Last Thursday night, Yaletown Roundhouse hosted An Evening with the Dragons’ Den and I once again had the pleasure to be part of an audience that no doubt left the theatre feeling inspired to do what they are passionate about: running a successful business.

Photo: Jim Treliving, surrounded by fans of Dragons' Den

The evening, similar to last year’s, began with a conversation between executive producer Tracie Tighe and main Dragon Jim Treliving, who, due to exposure on Dragons’ Den, is now well known to the public as an ex-RCMP that is today the owner of Boston Pizza International Inc.  Although sometimes, he is known to a younger generation as “Mr. Pizza Guy.”  This was in reference to a story that Jim told when asked by Tracie why he continues to return to Dragons’ Den.  On his flight from Toronto to Vancouver, Jim recalls a 10 year old boy on the plane who greeted him with “Hi Mr. Pizza Guy.”  He later found out that this boy watches every episode of Dragons’ Den with his family.  As long as he is inspiring people, Jim says, he will return to the show season after season.

Dragons’ Den is all about inspiration.  Many people have ideas.  Some people have the financing to make something out of those ideas.  But what I believe is sometimes lacking is the inspiration and belief that they can build on their ideas and become a success.  This is why I tremendously enjoyed the evening because as I looked at the faces around me listening to two successful entrepreneurs describe their Dragons’ Den experience, I can feel the sparks ignite within the crowd.

Photo: Panel discussion with Tracie Tighe (L), Jim Treliving (C), and Brad Friesen (R)

The evening’s two special guests were Brad Friesen and Margot Woodworth.  Brad Friesen is the owner of Last Call, a hangover remedy served in a unique, patented bottle and with a delivery system like you’ve never seen before. The ingredients are stored in a twist cap that only gets released with a twisting action.  I admire Brad’s innovative idea.  For the lack of a better word, it was cool and environmentally friendly.  The whole idea is to ship the bottles that contain only the ingredients in the cap.  Bottles without water mean less fossil-fuel required to deliver them.  Plus, the cap can be recycled once used.  In his segment, Brad offered these tips for a successful pitch on Dragons’ Den:

• Know your numbers.  Know all aspects of your business because the Dragons will only invest in people who know what they are doing.
• Practice your pitch before appearing on the show.  You will likely be steered off your pitch but you still need to deliver.
• Be prepared for absolutely everything.  With a 5-person panel, you never know where the discussion will take you. 

Next up was a business owner with a unique party favour. Margot Woodworth is the owner of Evergreen Memories, a business that offers tree seedlings as wedding favors, gifts for corporate events and many different occasions.  These little trees are packaged in bags that act as a greenhouse, allowing them to survive for two weeks without being planted.  Here are some of Margot’s tips to survive a face-to-face meeting with the Dragons:

• Know your numbers. Just like Brad, Margot hired an accountant to make sure that she has her numbers right. 
• Be prepared and practice your pitch. It’s a good idea to come up with an opening line to capture the Dragons’ attention.  For Margot, hers was “Money does grow on trees.”
• Show your passion and be proud of it. 

What I took away from the event was that you really need more than just an idea to be successful. You need a prototype. You need to do your research. You need to make sure that what you have is what people want.  And you also need a business plan and map out how you want to make your business successful.  Most important, you need to have courage to do what you are passionate about.  Starting a business of any kind is daunting but as Margot says it best, “Sometimes you just have to do it.”

Brian Chan has been with TELUS for more than five years and specializes in small and medium business.

Back in July, I had a post about the importance of a business plan prior to starting your business.  Now that you’ve taken care of the serious part, let’s focus more on the fun part: naming your business.  Read on.

In two new books, Mother Teresa, CEO[1]and Lady Gaga: Born This Way?[2], the writers talk about what businesses can learn from these charismatic, successful, and remarkably different women whose passion for what they love turned them into two of the world’s most iconic people.

Mother Theresa was actually born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu and devoted her life to care for the poor.  Then there is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, also known as Lady Gaga, who devoted her musical gifts to the entertainment world. Unless you’re a trivial pursuit buff, their real names probably aren’t all that familiar.  What is remarkable about these two women though, is not the names that they are known by but rather, it is their amazing accomplishments that people associate with when they hear their names.  Your business name has to do the same.

The name of your business is fundamental. You need it to be pitch-perfect to leverage the unharnessed power in your promotional and marketing materials as well as your advertising copy. Most importantly, you need to consider the raw power of words when you’re brainstorming for the name of your brand new start-up. Think about it – would Lady Gaga be as easy to find on iTunes if she weren’t using her stage name? Don’t think so. Would Monster.com sound as alluring if it were called ireallyneedajobrightnow.com? Enough said. The point is that your business name needs to be clever, catchy and memorable or else it gets lumped into a bucket of generic names that people forget about.

The name should also be fairly short and without any awkward spelling.  You need to consider things like:

• Will my customers be able to search my business name online to find its hours & location?
• How will the name look as a web address?
• What if I wanted my name to spell out my toll-free number?
• Will my customers have trouble remembering how my business name is spelled?
• Does my business name mean something negative or inappropriate in another culture?

Adding a slogan to your name can also make your business more memorable.  How about something like The Future is Friendly?  Oh, wait, that one’s taken and images of cute, friendly critters come to mind. But it’ll apply to your new business regardless if you find the right name for your start-up.  Choose the right words and harmonize it to your business venture and you will likely be singing to the tune of success.

Brian Chan has been with TELUS for more than four years and specializes in small and medium business.

Do you have a unique name for your business and if so, how did you come up with it?  Share tips for others here.  For more tips on how to pick the perfect name for your business, check out our New Business Start-up site.

