By the way, I have not shared with anyone outside of FastTrac or my close friends and associates what business I am developing and going to be launching. It is called BigLeapGPS. It will be the world's smallest personal GPS tracking device focused initially on child tracking. From there the uses are limitless. Keep an eye open for the site to go live as we have a few more developments happen. www.bigleapgps.com Nothing is there now but I promise it will be.
This idea came about at the end of August 2007 when my wife Chris and I were talking in the kitchen. Let me tell you first off that like must of you I am full of ideas and have been spouting them off to Chris since we met. This idea was the first one where she stopped what she was doing and told me this was my best idea yet. The idea was to incorporate a small GPS tracking device into a piece of jewelry for a child to wear so it would not be detected by a kidnapper.
Well here we are 3 months later, I have a business plan, an investor pitch, an amazing engineering company behind me and an entire entrepreneurial community beside me. Things are looking very promising and if I have my way about it, we will be manufacturing and selling this product before the end of 2008.
Please let me know your thoughts on this concept and if you are a manufacturer of a product or set of products focused on the child market for ages 3 through 8 please get in touch with me as I would like to validate my idea of incorporating my technology with your product.
Please write and let me know your thoughts... I am also interested in the political viewpoints many of you have. I know the reasons for me bringing this product to market is to return lost and kidnapped children safely and quickly. However, I am sure a completely different position can be taken and I want to hear about it.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Soccer vs. Swimming - A Classic Dilemma
I remember vividly when I was 9 years old and my mother had, at this point, been taking me from soccer practice to swim meets to soccer games to out of State meets for swimming... it all came to a head one day after soccer practice when she asked me, "Joe, I really need for you to choose one sport over the other because I can not continue to keep this up for you." My mom posed the first major decision I had to make in my life. Do I continue playing soccer or do I literally dive full time into swimming. Well, the way my mind worked then is a little different than now... I decided to swim because I was starting to get really good and because girls swam more then they played soccer. So there you have it. I chose swimming and ended up swimming my way to 6 State records, national rankings in several events and most importantly a swimming scholarship to Clemson. I would say the life changing decision I made at 9 years old worked out pretty well.
I bring all this up because all entrepreneurs must make a similar decision at some point. They have been doing one thing for a while, maybe their entire professional career, and here is something to take them away from the norm and into something completely different. Again the move, change, or whatever you want to call it was brought on by something inside you going, you have got to make a choice. Well, now it is something inside and no longer my mother. To choose doing what you have been doing or to do something you have never done before and hopefully something that has never been done by anyone else either.
I never looked back to soccer after I made my decision to swim. Sure, I would play it in the backyard or with friends but I never wanted to go back to what I was doing prior to my decision to swim. I made the decision to swim and that is what I did. An entrepreneur must have the same drive and determination to make the decision and not look back. Every bit of focus and energy must be dedicated to making your goal a reality.
What was the first major decision you ever had to make and how did it affect your life?
I bring all this up because all entrepreneurs must make a similar decision at some point. They have been doing one thing for a while, maybe their entire professional career, and here is something to take them away from the norm and into something completely different. Again the move, change, or whatever you want to call it was brought on by something inside you going, you have got to make a choice. Well, now it is something inside and no longer my mother. To choose doing what you have been doing or to do something you have never done before and hopefully something that has never been done by anyone else either.
I never looked back to soccer after I made my decision to swim. Sure, I would play it in the backyard or with friends but I never wanted to go back to what I was doing prior to my decision to swim. I made the decision to swim and that is what I did. An entrepreneur must have the same drive and determination to make the decision and not look back. Every bit of focus and energy must be dedicated to making your goal a reality.
What was the first major decision you ever had to make and how did it affect your life?
I am back... Finally!!
Hello everyone! I am very sorry for the small disappearance. One of the things I quickly learned as I started to build a business is the lack of time for everything. Being the father of three young children, the husband of a very busy and driven wife one barely has time to eat.
Since my last post in Sept. there have been a lot of things that have happened. I will start by saying the FastTrac TechVenture class was by far the best thing a tech-driven entrepreneur could do for their efforts. I started by new business venture planning at the same time the class started. By the time the class was done in 11 weeks, I had a solid foundation on which to build.
I hope to be able to fill in more details shortly and try to get this blog caught up again. Not to say I have any extra time but I feel this medium is extremely important and I want to do whatever I can to help guide and maybe inspire like minded individuals to dive in and take a swim in the entrepreneur waters...
Since my last post in Sept. there have been a lot of things that have happened. I will start by saying the FastTrac TechVenture class was by far the best thing a tech-driven entrepreneur could do for their efforts. I started by new business venture planning at the same time the class started. By the time the class was done in 11 weeks, I had a solid foundation on which to build.
