Networking Insight

Book Review: Upstarts by Donna Fenn

Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success was written by Donna Fenn who has been an expert on small business trends and entrepreneurship for over 20 years. She is the author of Alpha Dogs: How Your Small Business can become a Leader of the Pack and a contributing writer at Inc. magazine.

In Donna’s book, she discusses how Generation Y is changing the business world and creating a whole new crop of entrepreneurs. Inspired by the success of past generations of entrepreneurs, these young entrepreneurs are creating cools startups that are changing the way we do things.

Donna interviewed more than 150 young CEOs to learn how they do business, what motivates them, and how they want to change the world. The stories of these young entrepreneurs are very interesting.  Many of these people started businesses while in high school, which is amazing.

The book is broken up into the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Extreme Collaborators
Chapter 2: Technology Mavens
Chapter 3: Game Changers
Chapter 4: Market Insiders
Chapter 5: Brand Builders
Chapter 6: Social Capitalists
Chapter 7: Workplace Renegades
Chapter 8: Morph Masters
Chapter 9: The Future of Upstarts

Upstarts examines this entrepreneurial generation and reveals the following insights that are critical to this group’s success:

1. Building collaborative tribes
2. Deploying technology to your competitive advantage
3. Disrupting the status quo
4. Deconstructing the GenY market
5. Generating branding buzz
6. Adopting a social mission
7. Inventing the workplace of the future
8. Reinventing your company

According to the author, if you follow what these young entrepreneurs are doing, then you have a greater chance of success with your own business.  Times are changing so you need to adapt to the new normal and learn to work with GenY. After all, there are 77 million of them out there.

Upstarts!: How GenY Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success is a very enjoyable read that is organized around the stories of these GenY entrepreneurs.  Every business is different so it is interesting to read the stories of these entrepreneurs and learn about their journeys of success and failure. We can all learn from these young, determined, and driven professionals.

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Parents Try to Find Daughter Through Social Networking

The parents of an abducted child have created a video that they hope will spread through social networks. They hope that this video will reach someone who knows what happened to their daughter. While this a very sad story, it is one that shows us the power of social networking and how it can be leveraged to help one another.

See the video below:

How to Stay in Front of Others

In order to accelerate your personal brand, you need to always stay in front of others. As you become better known and memorable in your business community, you will build some great relationships.

Attend Events
You need to remain physically visible so attend events on a regular basis. At these events, you will not only meet new people, but also will reconnect with existing contacts. Nothing beats face time to try to attend several events a month.

Speak at Events
Find opportunities to be a speaker or panelist at events. Seek out organizers and ask them if you can speak at an upcoming meeting. If you have something to offer and fit with their needs, then chances are that you will be asked to participate.

Host Your Own Events
Demonstrate your expertise by organizing your own event so you can share your knowledge. Alternatively, you can host an open networking event. Whatever format you choose, new relationships and business will be developed from these activities.

Write Blog Posts
While offline activity is very important, online activity is also critical. If you haven’t already done so, then you may want to consider starting a blog. Blogs are a great way to showcase your expertise. The more posts you write, the more visible you will be online, especially with the search engines.

What do you do to stay in front of people?

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