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Julie Bick arrived at Microsoft in 1990, fresh out of TheWharton School of Business, she quickly realized the biggest partof her business education was still to come. After starting out asa product manager for Microsoft Word, Bick advanced to become agroup manager in charge of more than 20 CD-ROM products. Hernational bestseller, All I Really Need to Know in Business ILearned at Microsoft: Insider Strategies to Help You Succeed(Simon & Schuster, $12, 800-223-2348), reveals insights fromher five-year tenure at one of the world's premiercorporations.
What Bick learned at Microsoft can work for you, too. Here, herhard-won tips for the entrepreneurial-minded:
Eat your own dog food. Live in your customer's shoes and seehow they fit. "Whether you're making chocolates orsoftware, you should try out the product yourself and live it asthe customer would live it," says Bick. At Microsoft, thatmeant everything from building a reality-based "home of thefuture" complete with a computer in the kitchen, to rollingout its latest e-mail product for employee use before it was readyfor prime time. "[By testing,] you realize how important thosethings are to real customers," she says.
Mistakes are OK. If you're not making any mistakes,you're probably playing it a little too safe. "A lot ofpeople think `I'm starting my own business, so I don't wantto do anything wrong,' but [that means] you're not reallypushing the envelope at all," says Bick. "Respond to asnafu by asking `How did this happen? What can I do to fix it? Whathave I learned that will keep it from happening again?' As longas you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go on, it'sbetter to make the mistake [than not to try at all]."
Your Web site is never finished. "The Web is a great placeto let customers know about your product, but it takes as manyresources to maintain your Web site as it does to build it in thefirst place," says Bick. Whether revamping your technology tomake your pictures redraw faster or keeping up with increasedtraffic to your site, don't be outdone by your competition.
It's almost never as bad as you think it is."There's always some bizarre thing that happens,"says Bick, "and you're thinking `Oh, God, my life is overnow.' " But don't sweat it, she advises. It'sjust a bump in the road. "One time at Microsoft, a direct-mailpiece advertising Word and Excel went out to tens of thousands ofpeople. But the phone number on the back was not the phone numberfor Microsoft," remembers Bick. "Everybody was about totear their hair out, but then we [set out] to fix it. We apologizedand said `Well, poor Pete's Poodle Parlor got a bunch of phonecalls, and some customers had some hassles, but it's not theend of the world."
Study the competition. Microsoft does that through a SWOTanalysis, which evaluates the competition's Strengths,Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. "[Microsoft employees]go to trade shows to see how [competing products] are beingpresented. They study the ads and tear apart the products,"Bick says. "Then they write a marketing plan as if they werethat company, beginning with, `If we were that company, what[opportunities] would we take advantage of?' "
Real entrepreneurs eat lunch. Entrepreneurs are in their offices24 hours a day, observes Bick. "They kind of live there,"she says. But they also understand it's essential to take abreak, whether it's to talk to friends and bounce ideas offthem or relieve stress at the gym.
Big events make good deadlines. For example, if you'reattending a trade show, says Bick, "you have a [built-in]deadline for getting all your materials and [your product] readyfor that day. You can coordinate a press release to go [with theevent] or have your advertising roll out on that day."
Stay flexible. "Everything unforeseen comes up--bothopportunities and problems," Bick advises. "If you canjump on both and not be freaked out by either, you'll win thegame."
Bick is currently working on a sequel to her nationalbestseller. As yet untitled, it's scheduled for a Novemberrelease.
