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After many extended coaching sessions with entrepreneurs and small business owners, I’ve found myself wondering if my value-add was anything more than you could get by self-coaching. Of course, my years of experience in business gives me insights that you might not yet have, but I’ve found that the Read More

Maybe it’s just me, but I sometimes feel that accountability is a rare talent in business today. In big businesses, people are quick to defer with “that’s not my department,” and even startup founders too often blame failures on the economy or the lack of investors. As an investor and advisor to en Read More

Since the recent pandemic, I find that business leaders are fighting to retain and attract new talent to recover from necessary attrition losses and team members quitting due to personal priorities. In the wake of recent struggles, the people you need and want are looking for a new human focus from Read More

One of the reasons that now is the time to be an entrepreneur is the explosion of startup assistance organizations, usually called incubators or accelerators. According to the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA ), there are over 2,000 of these locations worldwide, and new online v Read More

If you aren’t willing to take some risk as an entrepreneur, then don’t expect any gain. Yet everyone has limits, and every investor implicitly has similar limits on what makes a startup investable, or one to avoid at all costs. If you need investors, it’s important that you understand their filters Read More

It seems like every entrepreneur and business owner I meet is highly focused on fast growth to a large business, and becoming the next unicorn. They don’t realize the running a large business brings a whole new set of problems, and may not be all that much fun, compared to their small business role Read More

Based on my own career as a business owner and angel investor, in this age of change, I still see key successes and growth from the same team member work qualities. These haven’t changed much over the years, but still seem to be often overlooked by business professionals and leaders in their haste Read More

I’m sure you will agree that not all business leaders are created equal, starting from the CEO on down. But I have found the more challenging question to be what distinguishes the best leaders from all the rest, especially before they have been selected and tested in a new role. My own conclusion, Read More

In my experience in large businesses as well as years of advising startups, I see far too much focus on product skills, and too little on people and process skills. In my view, this focus on the wrong skill set is the primary reason why over half of new businesses fail in the first five years, and Read More

In business, and in your personal life, the ability to anticipate and overcome criticism is one of the biggest differentiators between leaders, who make things happen, and followers, who may have great ideas but never seem to get things to go their way. In fact, leaders are not remembered for their Read More