Yanik Silver answers some questions from Toilet Paper Entrepreneur!

Yanik Silver answers Qs from Toilet Paper Entrepreneur from Perry Lawrence on Vimeo.

Interview With Entrepreneurial Founder of 7Mainstreet.com

Title: Founder/CEO
Industry: Technology
Type of company: Dynamic Commerce Community
Year founded: 2006
Number of employees: 19
Location: Philadelphia

Questions:

1. What is the startup story behind 7mainstreet.com?

The startup story is actually interesting.  The base premise for the idea came to me one day when I was on my way to the grocery store.  I was listening to the radio and there was a band that came on the radio.  The dj for the station asked them how they got so big in such a short period of time, I was curious too because I had never heard of the band myself.  The band said that they joined myspace, sent out a ton of friend requests and over a period of a few months amassed a fan base in the 10s of thousands.  The band then said that they sent out a bulletin to their friends saying that they had a new cd out.  Thousands bought the cd and the rest was history.  At that one moment I thought to myself “If a band can go from obscurity to a gold record using a network why couldn’t a business do the same thing?”.  Needless to say I didn’t make it to the supermarket and pulled a U turn in the middle of the road and went home and started writing a business plan.  This was on July 14th 2006.

2. What is your definition of success and has your company achieved it?

Success is when you have a company that can be a disruptor to another well established company.  Something along the lines of a game changer that when someone sees it they say “Wow, that is cool”.  If you get enough people saying that others start to take notice and the company really begins to take off and the revenue streams start to grow.  7Mainstreet is a fresh site so we are not there just yet but we have the tools, feature sets, future plans, and the right team in place to make it happen.  We get the “Wow that’s cool” quite often and it is just a matter of time until all of the pieces fall into place and we reach that tipping point.

3. To what do you attribute your company’s recent achievements?

I can honestly say that I have the hardest working team that I have ever come across.  They sacrifice weekends, late nights, and other activities that go on in their lives because they have tremendous pride in the work that they do and it shows.  Without having the current team that we have in place 7Mainstreet would have never gotten off the ground.

4. How important have good employees and team members been to your success?

Good team members who understand your vision and the goals of the company are absolutely key.  Without sharing the same vision as the founder of a company you will never get your idea off of the ground and into the real business environment.  We have had employees come and go over the years and the ones that have believed in themselves and the product the most are the ones that have stayed on and have been extremely successful.

5. What three pieces of advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

If someone tells you what you are trying to do is impossible ignore them, they are probably jealous that they didn’t think of it themselves

Make sure your team is kept up to date on what is going on in the company, especially your key members, it helps build camaraderie and makes everyone know that their opinions are listened to and actually matter

Be prepared to make sacrifices in your life, if you really want to have your vision and dream become a reality be prepared to put in crazy hours, I don’t know how many late night conference calls and meetings I have had with my team starting at 2AM

6. What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?

Never make a hire out of desperation to fill a position.  This has happened to me 2 times while working on this project.  What I’ve learned from it is that if you have a feeling in your gut that the person you are looking at doesn’t fit the bill 100% don’t roll the dice.  There is always someone out there that fits your needs and it’s just a matter of time until you find the right person for that particular job.  If you get stuck with a desperation hire the time you spent training them and bringing them up to speed is wasted.  That time is better spent looking for the right person.  It may be tough to do in some circumstances but you definitely do not want the distraction and aggravation that comes with the wrong hire.

Don’t stray from the game plan.  We spent many hours tweaking, fixing, building, and adding on to the product early on in which just pushed our timelines out farther and farther.  If the change isn’t completely necessary at the time then write it down and schedule it for a later release date.  Everyone gets excited over thinking of new things to add and sometimes it can hurt productivity more than enhance it.  If we had stuck with our original plans we may have been able to launch sooner.  We have learned our lesson and try to keep a tighter timeline and accountability on our projects.

7. Describe/outline your typical day?

Fortunately for me over the past 2 years I have been able to bring talented people on board that I have been able to delegate tasks to, however I still have a very action packed day.

