Posts by author:

Kendra Kinnison

Untemplater Businesses: Long-Term Focus

By Kendra Kinnison on October 13th 2010 in Business 1 comment

Thumbnail image for Untemplater Businesses: Long-Term Focus

To conclude our series on a framework for building a business, we’ll review some concepts that warrant your attention from day one – even if they aren’t yet possible. (To review, we’ve already covered planning and business selection and designing operations.) So what’s so important that you should be focused on it months or even [...]

How To Waste Your Money on College

By Kendra Kinnison on October 1st 2010 in Business 7 comments

Thumbnail image for How To Waste Your Money on College

The professor pulled his notes from his pocket and began speaking. He started with all of the things a student should not do: work, focus on too many extracurriculars, or take classes outside the main curriculum. He ended with a heartfelt plea to study as much as possible, focusing intensely on one’s GPA and the [...]

Open Thread: What’s the most important leadership trait?

By Kendra Kinnison on September 22nd 2010 in Open Thread 10 comments

Thumbnail image for Open Thread: What’s the most important leadership trait?

Some debate whether leaders are born or made. We’ll leave that question for another day. Today, let’s debate the next best leadership angle: What do you think is the single most important quality of a leader? Honesty, vision, inspiration, competence, integrity, charisma, intelligence, decisiveness, or your choice . . . Which one is the most [...]

Untemplater Businesses: Designing Operations

By Kendra Kinnison on May 6th 2010 in Business 9 comments

Thumbnail image for Untemplater Businesses: Designing Operations

Working through our framework for building a business, we’ve already covered the planning and business selection topics and today’s post is about designing your operations. Once you’ve identified and tested your business concept, you’ll want to think through how your business should function on a day-to-day basis. You’ll also want to acknowledge some key characteristics of businesses that lend themselves to an untemplater lifestyle.

Untemplater Businesses: Planning and Selection

Thumbnail image for Untemplater Businesses: Planning and Selection

Last time, I introduced a concept and framework for selecting and building businesses to support an Untemplater lifestyle. After some great questions in the comments, it was clear that we needed to dive deeper into each component. We’ll start with the planning and business selection topics in this post.

From my experiences and research, these four concepts are critical to the planning of a successful business. Overlook them early, and you’ll likely face their challenges sooner or later.

Building an Untemplater Business

By Kendra Kinnison on February 25th 2010 in Entrepreneurship 20 comments

Thumbnail image for Building an Untemplater Business

Today, I own interests in 8 different ventures – in a variety of industries and at different levels of maturity. Some of my businesses are well on their way to supporting my Untemplater lifestyle, while others will take much longer and much more work to get there. For many of you, focusing your efforts on one business will be preferred. For the serial entrepreneurs among us (myself included), you’ll now have a framework to use to evaluate each business opportunity that comes your way.