Josh Anstey’s Blog

Hello fellow entrepreneurs!

Something that all entrepreneurs have to do at some stage or another is make a great entrepreneurial speech. This speech could be to a board of directors, fellow partners, employees, venture capitalists, shareholders and investors, conferences or events, fellow business people, and the list goes on. In simple, you going to need to make a speech sooner or later, and you might as well be prepared for it and make it one to remember. Here are a few pointers.

Prepare – make sure you have prepared for the speech. No one likes to listen to a speech that is disorganised, off the topic and just simply unprepared. Set time aside a few weeks before the day of your speech to plan it and prepare the speech.

Practice – once you have written your speech, practice it. Practice, practice and … practice! While you can’t always know other variable on the day, you can at least practice the part that you are going to deliver. Practicing in front of the mirror is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and still works, so give it a go.

Research – do some background reading on your topic as well as relevant and recent news articles on the topic, to make sure you can answer any question thrown at you. You need to be knowledgeable in your area. It also helps to do some research and reading about your audience or the conference or event that you are speaking at.

Be enthusiastic – when presenting, be lively and enthusiastic. Show your audience your passion for the subject. This will give them a better impression, and they are more inclined to listen and remember you.

Make a dramatic opening – start with a bang. Grab the audience’s attention and let them know that you are in the building! This will also intrigue the audience and make them want to know more about what you are talking about.

Humour – try and add in a bit of humour. It doesn’t have to be a joke, but a light hearted humorous line creates a connection with the audiences and helps them relax and warm to you.

Make use of pauses – pick your pauses carefully and strategically. A one or two second pause can have a great effect, but you don’t want to overuse them. Think about where they will have greater impact in your speech.

Eye connection – make eye connection with your audience. Don’t talk at them, talk with them. Your preparation should mean that you don’t have to follow every single word with your eyes. A tip for doing this is to just write a few ‘reminder’ words on palm cards rather than sentences. That way, you can have a quick look down, see a word that reminds you of where you are going next, and continue that great connection with you audience.

Timing – don’t speak for too long. Have a watch and a clock and keep to your allocated time. No one likes a speech that goes on for too long.

K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) – don’t try to impress anyone with using extremely long words that no one will understand and will just make them think that you spent too much time reading the thesaurus. Know your audience, and use language that is appropriate to them and that they will understand.

Watch your body language – be conscious of your body language throughout the speech. Are you sitting or are you standing? Are you learning forward no the edge of your seat or reclining back into your seat? Are you pacing up and down or not moving from the one spot? There is no right or wrong with body language, but it helps to be conscious of what your body language is saying, and take a bit from each technique. There are however a few don’ts, including don’t drop your head when reading the speech, don’t play or flick a pen, and don’t turn your back to the audience. Other than that, everyone is different and has a different comfort level in terms of their body language.

Smile – after all, you are human. Smiling makes the audience feel welcome, warm and relaxed. Be their friend.

You are an entrepreneur. Part of making a good entrepreneur speech is taking that bit of a risk. I hope these tips assist you and get you on your way. If you have any others to add, it would be great to hear what you think.

Have a great day, and good luck in making your speech.

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Yes you heard me. Business is booming in the Web 2.0 world. What does this mean? Don’t miss the train, get on board. There is so much opportunity out there waiting to be utilised. Go out and get it!

Have you got an idea? Do you want to invent something? Is there anything that you think could be reinvented? Would you like to offer the world a new product or service?

Now is the time. Don’t sit back and relax. Take action!

The web offers you an infinite amount of ways to succeed, achieve something, and take your entrepreneurial sprit to the next level. Remember, you can only learn from the experience. So rather than not knowing, give it a go and take that chance because you never know where it will lead you.

If you would like to read an article about it, click here to read the iTnews article, ‘Business is booming thanks to Web 2.0’

It is sure to inspire you and give you that motivation.

If you would like to discuss business ideas with me, are looking for a business partner, need someone to bounce your thoughts and plans off, or would like some consulting and entrepreneurial advice, contact me! It would be great to help you.

