In this interview I ask Paul Edmonson how he knew he was on to something and what prepared him to go out on his own.

LD: What gave you confidence that HubPages would be successful.

E: We thought if we made a great product and built a community that people would use the service. We had a simple plan. To try things. To do more of the stuff that worked and to stop doing the things that didn’t. Nearly 6 million people visited HubPages.com last month. One of the things we did well was monetize Hubs, so we introduced a new ad optimization product called YieldBuild that served nearly 200 million ads last month as well.

LD: What in your education prepared you to run this type of business.

PE: There’s the education I received in school that helped get me started in the software industry. I started playing with computers in the fifth grade and making simple programs at school. In college I took programming classes that gave me enough skills to write software, and design databases. School is part of the education, but so much of what I learned to start this business is more about getting after it, asking questions and good old fashion trial and error.

LD: What in your experience working for others prepared you to go out on your own?

PE: My time at Microsoft was a very helpful learning ground. I’m always trying to learn new things and when I see someone do something effective, I try and incorporate into my skill set. Whether it’s about customer support, how to build a product, or even how to give feedback to an employee these are all skills that get developed with experience.

LD: What do you wish you’d learned in school to support your entrepreneurial efforts?

PE: I think part of being entrepreneurial is learning what you need to get the job done from all sorts of sources. School is good for broad strokes, but I think you really have to do it to learn it, at least for me.

LD: What has been the biggest surprise since you started HubPages?

PE: It’s incredibly challenging to build a great product or service, to hire talented people, to manage the finances and grow the business. While I knew it would be an incredible challenge, I didn’t really know how tuff I really am. I think the adversity that you go through with a new business teaches you about yourself in a way you would never know.

LD: What is the biggest myth about raising capital and getting funding for a new venture?

PE: I heard from several people that if five people pass on your pitch, it isn’t fundable. If I gave up after five people told me no, then we wouldn’t be funded. I think it’s important to keep trying, listen to the feedback and then refine your pitch. If five people say no, keep asking.

LD: Do you have any advice to young entrepreneurs?

PE: Start you own company. Today. Just get out there and start doing it.

LD: What is the most striking difference about working for yourself vs. working for someone else?

PE: Ahhh, the hours. Working for a company you start is an incredible commitment. While I’ve always been game to put in extra time when needed, when it’s your own company, almost everyday and weekend require extra time…But it’s worth it.

High Tech Retail Requires Special Skills

Wal-Mart suppliers use sophisticated software programs to access to sales data online in real time. Suppliers need account reps who can make constant decisions about the information they receive. Under-performing sellers must be replaced with new items based on the numbers.

Basic category management skills for Wal-Mart suppliers include the ability to work with software programs like RetailLink and ProSpace as well as the analytical skills to use the date received. Students use technology to optimize allocation of products, identify inventory problems, design displays, and instantly see the effects of changes.

Growing Talent Through Targeted Education

Wal-Mart requires its suppliers to maintain an office near their headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Having all that talent in one geographic area pays off. Wal-Mart has worked closely with retail experts from among their suppliers and Northwest Arkansas Community College (NWACC) to design education targeted at training potential retail analysts.

NWACC provides software training as well as education in other aspects of Category Management needed for the new world of retail. The program is designed to appeal to those beginning their retail career as well as those looking to change fields or expand their retail knowledge. Fortune 500 companies hire from the pool of analysts who have received education in he retail business, including advanced computer and statistical skills.

Marketing Analyst Certification

NWACC’s Marketing Analyst Program prepares students for the retail industry. In addition to core business classes like accounting and economics, retail students take classes with titles like Merchandising and Data Analysis, Retail Fundamentals, and Internet Resourcing. These customized courses are taught by working professionals in the Wal-Mart vendor community. Students in the certificate program are taught key software programs, such as RetailLink, with the emphasis on practical business case studies.

According to Marshall McCall, Executive Director of Retail Programs, as of January 2008, new student enrollment had more than doubled when compared to the same semester of the prior year. This spring there are 213 students enrolled.
“The enrollments also speak to the quality of real-life instruction provided by the instructors, all of whom are members of the retail community here in northwest Arkansas,” McCall said.

Success Breeds Partnership

In October, 2007, the Wal-Mart Foundation contributed $600,000 to NWACC to help create a new associate’s degree in business management with a retail emphasis. This expanded on the certificate program to provide a sound business education foundation with a focus on retail management and marketing. Students complete four certificates within the degree: retail management, business ethics, quantitative analysis (statistics), and communications.

The retail program benefits the world beyond Wal-Mart too. The skills leaned there are applicable to careers in real estate, marketing, human resources, finance, and information technology. What’s next WBS – Wal-Mart Business School? It may not be far away. In the meantime, if you want to break into retail – get yourself to Arkansas and enroll in community college.

While the strength of any hospital or health care facility is its medical personnel, many of these facilities, faced with rising costs, have had to cut back on comfort services that made hospital stays a bit more pleasant for patients in years past. Administrators are now trying to make up for these paid-staff losses by seeking out dedicated volunteers to handle everything from non-emergency patient intake to food services, running the gift shop, taking patients to and from radiology, doing back-office clerical work, and even bringing a patient an extra blanket or a newspaper. Crucial to making a volunteer effort like this successful is keeping volunteers happy, and that means effective human-resource management.

Traditional, hospital-based volunteer programs have been run by a paid coordinator. More and more, however, administrators are calling on their business school-trained HR directors to give these coordinators of volunteers valuable pointers on how to make the volunteer program run smoothly and professionally. For instance, volunteers have to sign in and out, report on schedule, and can’t leave before their shift is over.

HR directors are acutely aware that the facility must have an assigned job for the volunteers as soon as they come in. There’s nothing that annoys volunteers more than standing around waiting for something to do when they show up at their appointed time.

Why is a structure like this so important? Many of today’s volunteers are retirees from the business world, and they don’t want to waste their time participating in a poorly run program.

Establishing the volunteer component as a structured program makes volunteers realize that they’re very much needed, that people are counting on them to be there on a regular basis, and that their volunteer commitment has to be honored. It’s better not to have a program like this at all than to offer a poorly run service that isn’t benefiting the patients and isn’t responding to the needs of the volunteers.

And, of course, every volunteer coordinator should realize that it is important to make sure the volunteers know how much they’re appreciated–how much their time and service are valued. A volunteer recognition program, like those used by HR directors to recognize exceptional work done by paid employees, is a great way to reenergize volunteers who otherwise might feel as if their efforts were being taken for granted.

Health care facility administrators see an added bonus in recruiting and retaining a dedicated corps of volunteers: This effort can put their health care facility in the forefront of patient care and lead to some excellent publicity opportunities. Volunteers gain special recognition in local newspapers; the health care facility is touted as a leader in human-resource management–it’s a real win-win scenario.

Working with volunteers and managing them properly is a serious and growing component in the health care industry today. That’s why business school-trained HR directors are being put in charge of overseeing these volunteer initiatives. What better way to show your people skills than to develop a volunteer program that offers superior patient comfort services, provided by a well-trained and well-managed corps of volunteers? Even better, you can parlay that into gaining recognition for your facility as a leader in patient services, while still maintaining a healthy bottom line.