My day usually starts around 830AM and probably ends on most days around 9PM.  I like to start the morning off finding out what the status of our open projects are and asking my team if there is anything they need help working on or closing out.  I also like to use the morning hours to do follow up from previous sales calls and taking care of any scheduling of meetings.  I try to fit in at least 2 to 3 sales pitches in the late morning and early afternoon.  The afternoon is usually spent on testing out new features or changes to the site.  The late afternoon I like to circle back with the team again to see what milestones were hit and what projects were completed.  Throughout the day there are usually some meetings that I attend or lead depending on what the topic is.  Later in the day, or should I say early evening, is spent finishing up any paper work or other business tasks that need to be taken care of.  I like doing that type of stuff in the evening as its really the only quiet time I get all day and most other business in the world comes to a halt right around 530 or 6PM.

8. Where did your organizations funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it?

Our funding is from private equity and I was able to raise it by presenting a strong business plan with great growth potential form a revenue standpoint.  In fact the only way that I was able to take on funding was if I could show that the current business model is economically viable now and that it wasn’t dependent on placing banner ads on 7Mainstreet.  Once I convinced the investors that the idea was novel and had growth potential I got the funding I needed to get rolling.

9. What stops you from throwing in the towel and giving up during those frustrating days of running your business?

Knowing that I have put over 2 years of my life and sacrificed many things in order to make my idea a reality.  Even though some days are frustrating it’s not worth throwing away something that has tremendous potential and gives you so much pride because you hit a snag in the road.  If every day was supposed to run smoothly then everyone in the world would be running their own business.  Frustration and aggravating days come with the territory so you have to deal with them as they come, move on, and learn from them.

10. Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?

Not at all.  If you were to take a sample of 100 entrepreneurs out there they would all have a different story, come form a different background, and have different life experiences that allowed them to get to where they are today.  If there is a pattern to becoming a successful entrepreneur someone would have found it at this point and started selling that formula to make a buck and become the ultimate entrepreneur.  What I do think most entrepreneurs have to have is street smarts and common sense, without those basic skills it is tough in my opinion to get things moving with a business.

11. Who has influenced you most and been your greatest inspiration?

As cliché as it sounds, my dad has.  He was able to take our old family business which was close to bankruptcy in the early 1980s and grow it to a 450 employee manufacturing operation which sold in 2002.  Everything I know about business I learned from him as he has brought me up and involved me in the business since I was a kid.

12. What book has inspired you the most?

I honestly can’t say that any book has inspired me.  Unfortunately I don’t get to read as much as I would like, so on the times I can read I spend them reading business magazines like Forbes, Fortune, and Business Week.  So I would say business magazines inspire me the most because I get a wide breadth of news about different types of business models and business people.

13. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?

Everything we do at 7Mainstreet is designed to give us an edge and standout from the pack.  This goes for our marketing campaign.  We have devised a very interesting revenue share program that is different than what most people think when they hear revenue share.  We have come up with a plan that pays individuals commissions based on what services they are able to sell to businesses the know.  We have been able to recruit sales people from all over the country that are literally knocking on the doors of business in their communities to get them signed up.  Every service that involves a transaction is commissionable.  This includes profile creation, ecommerce fees, and advertising.  This program has given us grass roots spread in areas that we can’t get to and has enabled people to make some extra cash in the tough economy.

14. In one word, characterize your life as an entrepreneur.

Adrenaline

15. Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?

eBay

16. How do you achieve balance in your life? Or do you?

My gym is open late so I like to try to get there at least 3 times a week.  Running is a great stress reliever.

I also try my hardest to go out with my friends at least 2 nights a week after work.  In that same vein I try my best to not do any work on Sunday and take the day to do the things that relax me.

Finding a balance is tough to do when you have so many responsibilities but without making time for yourself to get away you will make yourself crazy and maybe even burn yourself out.

