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In my experience mentoring business owners 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 internal Read More

In a corporate environment, the focus of a job interview has long been demonstrating your match to the skills and experience outlined in the job description. In my experience with small businesses, that is still necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business world has become totally customer drive Read More

In my years of working with new business founders, I have heard many times the promise that their new idea will create the next Amazon or Apple, but I rarely hear the more important promise that the founder will practice all the good habits of winning business leaders like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs Read More

A common request I hear from aspiring new business founders is for an assessment of their latest idea. I don’t even try to critique things at the idea level, since I can’t read minds to fill in the details. I can evaluate execution plans, if you have any. Yet I believe that business success is more Read More

Most business founders start their company with the highest of ideals and wouldn’t dream of building one with a culture of apathy or downright unethical behavior. Yet all too many succumb to the pressures of survival, driven by demanding investors or a cutthroat competitive environment. How does a Read More

With the pace of change ever escalating, business owners today can't afford to acquire talent through traditional hiring and need to revise the perception that "talent" is only full-time office employees. More and more people in the workforce don't want to be resident employees. More than 40 percen Read More

As an enthusiastic early-stage investor in new business ideas, I have always been surprised that some founders who appeared to have a great idea and were doing everything right still failed, while others with “far out” ideas and tactics managed to succeed. I’ve become convinced that the difference Read More

You can’t survive as a new business founder without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. That’s the nature of trying something that’s never been done before. Resilience means not giving up and being energized by what you have learned. As Thomas Edison said, Read More

Every technical business founder I mentor is an early adopter of technology, so naturally, they build things with people like themselves in mind. Unfortunately, for most solution markets early adopters represent only 10 to 15 percent of the total opportunity, so it's easy to get misled about the re Read More

One of the things I have learned from working in many businesses, big and small, is that people are the key to success, rather than any specific business model or innovative product. People and their personalities determine how decisions are made that drive business. The better you can read people Read More