Design Vetica – William, David and Alex

Starting a company is hard but it’s even harder when you are in high school! So if you have excuses such as – I don’t have the time, I don’t have the money, or I don’t have the connection to start my business, team Design Vetica will blow all those excuses out of the water. They are young, they are determined and they are having fun working on their business.  Follow the team on twitter @designvetica.

1. Tell us what you do.
Design Vetica is a Vancouver based interactive agency dedicated to web design and media production. With our core service being web design and development, we work with clients across all kinds of industries to aid them in staying ahead of the competition. Not only do we emphasize on businesses, we also create websites for individuals who want an online presence. In addition, within the next few months, we look forward to adding new media services offerings to what we currently provide.

2. What is the start-up story behind Design Vetica?
All of the partners in Design Vetica, before establishing this agency, have either worked as freelance web designer/developer, or have built some websites themselves. Most of the projects they received were referrals from friends; but long before that, they have done multiple projects for themselves. Recognized by what they can achieve, they were given one of their biggest projects: building their school’s site (and they were paid with school credits). In the following year, William and David started talking about building a company on the idea of web design and media production in IT class. Soon, they pulled Alex into the picture since he was very close in working on previous projects with William. On February 6th, 2009 Design Veticawas born.

3. What was the most challenging aspect of being a young entrepreneur from your perspective as your entire team is still in high school?
Our most challenging aspect of being a young entrepreneur is that we are STILL in high school! People who are not constraint with schoolwork can focus solely on their work (apart from all the other random stuff). However, we, as students have to juggle school work and getting good marks while keeping up with deadlines from multiple projects with clients. This has caused some problems already. For example, we had to drop potential clients during finals. Nevertheless, at times, we encourage each other to keep up our grades in school.

4. To what do you attribute your company’s achievement?
All of us at Design Vetica can attribute our achievements to the individual member in the team. Without such a dedicated and hard working team, Design Vetica wouldn’t be where it stands now.

5. What advices do you give aspiring entrepreneurs, especially those who want to start in high school?
It may sound cheesy, but DO IT; because you never know unless you try. The truth is when we think back to how we started, we were even shocked to find ourselves following such a crazy idea; but we are glad that we did it. Even if your idea fails, use it as an experience because we all learn from mistakes.

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Bloom Marketing - Carlos Obregon

With the explosion of social media sites on top of the existing sites, it is difficult to navigate in the online marketing world  – how do I position my online brand and what do I do with this thing call social media?  I lucked out and landed my first entrepreneur interview withCarlos Obregon from Bloom Marketing, you bet I will be asking about social media.  Bloom Marketing is a leading search engine marketing agency located in Vancouver British Columbia.

1.  Tell us what you do.
In a nutshell, we do online marketing. The services we offer are:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to make your site easier to find by prospective clients.
• PPC (Pay per click advertising) these are the ads you see next to search results.
• Copywriting – we write text for websites, this text is different than the text you see in print media, it is designed to be easy to read and informative for users and easy to read for search engine robots at the same time.
• Social media marketing - we help website owners unleash the power of Web 2.0
• Web Analytics – We track and analyze the traffic that comes to your site, we can then determine who the most likely buyers are, which cities they come from, what times of the day do they normally visit your site, and a large number of other metrics that can shed light into how your online sales are happening.

2. What is the start-up story behind Bloom Marketing?
In 2006 Azita Fazli and I saw the opportunity to start this company because we were witnessing the growing demand for online marketing services. Azita has been doing internet marketing since 2000 and I have been in this field since 2005. We had paying customers from day one and despite the recession we have been growing every year. We currently serve clients in the following industries: financial, tourism, real estate and consumer products and services

3. Where do you see Bloom Marketing going over the next 2 years?
We seem to be specializing in tourism related industries; we currently have a hotel chain, an airline and two regional tourism associations as clients. We also work in partnership with 4 ad agencies in the city to enable them to offer not only traditional media capabilities but digital media as well.

4. Social networking is huge these days; do you incorporate that into your business offering as well?
We do, we are currently active on Facebook with and ad campaign and a Fan page, onLinkedIn and on Twitter.

