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AGENDA
POWER POINTS
POWER POINTS
Kickstart Your Business
Westchester entrepreneurs turn to crowdfunding.
STARTING A
business and need money the bank won’t give and your friends don’t have? Consider crowdfunding.
If you’re going to
get funding from a lot of strangers, then you’ll tech- nically be crowdfunding, although the definition usually refers to getting that funding online. The practice—often through the website Kickstarter— was once little more than a system for soliciting dona- tions to charities, disas-
ter relief, and academic research. Now, entre- preneurs have begun to use it, and much to their advantage, the rules have recently changed to allow loans and investment.
"Crowdfunding
allows people to pool
their money to make larger investments,” says Zak Cassady-Dorion, co- owner of Pure Mountain Olive Oil in Tarrytown, who helped write the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which was signed by President Obama this past April and legalized crowdfunded loans and investment in addition to donations. “How it works is, if some- one wants to start a docu- mentary or make a CD
or start a business, they create an online pitch and
go onto one of the online crowdfunding sites, and people can invest money in small amounts.” On Kickstarter, after profil- ing your idea, you create a minimum funding goal and set a 60-days-or-less time limit.
One local entrepreneur who has already received previously unavailable crowdfunding is Margie Nugent, owner of Making Faces Parties in Mount Kisco, which brings arts- themed children’s par-
ties to clients’ homes. She wanted to buy a new $600 stencil machine so she could produce original body art—face painting, glitter tattoos, henna tat- toos—for children’s par- ties and companies. So she put up a proposal on the website of Kiva Zip, the new US branch of a not- for-profit that distributes microloans for business development.
“The application was very simple,” Nugent says. “In the past, I’ve gone through bank loans. They’re very long and very intimidating. And you don’t want to blow up your credit cards at twenty-one percent inter- est.” In the past, people like Nugent, who says she had only $20 in 1997 when she moved to Mount Kisco, may not have been
able to secure bank financ- ing easily—despite their significant growth in year- over-year profits—because of dark spots on their credit history.
Joy Rosenzweig, associate director of the Women’s Enterprise Development Center Inc. (WEDC) in White Plains,
a not-for-profit that pro- vides entrepreneurial training and support services to women in the area, says, “About ninety percent of people who start businesses get fund- ing from friends, family, their own savings, but sometimes they need more than they can get. For the economy, [crowdfund- ing] is important. Most jobs are created by small business.” (WEDC, the first Kiva Zip trustee in the state, recommended Nugent for her loan because of her work with the organization.)
Nugent agrees. Once she repays her loan to investors, she notes, they can choose to fund another venture. “That money becomes available for someone else who might need a loan,” she says. “I’m a pay-it-forward kind of person. If I’m doing
a good job, I’m helping other people, too.”
— Austen Hufford and BB
16
Q1 2013
revamp your
resumé for success
Your job applications and resumé should be getting you interviews. Here’s how to make sure they do.
According to human resources
consultant Greg Chartier, “If you are sending your resumé out or filling out application forms and you are not getting interviews, something is wrong with your resumé and you need to change it.” Assuming you’re applying to jobs for which you’re well qualified, Chartier, principal at The Office of Gregory J. Chartier in Ossining, has a few sugges- tions for those changes.“Your resumé is a marketing tool,” he says. “Its purpose is to get an employer interested enough in you to schedule an interview.”
Below, his eight tips for getting that interview:
DON’T LEAVE ANYTHING OUT
“When employers see applications that are not complete, they wonder what you are trying to hide,” Chartier says. “And if you are looking for a certain salary and the employer is not willing to pay it, it will come out at some point anyway. So why wait?”
TAILOR YOUR RESUMÉ
“If you are responding to an ad, make sure that you use the same terms that are in the ad in your resumé or application,” Chartier advises. “A good applicant will tailor his or her response so that their experience more closely fits the require- ments.” But, he says, be truthful.
MAKE EACH PART OF THE APP COUNT
Don’t use different parts of the application to convey the same information, Chartier says. So in your cover letter, don’t just reiterate your resumé in prose instead of bullet points. “A good cover letter will try to answer the question, ‘Why should I interview you?’” Chartier points out. “If there is a story to tell, use the cover letter to tell it.”
EXPLAIN YOUR WORK HISTORY
“If you have been out of work for long periods, explain why,” Chartier advises. “If you have been unemployed due to the economy, give the pro- spective employer some idea about what you have been doing while you have been out of work. Did you volunteer? Did you rebuild your house? Did you use your time productively?”
GET GOOD REFERENCES
“Coworkers, friends, and relatives are not good references,” Chartier says. “Someone in a position of authority who actually knows your work is a good reference. A letter from the president of the company who did not actually know you or ob- serve your work is not a good reference.”
DON’T MAKE THINGS UP
“The most common exaggeration is about educa- tion,” Chartier says, “but it’s one of the most easily checked facts. Don’t lie about your education!” (This one seems obvious to us, but, then again, we employ a fact-checker.)
DON’T OVERSELL YOURSELF
Most employers won’t be fooled into thinking
your previous work was “excellent” just because you say it was. In fact, Chartier says, “the more adjectives and adverbs used in a resumé, the more suspect it becomes.”
—BB