Stop talking. Start doing.

I'm very proud of my wife. A couple of days ago she joined the entrepreneur club with the launch of Slingflower, the world's first social media-driven floral delivery service. (If you live in the Boise area, check it out on Twitter or Facebook.)

While it has only been a couple of days, she has deemed it a success based on her number of sales, Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans, overall buzz, and amount of fun she's having. Here are some things any would-be entrepreneur can learn from her approach:

1) Stop talking. Start doing. Nothing happened until she started, slowly but surely, putting in the time and effort to stop planning and start executing.

2) Have low expectations. Jennifer's not trying to get rich, she's just trying to build a cool little company.

3) Keep the overhead low. She's using PayPal while she's in Beta. She's using GoDaddy hosting. She's doing everything she can to keep expenses down.

4) Have friends. Many of her early sales came from friends who want her to succeed. As Seth Godin said, the first thing you need is 10 customers. Several of Slingflower's first 10 were friends. THANKS!

5) Be different. And not marginally. If people can't see your difference and can't express it themselves, then your story is too difficult to share.

6) Focus on today, tomorrow will take care of itself. She's taking it one delivery at a time. Get through the first one, then think about the next. No rush. Things will be fine. (see #2)

7) Don't let perfect stand in your way. This doesn't mean it's OK to suck. It just means that it is OK to launch fast and get input so you can...

8) Be flexible. Jennifer already has plans to tweak the service based on customer input. Now, she's not going to change her vision. Slingflower is not meant to be for everyone. But she is going to adapt were it seems appropriate.

Comments

[Jessica]

I am having so much fun following Jen's adventure with this. I hope it is a smashing success but more than that - I hope she is having a lot of fun with it.

[dan]

It's so simple. So nice. Jen's site made me smile.