1.     Act Big But Embrace your size

The first rule of business is that if you want to sit down with the players you have got to act like a player. Do your research. You need to be as fluent in your industry as you possibly can be.

While admitting that you run your company out of your dorm room may not be the best play, don’t be afraid to show the more humble side of your company. Being a small fish has its advantages too. Figure out what they are and present them proudly.

2.     Never Eat Alone

Networking, Networking, Networking. Business is just the culmination of a series of conversations between human beings and the financial transactions that proceed. Master the art of conversation and you’re a step closer to mastering the art of business.

Include others in your business operations as much as possible. You may be more valuable than you think, when you meet people you need to constantly be thinking  “who can this person benefit from knowing in my network, or who can benefit from knowing this person” not “how can I benefit from this person”.

3.     Embrace your elders

They’ve already done it. They’ve been there, and no matter how smart you are or how solid your plans are you can’t predict the future but you can always learn from the past.

The older you get the more you loving reminiscing, and the older you get the more time you have to do it. Pay your dues and give an ear to an elder whenever you can, I guarantee you’ll learn something. At the very least, if you’re kind and respectful with an open ear they won’t forget you.

4.     Make Mistakes!

Entrepreneur by its French definition means “risk taker”.  Your not here to play it safe, or you’d be working for someone else. Don’t be afraid to follow your gut and take the chance you want to take. It’s the people who take the chances other people won’t who reap the rewards other people can’t.

If you make a mistake and you screw up big time, oh well, keep moving, learn from your mistake and find a way to fix it. Own up for your mistake and deal with the consequences, that’s how you learn.

5.     The Secret

The secret ingredients are perseverance and faith in your self. The combination of those two qualities is the most potent cocktail for success. If you want to run your own company and you want to do your own thing than you have to be able to continue on no matter the obstacle or the mistakes you’ve made.

Along your path to success you are going to find that the more successful you get, the more haters you have. Mo Money Mo Problems. Use them as your fuel. If you truly believe you can and will accomplish your goals and meet your dreams, then you CANNOT be stopped.

Artician.com Launches!

Artician.com just “officially” launched, a long awaited sigh of relief for the community founder and close friend, Eric Zhivalyuk. Eric has been developing and redeveloping Artician for whats felt like years now. He’s on a mission to get the word out, you can see his press release here. Last night I asked him if I could interview him and he said yes. I think its a good chance to get to know Artician so I’ve pasted the highlights:

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Faz: How long have you been developing Artician?
Eric: It’s been a long journey, 2 and half years since we started.

Faz: What was your greatest development hurdle?
Eric: Our greatest hurdle was keeping up with the ever changing web. Since we started web 2.0 was a pretty fresh concept. As we were developing we were forced to continually keep the standards up to date with current web demands and technologies, sometimes causing us to have to complete revamp certain parts of the website

Faz: What was the biggest mistake that you learned from?
Eric: By far the biggest mistake we’ve made and were forced to learn from was trying to make things perfect the first time around. Releasing Artician 2+ years since we started was the result of this mistake. We should have started simple and gradually built ourselves up with a community. Until this time, we have refrained from promotion because we wanted to wow the world with a first impression. Web applications take time to develop, and doing things right doesn’t necessarily mean no bugs. Build yourself up with community, and digest their feedback all the way through.

Faz: How were you able to attract a community while the site was still in the development phases?
Eric: Good question, back in 2004 we had a site dedicated to Artists and Designers. This was more a resource based website, which we had a small community of dedicated users, however many of them joined us on this new quest. A large factor was that we as the developers of Artician were active. When we were active, we had a great response from users. They felt like they were a part of something new, something fresh…There was always something to look forward to, and everyone enjoyed helping out to continually make Artician a better place. We always made it very personal, people could talk to us on the same level as a friend. Community is what it’s all about.

Faz: How did you know when it was time to launch?
Eric: The hardest thing was drawing the line of what could wait until after we launch… About 6 months ago we had a team meeting and decided to draw that line. We decided after we finished our Groups system we must begin promoting Artician. I don’t think our to do list will ever be complete because there are always new features in the planning.

Faz: Tell me about Artician Groups.
Eric: Artician Groups was developed to empower users to create their own communities within the Artician network. We provide numerous tools and features in the form of a content management system that will help any Art / Design group to manage their teams.

Faz: Tell me about team Artician.
Eric: The Artician team is comprised of four individuals including myself. We all play very important roles in the development of Artician. Chris Alfano, who manages our backend infrastructure as well as server administration. Henry Paradiz, who develops much of the PHP/MySQL and logical programming that goes into the Artician Platform. Brandon Lis, who I like to call our “data freak”, also does a wide variety of backend programming, but  specializes in much of the optimization that will help the Artician Plaform scale under heavy traffic. And myself, who does all of the front-end development and design work, but always working in, out, and around Henry’s and Brandon’s code.

Faz: Does Artician have a business model?
Eric: Our business model revolves around three avenues of revenue: Artician Pro, our Advertising Platform, and Artician Job Oppurtunities.

The advertising plaform front-end is not done yet, but we have our ad-server setup and distributing ads on artician. We have full control over all the ads on the site, so we can create an ad campaign, control the duration, how many clicks / impressions it should get per day, and in which ad zones they should be displayed. We hope these tools will attract potential advertisers for Articians demographic.

Artician Job Oppurtunities is currently in development, but it will be a job board that will give companies access to our Artician’s talented professionals.

Faz: What are your greatest ambitions for Artician.com.
Eric: Our greatest ambition is to server as home base for every creative professional in the world.

Faz: Parting words for fellow entrepreneurs and web developers?
Eric: Someday is not a day of the week. Set out for your goals, because the time starts now. Talent is something that can be found in everyone, but it’s up to you to show the world. Artician will help the creative community do just that.