Cultivating The Mindset of a Successful Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur doesn’t need an MBA to be successful but there is a certain mindset an entrepreneur must cultivate to grow, understand and lead their business.Business leaders who attain this mindset are the ones who ultimately succeed. This mindset has four, intertwining aspects.

Anticipate failure.  In a study conducted by Duke University and the University of Southern California, 549 successful company founders said the most important reason for their success was their ability to learn from mistakes. Learning from failure is how we succeed.

An entrepreneur who makes it big on the first try is a rare story. The path to success is not straight. The road is full of potholes, the journey has many detours. No matter how meticulously you plan, you’re going to make a mistake. Maybe more than one.  Some entrepreneurs, fixated on the idea that they’ll succeed on the first try, give up without a second try. By not anticipating failure, they failed.

Let go and delegate. Richard Branson, one of the world’s best known entrepreneurs, relies on a team of top managers to keep his businesses on track. He encourages them to pursue their ideas and provides the tools to succeed. He attributes Virgin’s growth during the early days to his ability to delegate and let go.

Your business won’t grow as much as it could before you admit to yourself that, no matter how hard you work, you can’t run it on your own. A great idea can turn into a great business only when you find and trust the right people to help make it happen. Entrepreneurs need help accomplishing their goals. Hire great people to work in the business so you have the time to work on the business.

Stay curious, learn new skills. Studies of  Stanford alumni have shown that people with a greater variety of roles in in previous jobs are more likely to become entrepreneurs. Not all entrepreneurs are experts, but successful entrepreneurs always have a broad skill set.

A successful entrepreneur thirsts for knowledge and enjoys learning. That keeps an entrepreneur effective and efficient. Entrepreneurs benefit from learning new skills and ideas they incorporate into their business. The smallest lesson learned can make a big difference in business.

Follow your instincts. A survey by the Kauffman Foundation found 98% of company founders said the willingness to take risks is the usual stepping stone to entrepreneurial success.  Successful entrepreneurs relied on their “gut-feeling” when it came to hiring people for their business. As an entrepreneur, you will face new challenges every day. You will find yourself on uncharted territory where there is very little research or data for you to make a sound decision. This is where the gut feeling comes in. In risky business, entrepreneurs learn to follow their instincts.

Murray Newlands is an entrepreneur, business advisor and online-marketing professional. In 2013 Murray founded TheMail.com. 

Turn PowerPoint into Performance Art!

A big challenge when presenting in PowerPoint is the dual task of creating content and delivering authenticity simultaneously.

While the slide may contain information, it is not your whole message: the total message is what you say and how you say it. This balancing act creates a dilemma that pulls at two distinct disciplines: creativity and delivery.

You can simplify this dual challenge by preparing not only your message but also your delivery in advance. Sharpen your message as you do your slides and the presentation will come more naturally. You will be ready to engage your audience.

By John Baldoni 

The Best Work Advice I Ever Received – Reader Top 10 List

I recently asked readers to share the best advice they’ve ever received about how to succeed at work. Here are my favorite tips from readers about doing well at your job and getting along well with your manager and coworkers.

1. When you’re the expert, talk like one

“When you are the expert, talk like you are the expert. Don’t be overly deferential or modify your statements with things like “I think” or “Maybe…” when you are talking to people who are in peers or are ranked higher in the organization.

This advice was from my boss in my first corporate job after years in publishing, to encourage me to be more assertive. I’m a woman, I was younger than everyone else on the team, and I was often in a position of having to tell our IT team — all older than me and 95% male — how I wanted things on our website. They wouldn’t always follow my directions exactly or in a timely fashion; instead they would follow their own opinions and regard my instructions as advice. When I started sounding more direct and assertive, they had more respect for my experience and my projects were done to my specifications and timeline.”

2. Praise publicly and criticize privately

“Praise publicly, criticize privately. You will need, at some point, to get cooperation and work out of someone who does not report to you, whose boss does not take an interest in your work, whose department does not give a rat’s butt about your department. If you cannot get people who do not report to you to work with you, you will be dead in the water.”

3. You’re the average of the people you spend time with

“Someone once told me, ‘You are the average of the 6 people you spend the most time with.’ Professionally, I took this to heart and made a point of networking with not only people who are generally successful, but also people who exhibit the kind of work habits I know I need to emulate.”

