Being an entrepreneur is more than just starting a business, says Shutterfly CEO and dot-com veteran Jeff Housenbold. Entrepreneurial thinking involves an innovative mindset to create new products, new markets, and new ideas within any set of circumstances - from an existing Fortune 500 to a mom-and-pop shop.
Jeff Housenbold, CEO of Shutterfly, recalls how he learned that merging community with commerce was the winning ticket in business online. He recounts his days at Raging Bull, an upstart financial vehicle that knocked the larger, more established players out of the ring. It's secret? The site was bullish on building community and responsive to its users, resulting in millions of users in just a few short months. Furthermore, Housenbold credits the financial portal with two ubiquitous contributions to Web culture: The"off-topic" and "block this user" functions that are commonplace today.
While at EBay, Jeff Housenbold, now the CEO of Shutterfly, managed to enroll 65,000 new subscribers a day, and shepherded the company toward being the first to use Google's Adwords. In the process, he took direct marketing online to a whole new level - day-parting and month-parting ads during traffic surges, targeting users by geography, and understanding ad buying strategy. In short, he cites new technologies as the key to solving marketing's oldest problems.
Jeff Housenbold recalls that he was spending nearly two thousand dollars a year on Shutterfly.com before he came on as CEO. His personal experience - a family of growing memories to record - paired with his business expertise in melding community and commerce, inspired him to revise the online photography website. He repositioned the company from photo finishing to personal publishing. And selling memory, not product, is how he accounts for his venture going public and establishing a broader market presence, generating over $180 million in 2007.
In addition to the practical knowledge to do the job right, Jeff Housenbold, CEO of Shutterfly, seeks out employees that have a healthy self-awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses. In addition to capable communication and people skills, his talent has problem-solving tactics in situations of uncertainty. Thought-capital, thought-leadership, and intellectual curiosity are key.
Figure out what you're good at and where you can make money, and focus.This is a critical strategy in a competitive marketplace, says Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold, who claims that business always makes the mistake of trying to be too many things to too many people. Winning means differentiating yourself on the cluttered product shelf, and providing real innovation where products are most similar. And in this clip, Housenbold outlines the numerous facets of his services and products and the decisions that put them into place.
Do research, but don't let your customers tell you what do build.Too often, says Jeff Housenbold, Shutterfly's CEO, the customer doesn't know what they want, and rarely in market study will they admit that they're willing to pay more for a premium product. For example, 96 percent of Shutterfly customers polled said they wanted a brick and mortar outlet, but only seven percent of customers use it.
Why print photos when the blog is king? And who prints photos in the age of digital cameras? Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold explains how an old-fashioned business like photo printing is surviving - and thriving - in electronic media. He also discusses how technological innovations are reducing environmental resources in the photo industry landscape.
Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold rattles off a roster of quick and valuable bits of advice for the aspiring entrepreneur and employee of corporate America. Highlights include finding yourself a mentor invested in your success. He suggests learning where the money is made in a company, and building a career in that sector. Find wide areas of growth or turnaround and you will have the opportunity for broader success. And, uncover your boss' problems - and your boss' bosses' problems - and work to solve them. Don't dwell on titles; go to work to learn. Your intelligence is the ante, but it's luck that rings the cash register.
Success is not how smart you are; it's how you can get people to do what you want. Learning to delegate and to build a team was one of the hardest lessons for Jeff Housenbold, the CEO of Shutterfly, to master early in his career. With the insight of hindsight, he now sees effective team leading as a critical step in learning the right balance between career and self, and keeping the ego and ambition in check.