Kris Schantz - Advice To Other Entrepreneurs

The best advice I can offer is... ignore my advice. (Just like this sentence... sometimes in life or business, no matter what decision you make you're screwed!) I've found entrepreneurship to be part common sense, part motivation and part experience. You can't learn common sense (but I guess you can try to hire someone who has it...). If you're not motivated to do something hard - like run a business - do something easy instead, like a 9 to 5 job with a pension. While passion makes things possible, experience makes things easier - and your chance for success greater. To gain experience you need to try things, learn from them, try them again in a different way to get better results� then lather, rinse and repeat. While experience helps you don't always need it, and you won't live long enough to ever have enough.

If you choose to ignore my first bit of advice then you're welcome to a few tidbits I've learned from our successes and failures, but use at your own risk! My $0.02 in random order...

Life is too short, don't waste it doing something you're not passionate about

Do your homework - learn everything you can about what you're trying to do (look before you leap)

If you've done your homework and you truly believe in your big idea, when someone tells you it can't be done find a way to prove them wrong

If don't believe you can do it, you can't

As a general rule, things worth doing aren't easy

A corollary to the above rule: things will always take longer and cost more than you thought; and yes, sometimes your possible 'worst case' scenario doesn't do reality justice

There's a difference between working at your business and working on it

Making the sale is vital, but getting paid and keeping a healthy cash flow is the only way to stay in business

If you can do something well in a day or perfect in 3 months, do a good job now and work towards perfection in the future (note: this doesn't apply to all things, there are some areas where nothing less than perfection will do!)

Think big but spend small

Note to the above...

You get what you pay for; while you should try to buy things cheaply, don't buy cheap things or it'll end up costing you a lot.

Second note to the above... This doesn't apply to human talent; hire the best you can afford... but if they don't deliver the talent at the speed you expect quickly part ways

If no one's buying what you're selling, either sell it differently or sell something else

Look behind at past mistakes to learn from them, but don't worry about the past - you won't get anywhere unless you're looking ahead

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