Interview with Entrepreneur and Business Junkie Anthony Green of Take Care of Biz
As part of my ongoing series featuring fiery entrepreneurs, today I finally have chance to showcase in detail the great Anthony Green of Take Care of Biz, a business blog for aspiring entrepreneurs. Anthony has been appearing quite frequently here as of late because well, he’s fine gent and a good friend. Is there a company that this many hasn’t run? From tutoring businesses, to web-based health supplements and now marketing consulting and blogging – Anthony has developed a wealth of experience in a very short time.. and he’s only in the his mid-20′s.
In this interview, Anthony not only talks about his background and business, but shares some lessons learned and the importance of making mistakes along the way. He also goes into some his favorite marketing strategies. You can follow Anthony on Twitter @takecareofbiz.
What is your background, and What did you do before Take Care of Biz?
Originally, I wanted to be a writer. However, while I was at Columbia I started taking classes at Columbia Business School – the rest was history. Business is an art and a science and it fascinates me to no end – it’s like chess. It takes 5 minutes to learn how to start a business, but you could never do it perfectly in 100,000 years. I was tutoring SATs when I started my first business, so I decided to go with what I knew and start an SAT tutoring company that I’m now in the process of selling. I’ve also started multiple other ventures in the private education system. I also started a totally botched healthy energy pill company that crashed and burned, but taught me more valuable lessons than any MBA program ever could have taught me. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of small business consulting, which I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about, and I’m in the process of launching multiple entrepreneur-focused products and services that will be off the ground soon. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my business career, and I value my mistakes more than my successes – they teach you to be an adult, to take responsibility for yourself, to learn, and to do things better the next time around.
How would you describe your blog, Take Care of Biz?
TCOB is a blog that takes a deep look into the intricacies of all things business. In general, the blog is meant as a resource for aspiring and current entrepreneurs – I want to provide my readers with useful, actionable information that they can use in their everyday activities. I cover topics ranging from marketing and web design to business development and time management. Rather than give bite-size bits of information, I prefer to really delve into the details of the topics that I cover and clear up confusion, providing people with solid advice and resources that they can put into action as soon as they read. I’ll also be featuring interviews from entrepreneurs, discounts on B2B products and services, business book reviews, and a million other things that I think other entrepreneurs will find useful.
What prompted you to start your blog/business?
I’m a bit of a business junkie, and I read books and blogs constantly. There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there, and I started TCOB to clear the fog and give people solid, unequivocal guidance. When I started my first business, one of the first books I read was Guerrilla Marketing – it’s a good book if you run a small, local business, but some of the information in there is penny-wise-pound-foolish if you run a web business. I wanted to provide people with advice that they can use no matter who they are or what they do. It doesn’t matter if you run a pizza shop or a international web design conglomerate – the articles in my blog are meant to be put useful to everyone.
What did you need to put this website together?
A lot of research, sweat, and the right people. I used Elance to find amazing developers and graphic designers, and I tinkered with the concept constantly for months. My first version of the website was a disaster, but I kept making incremental improvements until I ended up with a product I was happy with. I still think TCOB has a long, long way to go, but it’s getting better every day. For anyone starting a new business, know this: your first version is never going to be your final version. Get something out there, get feedback, watch your competition, and improve every day.
What is your marketing strategy for Take Care of Biz?
Getting it out there! There are so many insanely talented writers and businesspeople out there, and I want to meet and interact with all of them. I could write all day, so my plan is to write for and with as many people as I can, let others who need good advice know about my articles, and network like a maniac. Human connections are the only way to build something great, so all my marketing is founded on that principle. I want to meet other bloggers and entrepreneurs and get them involved at the same time as I involve myself in their projects. The rest will take care of itself.
You clearly have a great sense for business and really enjoy writing. Where does your inspiration to write come from?
I was an English major at Columbia, and before then I was a creative writing major at my high school (super liberal, so we could declare “majors” by our sophomore year, and cut everything we didn’t want to study). I love writing, but my real passion is in business. I saw business blogging as a way to combine my two greatest passions. All I think about is business, and I love writing, so why not write about business? It was a perfect fit.
Most people that you talk to online have had a rough beginning, what would you say was the toughest part when you where just getting started?
A lot of people start businesses and try to do everything at once, educating themselves as they go. I made a million mistakes in my first few businesses, but that’s the beauty of being an entrepreneur – your mistakes teach you insanely valuable lessons that you can apply to business and to your life. To any aspiring entrepreneur, I would say this: you will make mistakes, but don’t get discouraged. You’ll screw up left and right – I know I did. But screwing up is good for you – as Edison once said when inventing the lightbulb, “I have not failed – I have found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” Screwing up is tough, but you have to do it. I used to belong to a boxing gym and, rather than tell you to keep your hands up, they’d just punch you in the head if you dropped them. You can’t learn by hearing advice – you need to get in there, get punched in the head, and then keep your hands up in the future.
