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A popular myth these days is that finishing college only dilutes your entrepreneurial instincts, and the best of the best, including Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out early to hasten their success. I agree with Robert E. Litan, former VP of research at the Kauffman Foundation, Read More

All of us have been on the receiving end of a difficult conversation at work, and many have had to deliver a hard message to others. Unless you are totally inhuman, none of these are painless, and we all wish we had some way to make them more meaningful and more effective. We all want to feel good Read More

With the advent and popularity of crowdfunding platforms, including Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, as a winning alternative for funding your new venture, I find that many aspiring entrepreneurs are confused about the need to ever seek a professional angel investor. I think it’s great to have more optio Read More

Most of you business leaders focus first on providing guidance to your team, but neglect self-leadership as an equally important dimension. In my experience, many entrepreneurs rely too much on the perspective of a trusted advisor, or try to emulate a competitor who is getting attention. Personal l Read More

While starting a new business always involves tackling many new challenges, I’ve personally found myself reluctant to ask for help. I suspect it’s a function of pride and confidence in my own problem solving abilities, but my hesitation has definitely cost me time and money. Thus, in my consulting Read More

Does your business have a visible positive strategy, or do your customers and employees still see your primary focus as closing more sales and killing competitors? Certainly that has been the strategy of many companies, and has worked in the past, but today’s customers and workers are looking for m Read More

The biggest challenge for every entrepreneur and every startup today is to get noticed and remembered in today’s information overload. The number of entrepreneurs worldwide is huge, starting an estimated 50 million new businesses per year, or 137,000 per day. Every one of these probably has a uniqu Read More

One of the most important skills for every entrepreneur is timely and effective decision making. In a startup, any decision is better than no decision. One of the primary roles of every founder is to solve problems, make a decision, and manage the decision to results. The best entrepreneurs relish Read More

In my experience mentoring new entrepreneurs and aspiring business leaders, I see far too many who seem to be driven by all the wrong reasons. Everyone seems to espouse extrinsic motivations, such as getting rich, having power, and fulfilling parent dreams, when in fact a focus on satisfying intern Read More

As a mentor to many aspiring entrepreneurs, I challenge them to think beyond what I call linear extensions to a current trend, such as another “easier-to-use” app for smartphones, a new dating site for pets, or another niche social network. In my experience, these startups usually find the field cr Read More