I hope to be able to fill in more details shortly and try to get this blog caught up again. Not to say I have any extra time but I feel this medium is extremely important and I want to do whatever I can to help guide and maybe inspire like minded individuals to dive in and take a swim in the entrepreneur waters...
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Unexpected challenge
As if bringing an idea to life was hard enough I was presented with a new challenge last week. I have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I plan on taking this news in stride and will do my best to truly make the best of this disease. I plan on getting in great shape, eating well and living my life has I have been with the exception of daily finger pricks and a shot everynight. Nontheless, any new development like this causes you to reevaluate your life, what you are doing with it and pretty much everything else. In my case, I have an even stronger desire to see my idea through and make the biggest impact that I can. Upward and onward, no holds barred.... let's all continue this trip more vigorously than before!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Signed up for FastTrac TechVenture
Today I signed up to attend the FastTrac TechVenture:
FastTrac TechVenture Workshops
FastTrac® TechVenture™ Program Overview
FastTrac® TechVenture™ is a comprehensive business training program that addresses the needs of start-up entrepreneurs refining and writing their business plans and seeking to grow sustainable high-impact companies. The program combines one-on-one coaching, peer learning, guest speakers and comprehensive tools to help entrepreneurs produce solid business plans and strategies.
Program Goal
The goal of FastTrac® TechVenture™ is to enable entrepreneurs to develop an effective Elevator Pitch, Business Plan, and Investor Presentation in order to effectively communicate your:
• Market opportunities
• Business concept
• Investment potential
Dates:
Ten Tuesdays starting September 11th from 6:00-9:30 p.m.; Program concludes with graduation where participants meet investors.
Location:
Innovate Building — Downtown Greenville, SC.
Class Outline:
* Week 1: Exploring Entrepreneurship
* Week 2: Defining the Target Market
* Week 3: Conducting Market Research and Analysis
* Week 4: Testing Your Business Concept
* Week 5: Entering and Capturing the Market
* Week 6: Planning for Financial Success
* Week 7: Building and Compensating Your Team
* Week 8: Protecting the Business & Your Intellectual Property
* Week 9: Identifying Funding and Working with Investors
* Week 10: Managing Cash and Operating Your Business
* Post-Class: Investment Pitch Refinement Session
* Graduation: Class graduates meet angel investors, venture capitalists and event sponsors
A Discussion with John Warner
John recently agreed to meet with me to discuss a technology-based idea I am pursuing. What I gained from this discussion will greatly help me be more successful and, from that perspective, I wanted to share this insight so that if you have an idea or concept you might gain a solid direction on how to start down the path of bringing your ideas to life. Not to say this is everything you need to do but think of this as a launching point. We will move together through the rest!
1) There are a lot of great ideas out there. You and I have heard and come up with a bunch of them. We might have even seen a few of our ideas which were born years ago be developed by others. Well, the first thing you have to get over... your idea, like many others are nothing nor will they amount to anything until you execute on them.
Do research on the web, check out the US Patent Office website (http://www.uspto.gov) for any patents touching or surrounding your idea, and share your idea with a few, trusted individuals to help qualify and build on your idea. It would help if the ones you share this idea with are knowledgeable in the field where your idea or product falls.
When you do your research be sure to ask the right questions. John used an example from a recent blog from Swamp Fox to explain this one: Henry Ford said, If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. By asking the right questions to his potential customers he learned they wanted to get to town faster and be able to get back home sooner after selling their goods. Ford, hearing this need, developed a stripped down, basic car for the masses to help them do just that, replace their horses for basic transportation to and from town. Please read the blog entry by going to: http://swampfoxinsights.blogspot.com/2007/08/henry-ford-if-i-had-asked-people-what.html. The right questions should further help you define your target market and sales channel.
2) One of the first questions John asked me was what will motivate anyone to by this product. Just because the idea is a no-brainer in an entrepreneur's mind doesn't mean a hill of beans if a defined market set or demographic will not purchase large numbers of this item. The motivation to purchase should come from an inner need of the buyer to make the purchase. What environment, place, circumstance, event, etc. does a person need, want, or require the item you are developing. You must define when and where people will want to buy your item and set up a sales channel to direct your product to those people so when they make up their mind or realize your product is what they want or need that you are there to sell it to them.
3) Keep it simple. With every additional step or process you add to your idea or product the difficulty and frustration rate goes higher exponential. Do not complicate a simple idea or process with extra bells and whistles. Stick to the core reasons for your idea coming about. If you developed a paper cup, make a cup, not an insulated, covered, spill proof, with a lid cup. Make your cup, sell your cup and get profitable. After you are profitable you can come back and add whatever else to the cup your paying customers want.