17. Where do you see yourself and your business in 5 years? 10 years?

In 5 years my goal is to make 7Mainstreet the go to destination for business information and information about the goods and services that business supply.  In 10 years its really hard to say where I think the company would be, although I know it will be successful as long as we are able to keep the current culture of being innovative and capitalizing on market niches.  I do have every expectation that 7Mainstreet will accomplish the goals my team and I have set forth.

In terms of myself I expect to be very active in the strategic planning and goal setting of the company, and it would also be nice to have a couple of bucks to put in my pocket as the company grows.

18. What’s your exit strategy?

I get this question a lot.  I do not have an exit strategy and I think that it is not really necessary to have one.  My goal is to build a sustainable business.  If I were to say that my exit strategy was to sell to Google in 2 years and it didn’t happen what opportunities would I have missed out on?  If you take a common sense strategy and plan on growing your business into the future that leaves all doors open for you and you don’t get stuck in a lurch.

19. If we could introduce you to anyone, who would it be and why? (you never know who we know!)

Mark Cuban.  He is a no nonsense guy who is intense and makes his own rules and shares similar philosophies to me.  He has been extremely successful because he’s stuck to his guns and won’t allow people to intimidate him.

Huffington Post Guide to Blogging – Book Review

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1439105006/ref=sib_dp_pop_fc?ie=UTF8&p=S001#reader-link

Last month, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging was released by Simon & Schuster.  Naturally, I felt the need to read and review it, especially after seeing Arianna Huffington interviewed on The Daily Show.  As the founder of HuffPo, Huffington is the “face” of the blog, doing much of the public relations for the site, despite the fact that there are 18 editors, 43 total employees, and hundreds of contributors.

Started in 2005, The Huffington Post led the revolution now known as citizen journalism.  The site quickly grew from a one-page website to a multi-page, in-depth internet newspaper that has a readership of almost two million unique visitors each month.

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging, however, is not so much an instruction manual for new bloggers as it is an inspirational tome that will get you excited to start blogging seriously.  Of course, the book does cover some of the basics like choosing your blogging platform, finding your voice, getting exposure and monitoring your traffic.  But most of this information can be found (much more succinctly) in other books or websites.

The real value in the book is contained in the anecdotes from a wide range of regular HuffPo writers and contributors such as Steven Weber, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nora Ephron, and Craig Newmark.  The advice is genuine and often very amusing.  However, because HuffPo is known to be an uber-liberal site, unless you have the same political leanings, the book may not be as enjoyable as it could be if it were purely written for instructional purposes.  Chapter 6, for example, is dedicated entirely to telling the story of the rise of HuffPo as an online rally for liberal politics.  And in Part III, almost forty pages are dedicated to reprinting some of the ‘best of’ blog posts from the site which include such telling titles as “Senator McCain Isn’t Funny, So Stop Encouraging Him” and “Bush:  Of Mojo and MacBeth.”

Nevertheless, the story of HuffPo as an internet business is inspiring, and it gives up-and-coming bloggers a look into the logistical issues that come from running a high-traffic blog.  The most helpful chapter for me was Chapter 5, entitled “Community:  Creating and Building It.”  The power of social networking has everything to do with giving your readers a reason to come back and interact with you and with each other.  Building a community is an art and this chapter goes over the details of making your site a nurturing environment for just this type of interaction.

Overall, much of the advice given to bloggers in The Huffington Post: A Complete Guide to Blogging is general and applies only when a blog actually gets to the point where it is getting a pretty decent traffic.  For startup blogger, however, it can motivate you to dream big.  There is definitely more to success in the blogosphere than just writing compelling content or having some political friends; and this book gives a real look at just what it takes.

Can Your Company Survive Without You?

The recent announcement about Steve Jobs stepping down from the CEO position at Apple created a wave of panic through the tech marketplace and sent Apple stock plummeting 7% immediately afterward. The company employs around 32,000 people, and yet, headlines the next day read: “Will Apple Survive If Steve Jobs Goes?” and “What is Apple’s Future Without Steve Jobs?” In fact, Jobs’ health issues were a carefully guarded secret for months; not just for his own personal reasons, but because Apple’s management knew how the announcement would affect employee’s morale, the public’s view of the company, and the financial support of the shareholders.

