Category: New Business Development

Micah has an absolutely wonderful
post on how to mentor entrepreneurs
(a must-read for entrepreneurs
or ANYONE working with entrepreneurs).

One of his tips?

“Ask, dont tell.
Its not your company.
Be respectful of that.”

I suck at this,
brutally suck at it,
and knowing this,
I tend to mentor more over email
than person to person.
With email,
I can say what I want to say
and then go back
and replace all the telling with questions.

If you’re mentoring entrepreneurs,
you can’t tell them what to do
with their own companies.

As Micah states
“The biggest value
you can ever provide
as a mentor
is helping the entrepreneur
discover their path for themselves.
Being a mentor is
an act of supportive self-discovery
not one of explicit direction.
Its hard to not just tell
the entrepreneur what to do
— after all, you’ve gone down that path
and have succeeded or failed,
so you should know
— but fight that instinct,
and instead, help them
become better leaders,
dot connectors and problem solvers.”

Ask. Don’t Tell.

Recently,
I was asked to
help a driver navigate
to a friend’s house.
The first thing I asked was…
where are we currently?

It sounds like a no-brainer
but when setting strategy,
many leaders forget to ask this question.

Richard Rumelt
talks about how important
it is to diagnose
the current situation
before coming up with solutions.

“A good strategy has,
at a minimum,
three essential components:
a diagnosis of the situation,
the choice of an overall guiding policy,
and the design of coherent action.
Many attempts at strategy
lack a good diagnosis.
At the star of most consulting engagements,
the client wants an appraisal
of a particular course of action
or wants advice on what to do.
I almost always back up
and try to create a better diagnosis
of the situation
before getting into recommendations.”

If you don’t know where you currently are,
you can’t figure out
how to get where you want to go.

Sasha Dichter recently
performed a generosity experiment.
For a month,
he said yes
to every single request.

He did this because
he feels
“If I want the world to be
more open,
more action orientated,
and more generous,
then I have to be more open,
more action orientated
and more generous.”

Change is contagious.
If you want to see change,
be the change.

Little ol’ me has quietly and slowly
changed the atmosphere
in huge corporations
by simply wishing everyone I meet
a cheery good morning.
I say it to one person.
She, being polite, says it back.
Then when she sees the next coworker,
it is easier for her to repeat it.

If you don’t love the world you’re living in,
change it.
It REALLY is that easy.

I see it all of the time
in both business and writing.
Someone has a bit of success,
and they stop listening
because they believe they know everything.

This stage usually comes
before a professional failure
because, of course,
no one knows everything.

Mary Jo Asmus shares
that subject or technical knowledge
can be a bad thing.

Why?

One reason is…
“Listening stops:
When you believe you know
all of the right answers,
you stop listening to other’s ideas.
This stifles creativity,
and can be a source
for flawed decision making.”

Knowledge is a great tool.
However,
thinking you have ALL of the knowledge
can be very, very dangerous.

I’m a moderator on a writing loop.
A moderator on a busy loop
only has to moderate.
A moderator on a slower loop
has the additional responsibility
of being a facilitator.

My biggest challenge
is to keep the loop from being the K show.
I do this by sourcing information
from other authors,
by quoting other authors,
and by asking questions
rather than replying with comments.
I step back,
and wear my facilitator hat.

Create Learning
has a great post on
the 10 Sins of the Facilitator
and one of those sins is
“Interprets or modifies
the words spoken and
records the “spin” on the input
rather than documenting
what is actually said.”

A good facilitator will be
as invisible as possible.

Fads happen in every industry.
Customers discover
a unique (yet usually shallow) product
and the product blows up big.
Then the imitators flood the market.
The customers eventually tire of the product,
and they move on.

If you’re quick with innovation
and developing new products,
you can hop on these fads
and make some dollars.

If you’re not a fast innovator,
it makes no sense
to try to catch fads.
Once your product reaches the market,
the fad will be over.

Both strategies have potential.
I know authors who take 5 years
getting a story to market.
I know authors who take 5 days
getting a story to market.
They are producing very different stories
using different speeds of innovation
yet both authors are successful.

The key is to know
which type of innovator you are.

Your speed of innovation
will drive
business strategy.

On the road to business building,
you will, unfortunately,
have days
when you question WHY.
Why are you building this business?
Why are you sacrificing time spent
with your family
for a success that might or might not happen?

This WILL happen.
It is normal.

So plan for these days.
Design a support system
to help you work through the doubts
and continue.

One of the tricks I use is
when I start a project,
I’ll send a loved one
a list of reasons
why this project will succeed
and why it is important.

I ask the loved one
to send this list back to me
whenever I sound like
I’m doubting myself.

Because the encouragement
is written for myself
by myself,
it uses words and concepts
I understand.

Doubt is normal.
Doubt is to be expected.
Plan for it.

Singer/Songwriter Burton Cummings
shared his thoughts
on Justin Bieber.

“I’ve got nothing against Justin personally
but I don’t think he writes
and when you don’t write your own stuff,
you become a victim sometimes
when the song finding machine runs dry,
and we’ve seen that happen
with Kenny Rogers and even Elvis Presley
to a degree.
As big a star as you are,
if you’re not writing your own stuff,
you’re not controlling your own destiny
and your own future.”

In music,
great songs are key for success.

Coca-Cola considers outsourcing
every step of the process
EXCEPT production of the syrup.
That step is key for their success.

In reporting,
reliable sources of information are key.
That’s why reporters will go to jail
to protect their sources.

Decide upon the key steps
for your business’s success,
and control those steps.

The road to writing success,
as with most success,
is long and hard.
Some of my writing buddies are
getting discouraged.

I’ve thus far avoided this.

How?

By surrounding myself
with up and coming writers.
Their joy and enthusiasm
is contagious.
I feel as hopeful as they do.

One of my business buddies
mentors up and coming entrepreneurs.
She feeds off their enthusiasm
and brings that back
to her own business.

An easy way
to feel that joy again
is to be around those
who are feeling it for the first time.

We’ve all made mistakes.
We all have challenges.

Ryan Blair,
CEO and founder of ViSalus Sciences,
knows this better than anyone.
He is a former gang member
with a criminal record.

Yeah…
talk about challenges.

Yet, he learned some valuable business lessons
while in prison.

One lesson?

“…adaptation is the key to survival.
In jail the guy who rises to power
isn’t always the strongest or the smartest.
As prisoners come and go,
he’s the one that adapts
to the changing environment,
while influencing the right people.

You can use this in business,
staying abreast of market trends,
changing your game plan as technology shifts,
and adapting our strategy around
your company’s strongest competitive advantages.
Darwin was absolutely right
— survival is a matter of how you respond to change.”

Are you adapting to change?
Can you figure out a way
to learn and benefit from your challenges?