4. Never be good at anything you don’t want to do

“Never be good at anything you don’t want to do. Tongue somewhat in cheek — of course, as a junior person you have to get good at the grunt work before you’ll be given more interesting tasks. But as a general rule — the better you get at something, the more you’ll be asked to do it. The way to make sure your niche is what you want it to be is to make sure you’re best at those things!”

5. Don’t present problems without solutions

“When you present your boss with a problem, also come in with as much knowledge as possible and potential solutions. If I’m talking to a superior about a case, I need to have read the entire file – even stuff that may not seem completely germane to my question – so that I can answer his questions and have an informed discussion about the issues of the case. (Sometimes doing this will resolve what you saw as a potential problem anyway.) If I do have a problem, I explain the problem and the potential solutions - i.e., I can do A, B, or C with this. Doing this saves your boss time and helps you get a better result, because often they were thinking about/working on something else or don’t know/remember the specifics of your project. I’ve used this strategy in multiple workplaces and found that it helps both me and my bosses.”

6. Find things interesting

“If you don’t find something interesting, it’s your job to find something about it that interests you. My mom gave me this advice when I was in university (and bored by required courses). But, it became excellent career advice for me down the road, and opened a lot of doors.”

7. Own your mistakes and then move on

“If you make a mistake, own it and move on. Don’t try to hide it or its impact.  Don’t blame others.  Take responsibility.  Then stop obsessing over it. It happened, you learned from it, and you’re past it.”

8. Align your emotional energy with your priorities in life

“The best advice I ever got was: Force rank the activities and people in your life. For example, maybe your kids are 1, parents 2, friends 3, employees 4 … boss 10. Then, work to ensure that your time and emotional energy expenditure are aligned with that ranking. If my boss ranks a 10 and I react to something with a very high emotional energy level (high stress, etc.), then I’m using emotional energy that I should be expending on my kids on my boss. My mentor told me that I’m essentially ‘stealing’ emotional energy from the important people in my life by overreacting to my boss.

This structure helps me keep my emotional energy and time expenditure in alignment with my priorities. So when I start to react to something, I ask myself if it makes sense or am I overreacting based upon my priorities. As a part of this structure, I found myself reducing the number of hours at work and increasing the amount of time with my kids.

Amazingly enough, this exercise helped me succeed far more at work because I’m more consistent and steady at work. I get more done and I’m more trusted because I don’t overreact very often. I’m also happier and comfortable with where I am with my job. It was very hard to implement, but very worth it!”

9. Be responsive

“My former boss’s very successful father once told me 90% of professional success is returning all your calls and emails. He was exaggerating a bit, but it was good advice because it can be easy to ignore certain requests, emails, or calls from people. And if you make the effort to respond to everything, you’re way ahead of most professionals who tend to ignore a lot.”

10. Work will still be here tomorrow

“‘It will all still be here tomorrow,’ said by a former boss (a big deal VP at a big company), looking at a giant pile of work I was frantically attacking on a Friday night. It was good advice because it was a dose of reality from an extremely hardworking person, that there is no such place as ‘done.’ Her point at the time was that I should get some rest because the world won’t end if I don’t finish XYZ tonight. But what I learned from it was perspective, focus, and strategy. You can wear yourself out trying to cross an ever-retreating finish line, or you can figure out how to approach your work in a meaningful way that addresses what you’re really trying to do.”

Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog where she dispenses advice on career, job search, and management issues. She's also the co-author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results and former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management, hiring, firing, and employee development.

4 Tips to Go Further, Faster with Strategic Partnerships

While some entrepreneurs may be hesitant to partner with other companies due to fear of misalignment, not a balanced relationship or a branding disaster, it can actually be quite beneficial if done correctly. Forming the right strategic partnership can increase your efforts in two essential areas of the business -- credibility and distribution.

Less than a year ago today, the company I co-founded Porch.com -- a home-improvement network -- had only touched the hands of a small group of our earliest employees, as we worked away from the basement of my rental home. Now, that same little website has touched millions of hands and this growth helped us form a strategic partnership with Lowe's Home Improvement stores. The Lowe’s partnership spring-boarded Porch into the public spotlight, aligning brands and establishing us as a tech-savvy innovator in the space. It also gave us distribution to quickly deliver our product.