5. Any tips for start-ups with regard to online marketing and how to navigate through the social networking explosions?
Try it. If you are familiar with print and electronic media, chances are you will be greatly surprised by the ROI and lower cost of online marketing. As for social media, make sure you claim your company name on all the major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Even if you don’t have the time or resources at the moment to maintain your profiles, at least you can avoid the problem of someone else posing as yourself or your company.

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Following your bliss

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

You have probably heard a million times, follow your bliss or follow your heart which really means do what you are passionate about. What it means for me means casting aside my degree, defying my parents, and leaving a possible career in criminal law – everything that is seemingly concrete and predicable to do something that my heart tells me. Try explaining that to your parents and your peers – my heart is telling me something else and oh yeah by the way, forget what happened in the last 7 years of education and yes that 2 years in law, let’s pretend none of that happened. What I really want to do was with two partners; build a place where entrepreneurs can call their second home.

We struggled and struggled hard. We were MISERABLE as we were all young all still in university with pressure of exams, satisfying demands of current clients for our current business and dealing with family pressure. One of my partners was in Computer Science and another in Chemistry, and I was in Applied Science with a clear path going to Law. None of us knew what constructions look like but we all came to the office after work and school to carry hardwood and drywall to help out the construction workers. We accelerate the construction process from the estimated timeline of 6 months to 3 months.

  

That was 2 and half years ago and we never looked back. The result is The Network Hub. The space is now more than 4 walls and some doors, it vibrates with enthusiasm, energy and passion from the people who occupy it. If I ever doubt my path or have a moment of weakness, all I need is to open the door to soak in the buzz and the vibrations from the people in the space determined to change the world in their own way, completely absorbed in their passion and loving every minute of it.

  

One person in our space who is so passionate about his cause, he is staying up 24 hours to blog to raise funds for the BC Cancer Foundation. Dr. Raul Pacheco has lost 3 family members to cancer, including two of his Mom’s sisters (lung cancer and stomach cancer, respectively) and his grandmother (pancreatic cancer). If this isn’t pure passion, I don’t know what is… please donate generously to Raul. I sure will be as a person who recently lost my uncle to pancreatic cancer.

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Confession of an entrepreneur: Friendship

At last week’s Meetup of Meetups, I had a chance to kick my feet up early and catch up with some keen entrepreneurs who came earlier to the event. A question was posed to me… what was one of the disadvantages of starting a business when I was so young? I had to think about it… perhaps because my second Budweiser Lime Light got my mind a little hazy, but off the top of my head and maybe because of the social event we were about to have, I exclaimed, “You lose friends and you lose them fast!”

What people don’t tell you is that once you start your business, when you live and breathe your business, you literally become a social outcast in your close-knit circle of friends. You can no longer relate to the complaints about a nasty boss, long hours in cubicles and crazy co-workers. I find myself having little patience – if you have such a problem then find a new job or start your own business! Those were not satisfactory answers and it usually gets me in a lot of trouble with my friends. In replies, I usually get the “I can’t believe you would trade a regular paycheque for little or no money”, why would you work from the basement or even worse “get a real job”.

I have fantastic supportive friends who I have known from high school and elementary schools. They love me and I love them. We do anything to support each other but we strain to make conversations whenever we meet each other. Once we get past the pleasantries and the updates, we have a hard time connecting about the present so we revert back to past events…. our conversations usually take the tone of “remember that time in the cafeteria and you slipped?” or “remember that teacher who was so nice?” I almost feel a relief when our social outing is over because it took so much effort to come up with conversations. My best friend and I see each other maybe once every 6 months, most of the time more because her work keeps her very busy, actually busier than me! She’s an auditor at one of the top 5 firms. It was always her goal to be in the top 5 and mine to be running my own business. It is slightly sad that the further ahead we get in our respective field, the further we drift away from each other. While we still make every effort to catch up, things aren’t quite the same.

