owning
...eaching a company how to market themselves, she gets more satisfaction from the work she does. It’s nice to know that there are businesses out there that care about making firms self-sufficient more than keeping them as a client so they get more profits. However, it can be argued that teaching companies to be self-sufficient will create positive feedback for your company, and thus through word of mouth you will get new clients. When we talk in class about what an entrepreneur needs to do to start up a business, Harp did all these things while she was preparing to start Sedona. She wrote a business plan, did market research and talked to people in the field about what to expect and how to succeed in her business. She also talked to her family about what she was about to do. Her family was worried about the risk, but fully supported her. I was impressed with how organized and how determined she seems to be. I was surprised when Harp said that she did not start advertising until a few months after her business had started. After Sun Life and Clarica merged, many people quit their jobs or were let go. Some of these people started their own businesses, like Harp. Harp worked with some of these businesses, and therefore did not need to advertise because she was getting work by word of mouth. Only after a few months did she start to advertise, and recently she has started giving public lectures to entrepreneurs in hopes of getting more business. She says that the work is not necessarily steady, but there are some very busy times. This seems like the backwards approach to me, and perhaps Sedona would have more business now if Harp had started advertising when the firm first began. When asked to compare the leadership required from her corporate job versus her entrepreneurial job, Harp said that her leadership has not changed much. Instead of hiring employees, Sedona contracts work out to other entrepreneurs, such as a web designer or an image editor. This means that Harp is currently the only employee of Sedona. Harp said that if anything, less leadership is required because she does not have to manage multiple people in a corporate environment. Instead, she uses a collaborative approach to leadership. Rather than managing her contractors, she tries to motivate them. The contractors have a similar...