For those thinking of forming a partnership, here are a few pieces of advice:

1. Identify opportunities. Any company can come up with a list of the top 100 partners they would love to work with in an under an hour. The trick is to identify what you can offer and align these incentives with a company that fills one of your needs. Look for companies that might be able to bring in valuable customers, credibility or links, among other resources. The key is looking for a partner with a matched vision and wants more than just a transactional relationship. Chances are you are going to be working closely with these companies for extended periods of time, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure the spirit, vision and culture are all aligned.

2. Use partnerships to build momentum. Whether you are talking to customers, investors or other potential partners, you need credibility to gain leverage. Latching on to a bigger, well-known brand through a mutually beneficial partnership is a way to quickly build your own brand and credibility. Plus, your company can use the momentum gained from one partnership or deal to leverage another.

3. Make sure you have the required resources. Like any major function of your business, you need to allocate first-class resources to your partnerships. This means that both sides need to have the capital, people power and leadership in place to be able to devote time, energy and money into the partnership. Make sure your company fulfills these obligations. That said, be aware that a majority of partnerships won’t exactly pan out the way you want them too.  Needs change, company’s pivot -- it just happens.

4. Negotiate your terms and stay the course. Often with young startups in relationships with larger, more established companies, the bigger business uses its weight to get what it want. This leaves the smaller company in an uncomfortable position where they can lose track of their own growth. Don't let this happen to you. It is essential to make sure the deal is structured in a way that lets you maintain control of your company.

As a general rule, it’s best to stay away from granting exclusivity to one company or another. You don’t want to paint yourself into a corner that you can’t escape in the long run. I always evaluate partnerships pragmatically, taking them on a case-by-case basis. If the partnership fits, incentives are aligned and the cultures match, you might be on the cusp of securing the big partnership that takes your company out of the basement and into the world.

Matt Ehrlichman is co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Porch.com, the home improvement network.

Ten Tips for Knowing When to Stay Quiet and Just Listen

It is a balancing act for leaders to know when they should talk and when they should just listen. Extroverted leaders have a particular challenge because they talk to think. For them, talking is an important part of processing information and ideas. They risk grabbing too much airtime and shutting others down.

Conversely, introverted leaders think to talk . They are often challenged to communicate information at a frequency that is conducive to their followers’ needs. I do not advocate that leaders should be “seen and not heard.” It is fair to say, though, that leaders should be heard less and seen more. People believe and listen to the actions of leaders more than to their words.

 It’s remarkable how much you learn when you stop talking and begins listening. The vast majority of communication between people is non-verbal, making it important to learn how to pick up cues and clues to lead appropriately for the specific situation.

It’s not an accident that the ratio of “listening” body parts to “speaking” body parts is 4:1 — two ears and two eyes, versus one mouth. In fact, we listen with our whole body — we also listen with our brain, our heart and our gut.

Leaders make fewer wrong assumptions and better decisions when they ask more than they tell and when they listen more than talk. Of course, leaders need to speak, share their vision, engage others, brainstorm ideas and make decisions. It’s about balance, and it’s about the quality of the conversations.

The wisest and most successful leaders pay attention, learn to “read the room,” and sense when it’s time for them to listen and when it’s time for them to talk. The first step in getting this right is to stop doing anything else when you are having a conversation with someone, and then make sure you pay attention and balance your airtime with others.

Here are 10 tips to help you know when you should stay quiet.

1. It’s an emotional conversation — people need to believe they are being heard. Ask how you can help rather than assuming you know.
2. You come in during the middle of a story. There is no need to embarrass yourself!
3. You are wondering if what you’ll say will be seen as offensive. If you have to wonder, then it probably is.
4. You are tempted to “fix” the person’s problem.
5. Someone asks you a question that you should not or cannot answer fully or accurately.
6. You think your idea is the best thing since shelled walnuts.
7. You ask a question. It is a good idea to wait and listen for the answer.
8. You feel yourself jumping to conclusions without much information.
9. You’ve been drinking or partying and someone from work calls you.
10. You are angry or upset. Take enough time to figure out why you feel the way you do and then determine the best course of action to resolve the problem.

Roxi Hewertson is the CEO of Highland Consulting Group Inc. and AskRoxi.com. For over 20 years she has helped hundreds of leaders learn to lead effectively. She is an expert in organizational development, organizational effectiveness, and talent management, and she has served as an adjunct faculty at Cornell University. Her no-nonsense, practical insights have been featured by Forbes, Inc. magazine, Entrepreneur magazine, Fox News, and Chief Learning Officer magazine.