It’s not all that bad though, I have fantastic business partners who live and breathe the business with me. People who in an instant would know what I am going to do and vice versa, I think my partners are now my best friends too. We have to be… we are in a relationship that is even deeper than friendship, I rely on them for my livelihood and I see them more often than my family. If you are looking to start a business on your own, I would ask you to consider bringing in a partner but if that isn’t an option then please join organizations with likeminded individuals who are in the same boat as you.

I think this is the reason why I threw my hat in the ring to be president of then Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurs (now called SIFE) and after graduation I started organizing the Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup. It can get pretty lonely sometimes to not be able to share the success, obstacles and challenges with another human being who is on the same path as you are. Well at today’s event we are expecting about 600 people, about 360 of those attending are from Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup so I guess I can’t feel that bad I have 360 people who can share, understand and relate to what I am going through.

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How good do you want to be?

As promised, I will quote certain phrase from “The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden” and elaborate on it each week. This week I’ve landed on the chapter with the question, “So how good do you want to be?” When asked, most people will say I want to be the BEST whether it is with regard to the best in their field or the best at whoever they want to be – husband, wife, daughter, son, etc. So why then isn’t every one the BEST?  This brings me to the quote of the week.

“Talent helps, but it won’t take you as far as ambition”

Everyone wants to excel at what they do but they are unwilling to make the sacrifices it takes to achieve those goals. This is what the quote intend to say… some people would rather well-liked because they confused being liked with being good. Some would rather take short-cuts but they don’t realized to be good you have to learn from experience and make mistakes. A long time ago, when I was in grade 11 I wrote a letter to myself in a notebook (which I still have to find) – in that notebook I wrote out the contract to myself. I knew to get myself on the path of being the best I had to sacrifice a few things…. in exchange for freedom to make my own decision and set my own rules I had to give up sleep, friends and peace of mind. I was ok with that but I also wrote down what I wasn’t willing to sacrifice, which was time with family, good friends and time for myself.

My start in my academic life was in science so I am fully aware of the rule, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. It doesn’t just apply to science; it applies to life as well. I know there is give and take in order to achieve what you need. So the next time I feel exhausted, hungry and grumpy due to lack of sleep I just have to remember this is my sacrifice to gain the freedom to make my own decision and play by my own rules.

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Rethink Vancouver Office Space Strategies

Every year, Business in Vancouver magazine publishes their Office Leasing Guide and this year, The Network Hub was fortunate enough to be mentioned in the 2009 Office Leasing Guide. 

The recession has many small businesses in Vancouver rethink their office space strategies. Aptly titled “Pooling together: Co-working creates space options for small businesses” on page 31 of Office Leasing Guide 2009, Peter Mitham explores the different options for small businesses in this economic downturn.

Here are highlights from the article:

“Most often downtown, you can just rent the office space but there’s no utilities, there’s no one taking when things breaks down, there’s no receptionist, nobody’s taking care of the cleaning.You have to manage everything yourself.”

At The Network Hub, “You can concentrate on your business. We’ll take care of everything else.”

Read more here….

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Recession survival strategies for small and medium businesses

I was honored to be part of GetConnected Magazine Spring 2009 Issue.

This issue helps you save money with green savvy practices (pg.16) hear from the technology companies making creative and agile decisions (pg.22) and get inspired by some of the big things happening in Canadian Telecoms (pg.28). Whatever industry you are in there is a technology you can employ to help you through the economic climate.

We were interviewed for one of the featured article: “Surviving and Thriving in the Downturn” by Steve Kim. The article looked at SME businesses who employed cost cutting measures to ensure survival during this downturn but also to set them up for growth. Read more…

During the downturn, one of the most effective measure is to get rid of your office lease but if you still the basic small business amenities to still grow your business then The Network Hubprovides some very attractive options. Shared office space or short-term lease rental which includes costs of all utilities, amenities such as fax, reception service, meeting room and mail receiving and more importantly, a predictable budget so there is no unpredictable extra cost. For those who found comfort in transitioning from office to their home office but don’t want to find clients at their door step, we offer downtown business address at $25 dollars a month.

In ending, the most memorable lesson from the article is that “the best offense is a strong defense”. Pick up a copy of the issue at your closest London Drugs location.

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