It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking.
Management
How I Harness My Insane Startup Anxiety
By definition, a startup is a torrent of anxiety. We’re swan diving headlong into the abyss. We’re likely doing things we’ve never done before with products that have never existed before. So let’s just start off by admitting we’re all freaked out and it’s a big problem and we all need to figure this shit out.
6 Marketing Tips To Attract Customers To Your Rollout
Your marketing launch is the most important element of startup success these days, to get customer attention in this world of information overload. Yet it is the one element that too many entrepreneurs focus on only as an afterthought. Everyone assumes their product or service is so great that “word-of-mouth” will carry the day for […]
Why Sales Operations Could Be the Key to Scaling Your Company
Salespeople are great at selling. They’re less great at all the things that surround the sales process — things like filling out spreadsheets, hunting down pricing and contract information, and figuring out how to use complex tools. Even the sellers who are great at these tasks are more useful to their organizations in the field or on […]
5 Exciting Technologies That Need Your Execution Help
As a business advisor and technologist, I often think about the large array of opportunities for entrepreneurs as technology seems to be evolving faster and faster. Yet I still too often hear the question, “Can you give me a really sure-fire idea for starting my own business?” My standard answer is that ideas are a […]
Nail It Then Scale It: The New Mantra For Startups
I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries, called “nail […]
Don’t Let Short-Term Thinking Hurt Long-Term Success
I recently met a business where the owner made 100% of her decisions based on how it impacts the immediate cash flow of the business. And I mean every decision! Whether it was hiring business professionals like accountants or lawyers that were advising the business. Or, making marketing decisions based on what drove revenues this […]
5 Steps to a Winning Assault on the Army of Investors
Don’t charge the hill until you are “ready.” This probably seems obvious to military types, but I see entrepreneurs violating this rule all the time. They approach key potential investors way too early, trying to talk their way up the hill, with no supporting business plan, and before they have a support team around them. […]
The Anti-Silicon Valley Formula: How Companies Succeed Despite Not Following the Silicon Valley Playbook
With Lyft’s and Uber’s recent IPOs and the pending IPOs of Silicon Valley unicorns like Airbnb, Pinterest, and Slack, the world shines a light on the mythical way in which Silicon Valley startups change the way we live and work. It’s storied founders, hard-driving teams, “asking forgiveness” as a business tactic, bottoms-up go-to-market, with San […]
6 Keys To Making Timely Changes To Save Your Business
Change is about the only thing constant in the world of startups. Despite their own focus on changing the world, they often forget that they too have to change rapidly and often as the market evolves. Too many find that out too late and are left chasing a rabbit that is long gone. The solution […]
6 Ways To Prepare Your Company For The Future Of Work
Most startups soon degrade into the negative work environments of more mature businesses, unless they know how to change their approach right from the beginning, and continually focus on the key pillars of workplace transformation.