[1] by Ruma Bose and Lou Faust

[2] by Jamie Anderson and Jörg Reckhenrich of Antwerp Management School and Martin Kupp of the European School of Management and Technology respectively

The Successful You Awards just held at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver featured keynote speaker, Vikram Vij.  He is a celebrated restaurateur with two acclaimed restaurants in South Granville (Vij’s Restaurant, Vij’s Rangoli), cookbooks and a line of packaged curries.

He’s also got a story to tell about his beginnings in Canada when his father signed a lease for him at the first restaurant that he saw after moving here from India in 1994.

It’s been a long road for Vikram since his early days of cooking with an electric stove, when daily sales of $100 were called a success.  What hasn’t changed, though, is Vikram’s ongoing passion to elevate the level of the cuisine and culture from which he came.

In his journey to success, Vikram remembers some very special milestones:

• That rainy day in 1994 when a food writer gives him a positive review after trying the fresh lamb curry his parents had brought in on public transit from Richmond
  
• The day he married Meeru, who now runs the kitchen of hard-working women and comes up with all the recipes
  
• The day when Pierre Elliot Trudeau and his son Justin stopped by for dinner. Vikram recalls thanking the former Prime Minister for his 1960s policies that allowed immigrants like himself to come to Canada and have the opportunity to succeed.
  

Vikram Vij, keynote speaker at the Successful You Awards 2011

Vikram is definitely a people person.  If you’ve ever been to his restaurant, you probably remember this friendly man who goes table-to-table to say hello. You might even recall him offering chai and hand-made hors d-oeuvres while waiting in the lineup for a table. At the end of the day, Vikram measures success by how happy his employees and his customers are. Judging by the nightly lineups, I’d say he is doing very well.

I really admire Vikram’s ambition and his motivation to come up with an idea and succeed at it. If business owners are to learn one thing from Vikram, it has to be the commitment he is always willing to put in.  As he said himself, as long as he puts 100% into whatever he wants to do, then he is successful whether or not he’s made a penny. Having the belief that hard work can lead your business to success is as good a first step as any.

Read my blog about the 2011 Successful You awards ceremony and winners.

Brian Chan has been with TELUS for over 4 years and specializes in Small and Medium Business marketing.

On Tuesday night, I spent the evening in a beautiful theatre in the Woodward’s building in Vancouver, for a Small Business BC event that featured Dragon’s Den executive producer, Tracie Tighe, Dragon Jim Treliving, and two businesses, that sealed deals on the show.  They each spoke about their experiences and what other hopeful entrepreneurs should know to be successful on the show, and in their business life.

The event left me feeling inspired and empowered to take a business idea and make something out of it. Though Jim’s story of his road to success was no doubt inspirational, I was impressed by the passion and dedication that the guest entrepreneurs, Holy Crap Cereal and Frogbox, invested into their business.

Jim Treliving is a successful Canadian entrepreneur and investor for 40 years.  Today, Jim is the chairman and owner of Boston Pizza International Inc. and part of the original ‘Dragon’ panel.  During his live segment, Jim mentioned quite often about the importance of managing great people  in order to lead a successful business.  This would explain why he invested into the owners of Frogbox and Holy Crap.  Below are the key points from Jim’s conversation with Tracie on what entrepreneurs should know when pitching their business in front of the dragons, but also has relevance in the real-world as well.

1. Always be prepared.  Be prepared to handle unexpected growth and move to the next level or be prepared if the business isn’t taking off.
   
2. Know your business, your market, and your numbers when you are pitching to investors.
   
3. Be confident with what you know but also know what you don’t know.
   
4. Be open-minded and have a good attitude.
   
5. People have high expectations when they start a business so don’t over-evaluate and  stick with what you know best about your business.
   

Doug Burgoyne is founder of Frogbox who is in the business of delivering reusable moving boxes and supplies and picking them up when you’re done moving.  What I admired most about his road to success are the following:

1. He wanted to be in a business with a bad reputation and was then able to take an idea as simple as plastic moving boxes and grow his business.
   
2. He focused on building his brand before seeking investors to help him expand his business.
   
3. He knew his numbers well and while he came across as extremely confident, he was honest and acknowledged what he didn’t know.
   

Brian and Corin Mullins’ road to success is a little different.  They were a semi-retired couple who wanted something that they could do together.  What started as a survival kit due to the ingredients’ 5 year shelf life, has since exploded into a cereal business now sold in 11 countries.  Holy Crap is not only the name of the cereal, it was also my reaction when Brian explained that they were selling 8 orders per second on the night their episode aired, which led to their hotmail address crashing and PayPal shutting down customer payments as they believed there was fraudulent activities going on.  What I admired most about their business venture are the following:

1. They did not spend a penny on advertising.  Their growing success came from their TV exposure.
   
2. They wanted everything made with the artisan feel so their products are mixed and bagged by hand.
   
3. Brian’s advice of “Frugal Innovation” which is to succeed by doing things on a budget and “Constant Improvisation” which links closely to what I mentioned above about always being prepared for unexpected changes and demands.
   

I had the opportunity to speak with owner Corin Mullins personally after the official Q&A to ask her how they managed to scale up quickly to meet their growing business demands after the show.  True to their artisan nature, she answered that she and her husband now have more employees to help them and will continue to hire more as needed.  According to Corin, they are still a little behind on their orders, but with some major website updates in the works, looks like they are ramping up to handle orders just fine.  If you are looking to purchase Holy Crap cereal, check out their new website or find a store near you that sells it.  As busy as they are with online orders, they are taking Jim Treliving’s advice to heart that they always “gotta keep stuff on the shelves!”

You can watch Brian & Corin Mullins brave the Dragon's below:

Looking to audition for Dragon's Den?  Check out: http://www.cbc.ca/dragonsden/audition/ to fill out an application online or find out when they're coming to a city near you!