For people just getting started on their first blog (or business!), what ís the best advice you can pass on to them?
The toughest part of starting a business is defining your market. When I started my first business, a tutoring company, I had no idea who my real customers were. If I had a better idea of who I was trying to reach in the first place, I would have had a much easier time doing everything. I expanded too quickly into too many arenas before I knew what my expansion was trying to accomplish in the first place. To anyone starting a business, I would say this: figure out EXACTLY who you are trying to reach. “Moms,” “teens,” “people who like pizza” – these are weak definitions. You need to get as in-depth as possible and figure out a specific human being that you’re talking to. From there you’ll avoid a lot of mistakes. Something like, “My customers are wealthy, 35-50 year old male care enthusiasts who live in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas” – that’s a good definition, and if you come up with that before you spend money marketing, you’ll avoid a lot of the screwups that I made.
Would you ever trade the lifestyle that you have right now for a high paying 9 to 5? why?
Not a chance in hell. I respect the 9-5 lifestyle if it’s right for you, but it’s not right for me. I get bored easily and I need intense challenges to stay happy and motivated. Sometimes being an entrepreneur can suck – it’s isolating, stressful, and you need to work your ass off all the time. But I wake up every morning before my alarm goes off and rush to my computer to get started. You just don’t get that level of fire from most 9-5 positions. If you’re a family man, or you value comfort over challenge, then by all means take a 9-5, relax, and enjoy your life. But I’m not happy unless I’m doing my own thing and grinding away to get it done.
What kind of role did your College education play in your entrepreneurial ventures, and what kind of doors did it open for you?
To be honest, I wish I could get my $200,000 back. I’m a serious autodidact – I read 3-4 books a week and I’m constantly experimenting with new things. I don’t need other people to guide or motivate my learning, and when they try to, I often resist that. To me, the very premise of college classes is sort of ridiculous: Pay $3,500 and by the end of the class, we’ll teach you about a few books. Why not just read the books and then spend the $3,500 on a business?
However, Columbia did teach me a few key lessons. Firstly, it taught me the power of networking. No one can go it alone, and if you think you can you’re cooked. Columbia forced me to find the people that I could help at the same time that they helped me, and that is priceless. Columbia also taught me the value of self-sufficiency. I was kicked out of housing my freshman year for a totally ridiculous reason, and from that point on I had to pay my own rent and succeed at one of the most difficult universities in the world. The main lesson I learned for $200,000 worth of tuition was this: if you want to succeed, you have to do it. No one else is going to take care of you, and you shouldn’t count on them doing so. That sounds pessimistic, but it isn’t – it’s an incredibly empowering stance. I network like crazy and I try to make myself useful to others and attain the help of others when I need it, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for your own fate and your own successes and failures. Expectations and blame are both useless.
Whats next for Anthony Green, and for Take Care of Biz?
I have a raging case of ADD, so I’m always working on multiple projects at a time, but I have three in particular that I’m really excited about.
The first is the development of my marketing consultancy, 8th Wonder Marketing. I’ve been working with multiple business owners to help them develop their businesses and marketing strategies, and I’ve never had more fun in my life. I always work over the clock because I don’t want to stop. One client I work with was getting 2 leads a week with his website. Now, 2 months later, he’s getting 6 leads a day. He went from being broke and terrified to happy and relaxed, and now he’s turning down prospects who don’t match his ideal customer profile. 8th Wonder is based on the idea of Compound Interest as it applies to referrals – if you can get 1.1 referrals from every customer you work with, you’ll never need to advertise again. I teach my clients to thrill their customers and then design systems to automate the referral process. My website should be launching in the next couple of months, but for now I have all the clients I can handle!
The second is a book I’m writing called Don’t Screw Up. So much business literature focuses on what you should do, but how much focuses on what you shouldn’t? If you exercise three times a day, eat healthy, get your sleep, and take your vitamins, but you smoke 8 packs of cigarettes a day, you’re still going to die when you’re 30. Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do, and I’ve used my own experiences and interviews with over 100 people to give people the best advice on what NOT to do.
The third is a bit of a secret – let’s just say that it’s a game changer. I’ll keep you updated when it’s further along in the development process, but right now it’s under NDA and I can’t say a thing!
You can find Anthony’s work on the web Take Care of Biz, on Twitter at @takecareofbiz, or drop him a line and say Hi! at Info@TakeCareOf.Biz
