How to start a business in the US- The key to success

Before we start to discuss on business and networking, I would like to describe this astonishing first class that will help you to understand my feelings and why this meeting was so cool: You just arrived from France, where people are very different compared to the US state of mind and in particular about how to make money and to run a business; Suddenly you are on the 66th floor of the Legacy building, in Chicago, where professionals are giving you some tricks to succeed in life. Trust me, for a student studying in a business school, there is nothing else better than admire the view and listen to their advices. As you understand, with my classmates, we learned a lot of things very interesting about how to start a business and to build relationships, and I’m going to share them with you.

Valerie Beck

Thus, our first class started with our Professor’s presentation: Valerie Beck, nicknamed «the Chocolate Queen» thanks to her involvement in the chocolate business; in the US with her company specialized in chocolate and through the world for chocolate fair trade. She tried to make us understand the important steps for starting a business and to gain customers in the US:

• Choose the good partners to deal with. It is very important to have reliable and good partners because they are the essence of your business.
• According to Miss Beck «Every business has a mission» that means to turn your general ideas into a specific idea (What’s the product or service? Who is going to buy it? How will you get paid?) You have to be as specific as possible in order to be efficient.
• Furthermore, you have to develop a marketing campaign to gain customers and be visible. Nowadays, we can do a lot of things on internet like creates a website, a Facebook page, a twitter account, a blog… that allows your business to be known by consumers. So every business needs marketing ideas and clearly identified actions you can take to further develop it. For example, when Valerie Beck launched her Chocolate tours company, she started by emailing to big companies in order to develop her customers base. It worked well in so far as people started to come and now her company offers Tours in many town of the US.

After we had been immersed, we leaved the classroom to meet our Professor’s friend Mary Vallender, a real estate agent responsible of the apartments sales in the Legacy building. When we arrived, she said to take the lift and to go on the 66th floor in order to visit an apartment. At that moment, the dream started !

Mary Vallender

In fact, my classmates and me were completely astonished by this 2 millions dollars apartments (as you can see in the video). We had 20 minutes to completely visit it and then we started to interview her on how she started her business and found customers.
So, before the building has been finished in 2010, she started to networking by creating a website, advertising in the newspaper/magazines in order to be known and be visible by the customers. With this, people knew that they can bought an housing in the Legacy and even had an idea of how it’s looked like with the photos.
In addition, Mary used her network to contact people that can bought the apartment. She told us that business is easier when you know the person you are dealing with because you are credible and so you can trust each other. Thus, when you have to develop your business, you must build relationship with targeted people. She knew it isn’t easy to go to see a bunch of people and to start speaking with them, so she gave us tricks to succeed: For her, «business is like life, it is take risks» so forget your fear and be confortable with people and know how to project yourself. That means you have to know perfectly the image you want to give to your contact. Not just a business card, a professional mentality. Moreover, for Mary to succeed in life, you have to keep in mind these 4 words: wishing, networking, volunteering and mentoring.

                                     
To conclude this post, I would like to quote a sentence from the entrepreneur article that is for me the best summary of our topic: «No matter whom you’re trying to build a relationship with, treating that person as a friend rather than a business contact will take you much further with the relationship».
 To finish, here are some pictures and video of an amazing 2 millions dollars apartment AND his view.