Related articles:

What is Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Galore
Diary of a start-up #1
Diary of a start-up #2 – take advantage of your age
The art of the elevator pitch
Internet breaks barriers making US less relevant
Are entrepreneurs scared of failure?

The top list of IT influencers was recently released.

The list was compiled by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a tech trade group with 22,000 members. The poll got 473 votes, mostly from people who have worked in the tech industry for at least three years

The list was:

1. Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft Corporation (84%)
2. Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple (73%)
3. Michael Dell, CEO and founder of Dell (53%)
4. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google co-founders (47%)
5. John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems (44%)
6. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle (36%)
7. Vinton Cerf, who (with Bob Kahn) co-designed the TCP/IP protocol upon which the Internet is built (35%)
8. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO (35%)
9. Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay (30%)
10. Craig Barrett of Intel (28%)
11. Louis Gerstner Jr. of IBM (26%)
12. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com (23%)
13. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems (22%)
14. Leonardo Chiariglione who helped create the MP3 standard among others (17%)
15. Paul Otellini of Intel (17%)
16. Carly Fiorina of HP (14%)
17. Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (13%)
18. Mark Hurd of HP (11%)
19. Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe of MySpace.com (10%)
20. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times (4%)
21. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com (3%)

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who is known to have invented the World Wide Web, which has provided opportunity to so many came in near the bottom of the list with 1% of the vote.

This is a really interesting list, and really inspirational.

What are your thoughts on who was in the list? Anyone not there you think should have been? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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.Asia domain name extension has opened for registration.

Entrepreneurs thinking of expanding into Asia, or see potential opportunities in the market (and there are many), now is your chance to get a domain name.

I did some web browsing and found that there were something like 648 521 .com domain names registered in the last 24 years, although you do need to take into account the ones that expire and are transferred.

What does this mean for entrepreneurs? The domain world is a fast and fierce one. You can buy and sell domains for extreme amounts of money, and there are many people that make a living off it.

I think over time, we will continue to see domain name extensions created because the demand is just so high. The increasing reliance on the internet will increase the pressure on the important of having your own domain name.

So if you would to get into the domain name trading industry, you better start now.

The big question remains, are domain names really worth the large sums that people pay for them?

If you take the demand-supply theory of economics out of this equation, I really don’t think they are worth the amounts paid!!!

As mentioned, the new .Asia domain extension has opened and time is limited to register, so click here to read the news article.

.ASIA Domain Name Registrations

Related articles:
The domain name game

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The iPhone has been named the invention of the year by Time magazine.

It has sold 1.4 million units since its release on June 29, and is looking to continue its strong growth and success.

There has been a huge amount of hype about the iPhone both before and after its release. It really shows how incredible and quickly technology is developing and gives us a taste of the future. And what a great future it looks to be. The Time Magazine article about the iPhone really presents a strong positive case about this amazing product that has won invention of the year.

It seems that Apple just can’t go wrong. I wonder what they are going to bring out next.

If you want to read more, see Time Magazine’s ‘Inventions of the Year’ article.

Got an iPhone? Tell us what you think about it.

Related articles of interest:
Mobile Phone Opportunity
There are two kinds of companies: brave and dead
Tools for Marketers 2.0
Web 2.0 Galore
Advertising Collection
Online advertising made simple

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Marc Andreessen, the entrepreneur and founder of Opsware and Netscape has said that businesses are not early adopters anymore and their IT departments are ‘stuck in the mud’. It seems that these days, whilst there is such an entrepreneurial boom, especially with Web 2.0, businesses are not welcoming these ideas and start-ups and entrepreneurs are experiencing barriers and closed doors.

I was reading this in an article ‘Evaluating tech startups: The risks and rewards’ from iTnews and it had some interesting information.

InformationWeek did research of 150 senior business technology executives and got some interesting results. 74% described their IT cultures as moderate and conservative only 26% called themselves aggressive. These stats are interesting but also worry to entrepreneurs and start-ups out there.

To those companies that fall into the 74% - step outside your comfort zone. You don’t necessarily have to be aggressive, but rather entrepreneurial, take a chance, give it a go, and help nurture and motivate the young entrepreneurial talent that is a click away.