4) Who is your competition? Your idea or product is more than likely a reconfiguration of ideas or products already on the market. What are those products on the market and why would anyone purchase your product over something else? If there is a market for your idea or product, re-invent it by reconfiguring a product or solution (your idea) that re-defines the market. By developing or re-inventing a market you will gain and hopefully retain market share and success. The first out of the gate, historically speaking, is usually always first.
5) Remember your resources. There are a lot of resources available to you to develop and explore your ideas. If you are a high tech, knowledge based entrepreneur then you have Greenville NEXT (http://www.nextgreenville.com) made up of some of the most talented and resourceful entrepreneurs in the country. You have SC Launch! which was created to facilitate applied research, product development and commercialization programs, strengthen South Carolina’s Knowledge Economy and create high wage-earning jobs by executing the mandates of the South Carolina Innovation Centers Act of 2005. (http://www.sclaunch.org) There are more resources than I can list in this article, I would suggest you contact the Greenville Chamber of Commerce for more details on who and what can best support your execution of your idea into a reality.
In summary, The only thing holding you back is yourself. You have no reason not to pursue your idea if you feel strongly about it and if you feel your idea or product will be accepted by your public. If you do not know if it will be accepted, then find out by asking the right questions and doing research on your idea. This will enable you to define who your public is and how to sell to them based on their times of motivation. When you sell to them, sell a simple to use product at whatever price that will get your venture profitable. Come on, how simple is that!
For those who are not familiar with John Warner:
John Warner is President of Swamp Fox LLC, publisher of Swamp Fox: News of the Southeastern Innovation Corridor and producer of the annual InnoVenture Conference. John is on the Board of the SC Venture Capital Fund, and is President and Co-founder of Capital Insights LLC, a Greenville, SC venture capital firm. He served as Chairman of its most successful portfolio company, Earth Fare, Inc., a southeastern chain of organic grocery stores. He holds numerous other business and community leadership positions.
1) There are a lot of great ideas out there. You and I have heard and come up with a bunch of them. We might have even seen a few of our ideas which were born years ago be developed by others. Well, the first thing you have to get over... your idea, like many others are nothing nor will they amount to anything until you execute on them.
Do research on the web, check out the US Patent Office website (http://www.uspto.gov) for any patents touching or surrounding your idea, and share your idea with a few, trusted individuals to help qualify and build on your idea. It would help if the ones you share this idea with are knowledgeable in the field where your idea or product falls.
When you do your research be sure to ask the right questions. John used an example from a recent blog from Swamp Fox to explain this one: Henry Ford said, If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. By asking the right questions to his potential customers he learned they wanted to get to town faster and be able to get back home sooner after selling their goods. Ford, hearing this need, developed a stripped down, basic car for the masses to help them do just that, replace their horses for basic transportation to and from town. Please read the blog entry by going to: http://swampfoxinsights.blogspot.com/2007/08/henry-ford-if-i-had-asked-people-what.html. The right questions should further help you define your target market and sales channel.
2) One of the first questions John asked me was what will motivate anyone to by this product. Just because the idea is a no-brainer in an entrepreneur's mind doesn't mean a hill of beans if a defined market set or demographic will not purchase large numbers of this item. The motivation to purchase should come from an inner need of the buyer to make the purchase. What environment, place, circumstance, event, etc. does a person need, want, or require the item you are developing. You must define when and where people will want to buy your item and set up a sales channel to direct your product to those people so when they make up their mind or realize your product is what they want or need that you are there to sell it to them.
3) Keep it simple. With every additional step or process you add to your idea or product the difficulty and frustration rate goes higher exponential. Do not complicate a simple idea or process with extra bells and whistles. Stick to the core reasons for your idea coming about. If you developed a paper cup, make a cup, not an insulated, covered, spill proof, with a lid cup. Make your cup, sell your cup and get profitable. After you are profitable you can come back and add whatever else to the cup your paying customers want.
4) Who is your competition? Your idea or product is more than likely a reconfiguration of ideas or products already on the market. What are those products on the market and why would anyone purchase your product over something else? If there is a market for your idea or product, re-invent it by reconfiguring a product or solution (your idea) that re-defines the market. By developing or re-inventing a market you will gain and hopefully retain market share and success. The first out of the gate, historically speaking, is usually always first.
5) Remember your resources. There are a lot of resources available to you to develop and explore your ideas. If you are a high tech, knowledge based entrepreneur then you have Greenville NEXT (http://www.nextgreenville.com) made up of some of the most talented and resourceful entrepreneurs in the country. You have SC Launch! which was created to facilitate applied research, product development and commercialization programs, strengthen South Carolina’s Knowledge Economy and create high wage-earning jobs by executing the mandates of the South Carolina Innovation Centers Act of 2005. (http://www.sclaunch.org) There are more resources than I can list in this article, I would suggest you contact the Greenville Chamber of Commerce for more details on who and what can best support your execution of your idea into a reality.
