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Believe it or not, it pays to think about your exit strategy before you start a business, just like buying a house. Is it an investment, do you want to flip it, or do you plan to live there forever? For entrepreneurs seeking investors like me, it’s especially critical, since investors want to see a Read More

Whether you are an entrepreneur managing a startup, or a corporate executive with thousands of employees, it’s hard to ignore the evidence of big value from happy employees. According to a classic study from Deloitte, happy employees have been shown to be up to 20 percent more effective in the work Read More

You can’t make any business work if your customers can’t find you, or don’t even know what you offer. Thus I was surprised to read a while back that 30 percent of small businesses don’t even have a web site. As an advisor to new entrepreneurs, I’m also surprised at how many potential business owner Read More

Most entrepreneurs are so convinced that they are the disruptive element, they fail to anticipate that unknown facts or events can and will occur to disrupt their own well-laid plans. While it’s true that there is no way of know specifically what might happen, you need to anticipate the worst, and Read More

As an entrepreneur, you should treat gossip among the members of your team as a reduction in productivity at best, and at worst, an indication of unhappy, un-empowered, or non-collaborative employees. As a leader, you should be asking yourself if you are the problem, and working hard to improve the Read More

As an entrepreneur advisor, I am surprised at how often I hear the same or very similar proposals of an incremental innovation to an existing process, versus a really new or breakthrough solution. If you are seriously looking to start the next billion-dollar startup, you need to get beyond the real Read More

According to Gallup surveys, job satisfaction for employees is at an all-time low. Only 13 percent of workers are fully engaged in their job. The sad part is that is seems to be getting worse, rather than better. One obvious alternative is to become an entrepreneur. As a mentor to many aspiring ent Read More

Being “street smart,” or able to anticipate and deal with daily business problems and surprises, is generally recognized as a critical skill to have for business owners and entrepreneurs. Most investors say they can recognize this capability when they see it, but it’s hard to define if you haven’t Read More

Attracting the right customers is the key to success in business, whether you have a new startup or a mature enterprise. In my role as an advisor to entrepreneurs, I often see struggling businesses trying to be too many things for too many people, resulting in customer confusion, initiatives execut Read More

We all have blind spots – things you don’t see despite your best intentions to observe the world changing around you. In business, these can quickly take you off the growth track, even as you work harder and harder. In my role as startup and small business advisor, it’s my job to help you see more Read More