Newest member Stephen Bowtell appropriately introduced guest speaker Bernadette Schwerdt on the topic of online entrepreneurship.

Bernadette's fresh approach to addressing our mature audience disguised her own successful and diverse career and of course Rotary membership at the Essendon club(“The meals are better are Kooyong”).  With a surprising 25 plus years of experience in marketing, advertising, newspaper columnist and TV Bernadette gave us an insight into how the internet revolution has spawned a new form of entrepreneurship.

She has had her own success with an online venture, with The Australian School of Copywriting. It offers specialized courses designed to teach you the art of copywriting, advertising and marketing.  

Extending from her own experience Bernadette has researched and interviewed many of Australia’s successful online entrepreneurs and condensed all those hints, correct and incorrect moves, and challenges that they faced in gaining success, in her book Secrets of Online Entrepreneurs. The book  has all the characteristics of a guide for potential and even experienced entrepreneurs seeking to exploit the internet to set up a new business.  

The online approach offers new and different ways to set up a business. So it is easy to focus on some niche product (a common theme), use technology(essentially free) to target a wide global audience and find like minded people interested in that product. The near perpetual online product brochure or screen is memorable.  Contrast that with pre internet days it would be expensive and near impossible to gain the same penetration through say newspaper or TV advertising. The point was quickly acknowledged by the audience.

Aside from the importance of online capacity she has noted in her book how the personal attributes and attitudes of these entrepreneurs is key.   The one-man or personal involvement  precludes being bogged down in those analytical “hows” typical of external inputs in big organizations and focuses the individual on the positives, the why, where when etc.   Similarly dealing with failure is easier at the individual level - the relatively low cost nature of an online try is not an enduring hurdle to success with some new or revised idea.

Bernadette took some examples from her book and pointed out the unique means by which some modern day Australian entrepreneurs had made it    It concluded a fascinating and well-presented address.

Ed{One can correlate  Bernadette's talk with definition of the "E" word.  Someone who exercises initiative by organizing a venture to take benefit of an opportunity and, as the decision maker, decides what, how, and how much of a good or service will be produced.

According to economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950), entrepreneurs are not necessarily motivated by profit but regard it as a standard for measuring achievement or success.  he discovered that they , greatly value self-reliance, strive for distinction through excellence, are highly optimistic (otherwise nothing would be undertaken), and always favor challenges of medium risk (neither too easy, nor ruinous).}