Assess Your Abilities and Resources
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Because starting your own business is a risky thing to do, it is important to come to grips early on about the potential risks you face. By facing those risks head-on, you can make an informed decision about whether or not you are willing to accept those risks. It also gets you thinking about ways you can reduce that risk.
Here are some important questions you can ask yourself:
- Do you have the financial resources you need?
- Can you afford to put your financial resources at risk? Can you afford not to?
- Do you have enough experience and skills necessary to go into business? If not, do you have access to the experience and skills of others?
- Do you know enough about your market to assess its needs and be able to sense and adapt to its needs?
- Do you have the tenacity that entrepreneurship requires?
- Do you have the discipline you will need to be accountable to yourself about your own performance? Read More→
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Capital, Confidence and Concept Conventional wisdom says that starting your new business is risky, although these days "risk" is a relative term. It turns out that working for someone else is risky, too - as so many people have discovered in the past 18 months. Evidently, joining a union for the perceived promise of......
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Tip-toeing Past Fear
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Our internal fight-or-flight response is designed for our protection in times of danger. When our brain senses fear, it suppresses our creativity and shuts down access to the thinking part of our brain – the cortex. Scientists tell us that our fear response is controlled by a small, almond-shaped part of the brain that is located behind the frontal lobe, called the amygdala.
When the amygdala takes over, the cortex usually doesn’t function as normal. At that time, the brain’s ability to go into self-protective lockdown mode can become a crippling liability. It’s an experience we have all had to one degree or another – and it has a direct application in business. Read More→
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The Golden Rule in Business
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The Golden Rule is an important part of our society’s virtue ethics. It focuses us on our duties and responsibilities to one another more than on our individual rights. It invites us to focus our attention on respecting and preserving fairness and the rights of others. In business, we are entitled to feel that we will be dealt with honestly. Though we must be wary, in our business relationships (caveat emptor), no business deals would ever be made if both parties didn’t feel that they were receiving approximately equal benefit. Read More→
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Business lessons from snow camping with Boy Scouts This weekend I spent Friday and Saturday in the company of 11 young men and 4 adult leaders on an overnight snow camping expedition in the mountains. This involves digging a cave in the middle of a snowfield, and spending the night in it. For us, the temperature dropped to...... -
Assess Your Abilities and Resources Because starting your own business is a risky thing to do, it is important to come to grips early on about the potential risks you face. By facing those risks head-on, you can make an informed decision about whether or not you are willing to accept those risks. It also......
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When “You’ve got it all wrong” is the best advice
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12 year old Shaheen JaFargholi
Much has been written in business about the value of playing to your strengths. On my bookshelf alone, I’ve got a half dozen business titles that preach the concept. As an entrepreneur, there is much to be learned from this video from the BBC show “Britain’s Got Talent”, where 12-year old Shaheen Jafargholi performed before the notorious Simon Cowell and company for the first time.
Shaheen stepped bravely on stage to perform a number that “his grand-dad really loves” – “Valerie,” a number originally recorded by Amy Winehouse, who is a poster child for a strung-out, self-absorbed culture. Not exactly the type of song that would be in the “wheelhouse” of a boy from Wales who just turned 12. Just a few lines into the song, Simon stops everything and tells the young man, “You’ve got this really wrong”. Simon saw with his experienced eye that, whatever Shaheen’s strengths as a performer, his choice of song wasn’t going to show it. Read More→
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Your Business Checkbook Doesn’t Tell You Everything
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It can be a real challenge for a new entrepreneur who doesn’t regularly balance his or her personal checkbook to adjust to the demands of business accounting. Business accounting is a critical discipline that the business owner either must learn and adopt – or must outsource to someone else. No matter how small your business is, you simply can’t run your business as if it were your home. There are many solid reasons for this.
One reason is that in business it is far more likely that more people are going to have claims on your money. Lendors, vendors, employees, and Uncle Sam all need to get paid. These obligations create liabilities that your checkbook doesn’t show. How much should be set aside to pay the bills? How much do you need to reserve for tax payments? What about those business loans? It is simply too hard to track in your head. Read More→
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11 Steps to Giving Employee Negative Feedback
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Every successful entrepreneur eventually has the experience of giving what is perceived to be negative feedback to an employee, manager, vendor, or partner. Providing this kind of feedback is essential to leadership, and it is the most direct way to provide direct reports with information on how they are performing. This type of communication is best handled face-to-face – and NEVER by email.
While some of these communications happen at regularly-scheduled intervals, such as at semi-annual or annual reviews, frequently it becomes necessary to provide this kind of feedback on shorter notice at the time underperformance is detected. It is common for some personality-types to put off these conversations, which only delays the inevitable.
Others find it easier to deal with in very brief but pointed meetings in the attempt to avoid confrontation. This usually results in confusion by an employee who is looking for a more detailed explanation, or who feels that his/her side of the story has not been told. Yet other personalities become so frustrated with the performance issue that the focus is heavily weighted on shortcomings without offering advice, direction or suggestions on how to improve, or on what type of training needs exist. Read More→
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Psychology of Recession
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That’s a bit of a pretentious heading – as if I’m qualified to comment on either psychology or economics…
However, as an amateur observer of the human condition, it does strike me that a significant component to our current economic quagmire is largely in our head. It seems that while we have transitioned over the years from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy to a service economy to an information economy – what we really are is an economy of confidence. When we lose that intangible, psychological element of our collective selves, we perceive ourselves to be in huge economic trouble. And, because we are an information-based economy, we have an amazing ability to measure, calculate, survey, report, broadcast and share our lack of confidence with the world. Read More→
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Protecting Your Credit in Economic Decline
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The “credit crisis” has become ubiquitous. It is being blamed for everything from home foreclosures to a plummeting stock market. Many individuals and most businesses are feeling the pinch from the credit markets today. Which is precisely why it is so important to carefully manage and protect your personal and business credit profile during these turbulent times. Those who are able to survive the current recession with their credit profile intact will have so much the advantage in the economy to come.
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Entrepreneurs Tale of the Tape
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When "You've got it all wrong" is the best advice /caption] Much has been written in business about the value of playing to your strengths. On my bookshelf alone, I've got a half dozen business titles that preach the concept. As an entrepreneur, there is much to be learned from this video from the BBC show "Britain's Got Talent", where......
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We Believe in Entrepreneurism
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Zogby Interactive conducted an interesting poll of Americans to see where the nation is placing its faith in a better future. “Who will lead us to a better future?” Here are the results:
- 63% – Small business and entrepreneurs
- 52% – Science and technology leaders
- 38% – Family and friends
- 36% – Ourselves
- 32% – Non profit groups
- 31% – The government
- 21% – Big business
- 13% – The media
These findings shouldn’t surprise us. Capitalism provides inherent economic freedom and opportunity. Because of that economic freedom and opportunity, capitalism connects us to our hopes and dreams.
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