Josh Anstey’s Blog

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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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’.

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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?

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Welcome back to my ‘Diary of a start-up’ series.

Today I am going to remind you how important it is to take advantage of your age. It is very exciting to be a young entrepreneur, and trust me when I say that a lot of people are just as excited about it as you. Society is becoming more accustomed to young entrepreneurs and are willing to embrace and support them.

This is something I learnt when I started my web design business. We were definitely ahead of our time in the sense of being young entrepreneurs, and encountered a bit of resistance, but overall we were able to take advantage of our age. You will always get the people who do not trust you, or don’t believe in you, but this is a perfect opportunity to prove them wrong and show that you mean business. Show them that your entrepreneurial flair won’t stop at anything. I found this to be a really positive beneficial attitude to have.

In my experience, I found that most people are really energized when they encounter young entrepreneurs and often want to deal with you to see what you have and can offer. This is really great, so make sure that you don’t disappoint.

Take advantage of your age to get in the media. As they say, all publicity is good publicity, and using your age to create media hype and a story can do wonders for your business. New reporters love nothing more than to showcase the work and enthusiasm of a young entrepreneur, so get out there and in the spotlight.

In summary, take advantage of your age because:

• People love dealing with young entrepreneurs
• Your age is a great story to get you publicity

These are two really simple points, but nonetheless important in generating strong business and making the most of being a young entrepreneur.

Read my previous post, ‘Diary of a start-up #1’.

Keep your eye out for future ‘Diary of a start-up’ posts. Make sure you don’t miss them by subscribing to my blog.

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

Do you think entrepreneurs are scared of failure? I think its quite a contradictory statement, as entrepreneurs are risk takers and don’t have fears about giving it a go.

In any case, have a look at this BBC news article that says that four in ten would-be entrepreneurs are too scared of failure to do anything about their business idea. There are some interesting statistics in the article and ideas to think about.

Click here to read the article.

Do you agree or disagree?

Welcome to part two of my thoughts from the ACS talk I attended earlier this week by Stephen Kowal.

As the title says, ‘Short term pay, long term gain’. What does this mean? Sometimes in order to achieve your goal and reach a point that you are focused on you need to make some sacrifices (more like ‘changes’) now. Sacrifices is a bad word to describe this as I would rather look at it as making ‘strategic changes’ now, in the short term. This may be a decrease in salary, a demotion, or working in an area that you may not have a real interest in, but these ‘strategic changes’ will help lead you in the right direction. These strategic changes may help you get that promotion, start a business you have been meaning to get up and running, or take yourself to a level you only dreamed of.

As entrepreneurs, we should understand this notion of ‘short term pay, long term gain’ better than anyone else. We are the ones that are able to take the risk, make that strategic change (or sacrifice for those that prefer the word), and know that in the long run, down the track, what we are doing now is for the greater good.

Passion
Take the risk, give it a goal, and be passionate about your goal. Don’t let ego or anything else get in the way. Remember to plan for the short term and the long term so that your goals and dreams are realities.

Another important thing Stephen mentioned was that over specialisation can be a killer depending on your goal. I found this interesting and I think that as entrepreneurs, whilst we want to be involved in every aspect of the business, there comes a time when we need to give ourselves a reality check and make sure we are not ‘over specialising’ in any area.

‘Your goal can and probably will change many times’
This is something to embrace, welcome and make the most of as entrepreneurs. Don’t fight it off but rather make the most of the exciting entrepreneurial journey.

Balance
In business, balance is important. So remember to have professional goals, personal goals and social goals. This will ensure that you are a better you, that you have balance, and that you continue to enjoy what you do. Working towards these goals will benefit you in all areas of your life. As entrepreneurs, often we tend to focus too much on our business, our idea and what we are trying to create and we forget there is life outside of the business. Always remember that you have 3 areas of goals; professional, personal and social.

It was mentioned that there are three important factors to success. These are:

• Personality
• Passion
• Drive

Remember that, and use it to your advantage.

Finally, here is a quote from the talk, and is something that will motivate every entrepreneur. Keep this in mind and your goals are only a short distance away.

“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal”

Remember to subscribe to my blog so that you don’t miss future posts.

Click here to read my previous blog posts about the talk, ‘A straight line career path doesn’t exist’ and ‘ACS Young IT Talk’.

Motivated? Check out my post on, ‘There are two kinds of companies: brave and dead’. It is a must read!!!

Yes, that’s right, you are reading correctly. As Entrepreneurs, and specifically Internet Entrepreneurs, there is often the misconception, that to make an online venture work, and to succeed in this web world of Web 2.0, you need to be in Silicon Valley, USA or somewhere else in the country.

Last week, Mary Meeker, managing Director of Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology Research Team, said that the US was becoming less relevant in this web world.

Meeker’s presentation shows that the fastest growth was outside the US.

• Germany is winning the E-Commerce market
• China is winning the online gaming market
• South Korea is winning in broadband
• Japan in winning mobile payments
• United Kingdom is winning in online advertising
• Brazil and South Korea are winning social networking
• Philippines are winning in micro-transactions via SMS

So for all internet entrepreneurs out there, don’t be de-motivated or disheartened if you are not in the US. You can still succeed. If your country is in this list, there are great opportunities is some markets, and if your country isn’t in this list, challenge yourself to create a technology that will put it there.

If you want to read the original article, click here.

Demo is the launch pad conference for emerging technologies. At this year’s conference in September, some interest technologies were released. Of particular note were technologies that Michael J. Miller of Forward Thinking mentioned in his post: “Demo Aims at Marketing 2.0”.

A brief summary of the sites included:

• FastCall 411
• Shoutlet
• The Pudding
• 360 Desktop
• Myndnet

The one area they do help with is creating widgets. In any case, its always good to have a larger pool to get ideas from and resources to use. For more information on these, check out Michael J. Millers post.

An elevator pitch is carefully planned, concise and brief overview of a product, service or business. It is called an elevator pitch, because it should be no longer than an elevator ride (a 30 second elevator ride, not a ride up 150 floors).

Elevator pitches are especially useful for entrepreneurs, when pitching ideas to potential partners, venture capitalists, or future customers. You need to be able to convey all the relevant information in a way that is likeable, and will entice a person to want to hear more. Elevator pitches need to be well rehearsed, and smooth when presented. After all, you never know when you will have to do your elevator pitch in an actual elevator. Elevator pitches are not sales pitches, but rather a way of marketing yourself, networking yourself, and showing that as an entrepreneur or businessman, you have credibility, an idea, product or service that can solve a need and be beneficial for the person you are talking to.

Some important elements of an elevator pitch include:

• What’s the idea?
• What market does the product address?
• Why it was created?
• What need it satisfies / what does it do for the buyer?
• What is your competitive advantage
• Who you are
• Your revenue model?
• A long term plan

Your elevator pitch needs to contain a ‘hook’ or something that will make people want to hear more and you need to effectively convey your passion for the idea.

Dan Schawbel’s ‘Personal Branding Blog’, has a video on how to construct and deliver an elevator pitch. Click here to watch it.

Remember to have your elevator pitch well prepared, rehearsed and ready to go. After all, mastering the ‘Art of the Elevator Pitch’ can take you to places you never imagined. Always be ready, because you never know when you will have to deliver it.

Good luck elevator pitching!