In summary, The only thing holding you back is yourself. You have no reason not to pursue your idea if you feel strongly about it and if you feel your idea or product will be accepted by your public. If you do not know if it will be accepted, then find out by asking the right questions and doing research on your idea. This will enable you to define who your public is and how to sell to them based on their times of motivation. When you sell to them, sell a simple to use product at whatever price that will get your venture profitable. Come on, how simple is that!
For those who are not familiar with John Warner:
John Warner is President of Swamp Fox LLC, publisher of Swamp Fox: News of the Southeastern Innovation Corridor and producer of the annual InnoVenture Conference. John is on the Board of the SC Venture Capital Fund, and is President and Co-founder of Capital Insights LLC, a Greenville, SC venture capital firm. He served as Chairman of its most successful portfolio company, Earth Fare, Inc., a southeastern chain of organic grocery stores. He holds numerous other business and community leadership positions.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
In the beginning
Hello all,
I am Joe Milam from Greenville SC... I have been a self proclaimed entrepreneur for at least 6 years ever I left my sales position at ScanSource to help them move into e-commerce with a product called BlackArrow. BlackArrow was built to help ScanSource resellers move to the Internet and sell products that ScanSource sells. Being a part of the BlackArrow team and something so innovative made me want to go out and do something new on my own.
I left BlackArrow and ScanSource in July of 2001 to start up my own business. After I did some web development for a little while with a reseller I started Gorilla Networks with some friends to provide wireless networks for businesses. One of our first projects was to wirelessly enable downtown Greenville. We wanted to use this as a marketing method for our business. And it worked! By the press generated by the wireless project Gorilla quickly moved into doing large scale wireless networks for hospitals, other cities and colleges.
It looked like we were on our way until we made a very bad decision, we diversified.
VoIP was coming on really strong at the same time wireless networks were popping up everywhere. Being young and invinsible entrepreneurs we lunged into developing a hosted VoIP solution before VoIP was cool. We justified this diversion by saying the hosted VoIP would lead directly into wireless hosted VoIP - man what a mouth full. Well, needless to say this diversion cost Gorilla a lot of time, money and relationships. Key thing to remember here and learn is you need to pick one thing and be the best in the world at it. We should have stuck with wireless and let other companies with more of a bankroll tackle hosted VoIP.
We ended up selling off the wireless business we worked so hard to build in 2005.
In Jan of 2006 I joined forces with my brother's existing company called PICS or Profitable Inventory Control Systems, Inc. PICS is a software development company focused on building inventory control, asset tracking and process tracking solutions for the manufacturing vertical. Since joining the company, which my brother and I had discussed for some time, I began to work directly with one of our very talented .NET programmers to produce what is/will become the best process tracking solution on the market.
With all this being said, this brings us to today... the birth of a new idea. So what I want to try and do is give you an insider's view of what I am doing and going through to make my idea happen.
I am Joe Milam from Greenville SC... I have been a self proclaimed entrepreneur for at least 6 years ever I left my sales position at ScanSource to help them move into e-commerce with a product called BlackArrow. BlackArrow was built to help ScanSource resellers move to the Internet and sell products that ScanSource sells. Being a part of the BlackArrow team and something so innovative made me want to go out and do something new on my own.
I left BlackArrow and ScanSource in July of 2001 to start up my own business. After I did some web development for a little while with a reseller I started Gorilla Networks with some friends to provide wireless networks for businesses. One of our first projects was to wirelessly enable downtown Greenville. We wanted to use this as a marketing method for our business. And it worked! By the press generated by the wireless project Gorilla quickly moved into doing large scale wireless networks for hospitals, other cities and colleges.
It looked like we were on our way until we made a very bad decision, we diversified.
VoIP was coming on really strong at the same time wireless networks were popping up everywhere. Being young and invinsible entrepreneurs we lunged into developing a hosted VoIP solution before VoIP was cool. We justified this diversion by saying the hosted VoIP would lead directly into wireless hosted VoIP - man what a mouth full. Well, needless to say this diversion cost Gorilla a lot of time, money and relationships. Key thing to remember here and learn is you need to pick one thing and be the best in the world at it. We should have stuck with wireless and let other companies with more of a bankroll tackle hosted VoIP.
We ended up selling off the wireless business we worked so hard to build in 2005.
In Jan of 2006 I joined forces with my brother's existing company called PICS or Profitable Inventory Control Systems, Inc. PICS is a software development company focused on building inventory control, asset tracking and process tracking solutions for the manufacturing vertical. Since joining the company, which my brother and I had discussed for some time, I began to work directly with one of our very talented .NET programmers to produce what is/will become the best process tracking solution on the market.
With all this being said, this brings us to today... the birth of a new idea. So what I want to try and do is give you an insider's view of what I am doing and going through to make my idea happen.
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