By: Kristine Dickson for The Entrepreneurship Alliance at UNO
If you ask about the criteria required to become a successful entrepreneur, you are likely to be told about the need to be creative, hard-working, and determined. The most critical characteristic, absent from this viewpoint, is the need to be visible.
To be visible literally means just that. If you are not seen, how can your idea, product, etc. be seen or heard, and how will you know if it’s really any good? More than that, how will you connect with the people out there who can help you bring your idea to fruition so that you can create a real, functioning business, which is your whole goal in the first place?
Getting out into the community is critical, crucial, imperative, paramount, (insert your favorite adjective here).
You get the idea.
Time is at a premium for everyone, especially students who are juggling classes, studying, jobs, and families. But if you’re goal is to start your own business, then you have to get out there and start going to events and meeting the people that can help you make and grow a business.
Being visible in the community is as important a component of your business strategy as writing a solid business plan.
There is always something feeding the entrepreneur/startup scene in New Orleans. On any given day or evening, there is a workshop, seminar or some opportunity for you to meet other emerging entrepreneurs and make connections. Whether it’s free seminars about “Lean Startups,”
“How to Pitch Your Idea to Investors,” or events like PitchNOLA and Startup Weekend New Orleans, there is always a way to be engaged with the startup community in New Orleans.
The great thing about New Orleans is that it is easy and unintimidating to meet people here because of the inherent Southern mindset of “there’s no such thing as a stranger, just someone you haven’t met yet.”
That rationale lends itself to why New Orleans continues to rise in the rankings every year as one of the best startup cities in America. There are so many resources here available to emerging entrepreneurs, but just like everything else, you get out of it what you put into it.
By joining the Entrepreneurship Alliance at UNO and following the organization’s blog and Facebook page, you can stay informed on all of these different types of opportunities.
From the UNO Driftwood 9/24/2013
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