Josh Anstey’s Blog

Hello fellow entrepreneurs,

I am going to be travelling for the next 2 months. So if you don’t see a new post here for a few days, it’s because I have not had a chance to get to a computer in wherever I am. But rest assured, there will still be some great posts over the next little while.

Here are some reasons why travelling is great for all entrepreneurs:

• Exposed to different cultures
• Identify opportunities in foreign markets and countries
• Learn about other ways of doing business
• Meet people (other entrepreneurs, business partners, clients) in person
• Ability to bring your world experience into your business and entrepreneurial world

I am really excited for my trip, and look forward to writing some great posts along the way that will cover the different entrepreneur, marketing, networking, and web 2.0 experiences that I have along the way.

For those interested in where I am travelling, I will be in the USA (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas), Mexico (Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Isle Majures, Oaxaca, Mexico City) and Canada (Montreal, Toronto).

If you have any suggestions of places to check out while I am in any of these amazing cities, reply to this post and let me know. If you would like to meet up, send me a message.

I look forward to bringing some great travelling experiences to my blog.

Make sure you don’t miss out on anything during my travels. Josh Anstey’s blog is going to bring the world to the entrepreneur. Make sure you have subscribed to my blog.

Click here to subscribe to this 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.

Have you subscribed to my blog? Don’t miss out! Click here to subscribe.

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’.

Don’t forget to, subscribe to my blog.

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’.

Have you subscribed to my blog? Click here to subscribe.

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.

Have you subscribed to my blog? Click here to subscribe.

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

Enjoyed this post? Found it useful? Subscribe to my blog feed

A well organised agenda is one of the secret keys to a successful meeting. Spend some time before the meeting preparing the agenda.

7 important points to organising the agenda are:

1. The purpose of the meeting
2. The division, committee, team or attendees of the meeting
3. Date, time and location of the meeting
4. The expected length of the meeting
5. The items on the agenda – who is responsible / presenting for which item
6. Time allocation for each agenda item
7. Pre-meeting reading / preparation requiredRemember to send around the agenda well before the meeting (at least a day or two). This will allow everyone to see what is going to be discussed at the meeting, prepare accordingly, and propose any other items that they wish to discuss.

I hope you can use these 7 important points to organise your agenda so that you have a successful meeting.

Click here to read my previous post, ‘Preparing for meetings – who to invite’ and a follow on post from this article, ‘Preparing for meetings - 5 tips to encourage participation’.

Enjoyed this post? Found it useful? Subscribe to my blog feed

Knowing how to prepare for meetings is a really important skill that is quick and easy to learn, but often many entrepreneurs have no ‘meeting’ experience, and therefore don’t prepare for meetings effectively.

On top of this, there is the question of who to invite to the meeting. It is safe to say that people generally do not like meetings. Furthermore people really don’t like meetings that they didn’t need to be at. There is no worse impression on people than wasting their time with pointless meetings.

Strategically inviting people to the meeting is the key to avoiding these issues. Preparing for meetings effectively will ensure success and that everyone invited is playing a role in the meeting.

Here are some key points of who you should invite to a meeting:

• Key decision makers
• Senior managers in this area
• People who are experts or have key knowledge about a certain area of interest
• Certain stakeholders in the issues
• Anyone who will have to design, develop, implement, monitor, create or manage the outcomes of these decisions

Remember to carefully think about who is required at the meeting and who the meeting is optional for. Sometimes it is better for senior management just to be updated about the meeting afterwards as this is a lot more time efficient if their direct input is not needed. Others who did not need to be at the meeting can be updated via a quick chat, phone call or email.

As entrepreneurs, it is important to determine who is required at meetings, and strategically invite people. After all, you may be starting out, and this is a perfect impression of where ‘first impressions last’. Rather saves someone’s time now than waste it.

Preparing for meetings and inviting the appropriate people is often a challenge for entrepreneurs with no experience, so this should be a good guide to get you going. It will help you run a successful meeting and avoid people thinking of the good old saying ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.

Have a great meeting!

Other related articles: ‘Preparing for meetings – 7 important points to organising the agenda’ and ‘Preparing for meetings - 5 tips to encourage participation’

Have you read my ‘Diary of a Start-up #1’ series?

Enjoyed this post? Found it useful? Subscribe to my blog feed

I am pleased to announce that I was mentioned in a blog carnival on the ‘Business Opportunities and Ideas Blog’. Whilst John, the writer of the blog disagreed with my post mentioned, it did provide some good discussion and through generation.

In any case, you can check out my appearance on the ‘Carnival of Small Business Issues #26’.

There are some interesting posts in this carnival.

Thanks John for adding me to the carnival!

What a great exciting month October has been for blog.joshanstey.com!!! We kicked off the month with ‘Networking with Business Cards’ which is really useful in getting a better idea of how to use your business card to your benefit.

‘UPOD – Pronounced “You Pod” – Under Promise, Over Deliver’ gave entrepreneurs some business insight and ideas for future projects and developments. This is quite an interesting theory.

We are in the middle of what has been coined ‘Web 2.0’ and what better way to explore this than to post ‘Web 2.0 Galore’. A few great Web 2.0 sites and web 2.0 logos are on show here.

The benefits of mobile phones were seen in the article ‘Mobile Phone Opportunity’. This is definitely some food for thought for all you entrepreneurs out there.

‘Advertising Collection’ was a list of advertising websites that are a great resource for advertisers. You can never have too many resources, so this list is guaranteed to give you some very useful information.

Who would have thought there were rugby entrepreneurs? The 2007 Rugby World Cup provided some interesting ideas and insights into the mind of the entrepreneur. I explain this with my post, ‘The Rugby Entrepreneur’.

A quick view of how those that inspire us are living in ‘How to live like a billionaire’. There are some images of where the wealth these guys have created has taken them.

I found an interesting site that made online advertising really simple. Check out my article ‘Online advertising made simple’ to find out more.

My ‘Diary of a Start-up’ series started. This was very exciting, and gave a few tips and tricks from some of my experiences. Keep your eye out for more of these by subscribing to my blog.

‘Second Life Virtual Career Fair’was really interesting and amazing to see where the web has taken us.

No entrepreneur can go without it. It is so important to the success of a business. ‘The art of an elevator pitch’ explains all you need to know and how to master it!

If it’s Web 2.0 why can’t we have Marketing 2.0? ‘Tools for Marketers 2.0’ gives some tips and sites for being a 2.0 marketer.

My post ‘Internet breaks barriers, making US less relevant’ is topical, in the news, and gives every entrepreneur opportunity!

I was lucky enough to attend an ‘ACS Young IT Talk’ and this provided some interesting ideas and posts including ‘A straight line career path doesn’t exist’ and ‘Short term pay, long term gain’. These are really interesting and there is a lot to learn from them.

‘Are entrepreneurs scared of failure?’ was an interesting post that was thought provoking and is a must read.

Finally, we rounded the month up with ‘Marketing and Networking YOU!’ As an entrepreneur, you have to read this article so that you can make the most out of marketing and networking yourself to benefit your business.

What an exciting and developing month October has been. November is shaping up to be even better, with lots more information, tips and tricks for all you entrepreneurs out there. If there is an area or topic of interest that you would like me to blog about, send me a message here.

Remember to subscribe to my blog RSS feed to keep up to date with all the latest updates on blog.joshanstey.com