In sharp contrast, last year Bill Gates retired as the CEO of Microsoft and focused his attention on his philanthropic foundation. The company is as well known as Apple and far more economically successful; yet Gates’ retirement did not send shareholders into a wild speculation about the future of the Microsoft and whether it would survive in the future without its founder at the helm.

It got me thinking about how difficult it can be to separate a company or product from its founder; and how dangerous it can be for the overall success of a company to create a cult of personality around a single person. As entrepreneurs, we place a huge amount of energy into our businesses. Many of us fund our startups with our own income or savings; we work long hours, many times unpaid. We forfeit vacations, luxuries, and sleep just to make our dreams come true. It is inevitable that we may begin to feel possessive about the companies we create.

But for a company to really succeed there has to be a point when the founder lets it go. I don’t mean that he or she walks away and leaves it to fend for itself; rather, they themselves have to be willing to offer it up as a community project with the combined efforts of many other talented people shaping its ultimate destiny. If the personality and vision of the founder is particularly strong, it can cause employees and even a board of directors to make decisions based more on what they think will please the founder than what is actually in the best interest of the company.

To be fair, there will always be a part of the founder in any organization they have launched. The overall mission of a company involves both monetary success, and very often, a personal vision that is near and dear to the heart of the person who started it up. This can be a continuing source of inspiration as long as it does not trump the actual primary basis for the existence of a business in the first place: to make money and expand itself.

When a company that is 32 years old with a net worth of almost $5 billion provokes questions about its ability to survive the retirement of a single individual; anyone who is currently struggling to establish a company should stop and think about the kind of foundation they are laying for long term success.

What things do you do to insure the long term success in your business ventures?

New Bloggers Tool – Creates Exposure!

Social media is a proven method for marketing your business, blog, product, or personality.  The past five years have seen the development of hundreds of online communities, some of which are geared to specific interest groups like artists, women, or eco-businesses.  One of the newest additions to the social media melee is BloggersBase.com, a user-created magazine which caters to bloggers who want to gain more exposure and generate public awareness of their writing.

BloggersBase.com users can sign up for a free account and immediately begin adding blog posts, videos and photographs to different categories including Entertainment, Technology, and World Affairs.  These contributions create an enormous resource-filled site that benefits both the writers and the readers.  As a contributing blogger, you gain a vastly greater audience than you would by simply blogging on your own website.  The administrators of BloggersBase encourage the participating bloggers to use content from their personal blogs on the site, and to fill out their profiles to include links to their bio and personal website.

Each contributor gains rank based on their seniority and their popularity among other bloggers and readers and the number of posts submitted.  Ranking titles range from “Newbie” to “Scholar” and are clearly displayed on your user profile along with your avatar.  Registered users have the ability to rank each post you make, as well as leave comments and feedback.  The entire site is highly interactive, which can be both fun and useful in helping you fine tune your blogging skills.  (Especially if you’re just starting out as a blogger)

But perhaps the most exciting part of the site is the aspect of competition between the users:

“Each blog in BloggersBase is in constant competition, which lasts a certain duration called a Timeslot. The end of each Timeslot marks the end of one competition and the beginning of a new one. The best bloggers in the previous Timeslot continue to co-author the blog and can receive special awards, while the ones with the lowest marks are forced to become contenders again…”

To make the competition even more exciting, BloggersBase offers cash prizes for the weekly winners in each of the blog categories.  (Top poster in each section receives $40 and second prize winner receives $10)  So, in addition to the prestige of winning each week, you have the chance to earn a little extra money with your blogging.

Finally, as a BloggersBase reader, members are able to gain a separate ranking based on the length of their membership and the number of blog posts that they vote and comment on.  These titles range from “Subscriber” to “Oracle” and the higher the rank the more influence your votes have.  Even individuals who have no interest in writing can enjoy the high quality site content and participation in the competition between the bloggers.

Very few other social media sites have been able to combine the value of content with an interactive competition.  Bloggersbase.com is sure to keep you coming back time and again—for the sheer fun of it.

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