As entrepreneurs, what can we do?
Look at this as a challenge! Don’t be afraid of it, but rather welcome these statistics and use them as motivation. Be prepared, and know that with determination and persistence you can succeed!

Some related articles:
There are two kinds of companies: brave and dead
Mobile Phone Opportunity
Business Cards for Beginners
Springwise – your daily entrepreneurial ideas

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Following on from my article, ‘Who are you and why should I care’ I found this interesting article that is along the same lines.

It reinforces how important your online reputation is, and how you need to make sure that your online reputation is positive, consistent and portrays the image you want the world to see.

Click here to read the article by Tyler Cruz on Learning to Manage your online reputation.

Did you like this article? You may be interested in my article, ‘Who are you and why should I care’ or ‘The art of the Elevator Pitch’.

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I read an interesting article on Biz-Blogger.net called ‘Who are you and why should I care’. I have talked before about the importance of marketing yourself and how you position yourself. This is even more important for online entrepreneurs, as we live in an age of instant information. You really need to have thought about this, and be ready to answer the title question of this post, ‘Who are you and why should I care?’

Some questions the article suggests you think about and know how to answer include:

• How am I different?
• What do I stand for?
• What can I provide?
• What are my product strengths?
• What are my product weaknesses?
• What does the market want?
• Am I an innovator?
• What can I personally offer to the product/service?

Read the full article, ‘Who are you and why should I care’ on Biz-Blogger.net as it has a few good pointers.

Something that relates to this is the elevator pitch article that I wrote about a while back.
Click here to read my article, ‘The art of the Elevator Pitch’.

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Hey there! The internet is vital in marketing and networking yourself. It shows people who you are, what you are all about, and gives them a really good insight into what they are going to get if they go into business with you.

For those marketers, networkers and entrepreneurs out there I would like to give you a great example of how someone used their blog to land their dream job. Remember, your blog promotes you and it is often the first thing a person will look at before meeting you.

As an entrepreneur, a few ways that a blog can assist you are by:

• Attracting business offers
• Bring in business partners – determining if someone wants to go into business with you
• Showing your knowledge, experience and entrepreneurial flair
• Positioning yourself as an industry leader

Here is an example of how you can use your blog to land yourself your dream job or business opportunity.

Matt Coddington is a web designer, and he used his blog as his resume to land himself his dream job. Click here to read his blog about what he did. He also writes the Net Business Blog.

As you can see, your online presence is a great way to position yourself so that you can benefit. So remember, when writing each blog post, the world of opportunity that it can bring to you.

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There is nothing worse than a meeting with no momentum and participation, or a meeting where certain people are not given an opportunity to participate.

Here are 5 tips to encourage participation in meetings:

1. Monitor your own level of contribution – often as entrepreneurs we can get over-excited and steal the show. Make sure you are not the only one participating as you don’t want to come across too dominant or pushy
2. Steer the momentum – it is great if everyone is so enthusiastic about the topic but make sure you control the meeting if they try to talk over each other. If this happens, quieten everyone down, and announce an order to go around the table and hear everyone’s opinion.
3. Encourage everyone to participate – this is your meeting and you’re responsibly that everyone participates in the meeting. If you see somebody sitting quietly in the corner, or not contributing, encourage them to participate. This can be easily done in a number of ways such as asking them if they have anything to contribute to this topic, what their opinion on the topic is, or suggesting to the meeting that you go around the room and get input from everyone
4. Be enthusiastic and supporting – it is important that you are lively and enthusiastic and that you support suggestions made. There are still positive ways of acknowledging ideas that may not be practical or useful without hurting or insulting people. Being enthusiastic and supporting will make people want to participate and contribute
5. Watch body language – this can give you a really good indication of how the meeting is going, and what the person’s thoughts are on the issue. If they are leaning forwards, this means there is a good chance they want to add something, and may not be able to say it. If this happens, actively engage them and ask for their input. On the other hand, if someone is sitting far back and has removed themselves from the conversation, try invite them back in and ask what they think about the topic.

These are 5 simple tips to encouraging participation in a meeting.

Related posts include:

• Preparing for meetings – who to invite
• Preparing for meetings – 7 important points to organising the agenda

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