Wilson Owens is the Co-Founder of Royalty Exchange, the world’s first online marketplace for buying and selling royalties from music, film, patents, energy and other intellectual property rights. Recently featured as one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Wilson has also worked for Merge Records, Press Here Publicity and Virante. Follow him @OwensWilson.
Who is your hero?
In life, I would say Percy Harrison Fawcett. His determination to achieve his goals was unmatched. While I have no desire to get lost in the Amazon, I have the utmost respect for his courage and willingness to discover the unknown at all costs.
In business, it would definitely be my aunt. As the former CEO and President of numerous Fortune 500 companies as well as the founder of her own company, her expertise and feedback has been invaluable to me in growing Royalty Exchange and as an entrepreneur.
What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
Don’t spend all your time in meetings. For me, this is the number one productivity killer. We have scaled Royalty Exchange with action and effective digital communication.
If the discussion can take place via email, keep it digital. I understand some meetings are necessary and can spark team innovation, but most meetings are focused on trivial issues and usually include an unnecessary amount of people.
I try to stick to my rule of no more than two calls/meetings in one day. I also try to schedule them right around lunch, early in the morning or late afternoon. Scheduling meetings during other times can easily break up your train of thought and force you to switch mindsets too often.
If you are scheduling meetings, make sure everyone invited has a clear picture of what is going to be discussed. Do this a couple days in advance and send out an overview email to all parties involved. This will reduce the amount of time everyone is brainstorming on the fly during the meeting and increase future action items post-meeting.
What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?
During our two-year bootstrapping period, we decided to contract out most of the development work to reduce costs and preserve equity stakes by not bring on someone full time. This quickly became an issue since we had to settle on a sufficient platform for our marketplace. When your ultimate goal is to create an “eBay meets eTrade” for royalty transactions, sufficient isn’t an option. In hindsight, we should have brought on a talented developer earlier to expedite this area of the business.
My advice for all entrepreneurs in early-stage startups: Identify your missing components or skill sets during the bootstrapping phase and don’t hesitate to give the right person a respectable amount of equity for their expertise. Currently, we have a rockstar team of developers and are very excited to see our platform grow exponentially.
What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
I look over the entire site and make notes. Yes, you heard me right — I look over every page of the site.
As my company grows, it’s very easy to miss details and most importantly, how the company is portrayed to the public. I don’t think entrepreneurs should micromanage every element of their company’s site, but I do think it’s very important to constantly update your business’s overall portrayal to the public regardless of your primary job function.
For the good and bad, perception is reality.
What’s your best financial or cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?
Money without a clearly defined use or benefit is worse than having no money at all. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is believing that money will solve all of the needs and problems with their business. This will never be the case. It will simply exacerbate them without proper allocation.
Unfortunately, this mindset is very easy to adopt after receiving venture capital funds. If you do take on funding, make sure to initially define the best outlets for spending the money. Don’t run off and hire 10 people to fill apparent holes in the company. Don’t start 30 Adwords campaigns because you finally have the money to spend and Google is telling you that “X” amount of people will visit your site now.
Take a breath and strategically identify what has made your business work without capital. Once you have this list, it will make it much easier to allocate and manage your funds. Oh, and I almost forgot — hire a part-time accountant.
Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?
Deflate your ego and your nobody-has-done-this-before attitude. Just because you couldn’t find it in Google, doesn’t mean it never existed. Let your actions speak louder than words.
What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?
I believe in more of a continuing success for business. I celebrate the small victories but keep a healthy sense of dissatisfaction. I will probably never feel I’ve “succeeded” until I look back at the business from a bird’s eye view years later.
I also say this to new entrepreneurs: Every business doesn’t need to be a Fortune 500 company. As the person with the controls, you must define where you want the business to take you on a personal and financial level. Money shouldn’t be your only motive for success.
