The right business accelerator program can open many doors for you, but as I was once told, we still have to “walk into those doors.” Whether or not you decide to join an accelerator, keep in mind that, at the end of the day, it’s still up to you to develop your idea, prioritize your long list of must-dos, and execute.
About the Author
Jerry is the co-founder and CEO of Retention Science, a leader and innovator in retention marketing. Previously, Jerry was an analyst with Morgan Stanley, an engagement manager with BearingPoint Management Consulting (KPMG Advisory) and, most recently, an advisor to the CFO of Clear Channel, working on digital initiatives such as iHeartRadio. Jerry is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a full-tuition scholarship as an Alumni Scholar; he also attended Yale School of Management.
You Can't Do It All, So Expand Your Leadership Circle
By Peter Economy
It's far too easy to let your organization get stuck in the leader/follower rut, where you end up doing all the leading, and everyone else just follows along. Remember these five words: You can't do it all.
You hired great employees for a reason, so put all their skills to work by enlarging your leadership circle. When you encourage your employees to expand their roles in your company, you give each one of them a chance to show their creativity in different ways. The result? Better ideas and a happier, more engaged workforce.
Here are some tried-and-true ways to expand your leadership circle and get the best from your people every day:
1. Create a Supportive Environment
If you want your employees to take initiative at work (and believe me, you do), they have to know that you support them. Give your people the freedom to take chances and experiment with new ideas, and to make decisions within their areas of responsibility. Shine a spotlight on your employees by letting them take the credit for their own successes. Be sure that all managers understand the importance of sharing leadership--and reward those who delegate well.
2. Provide All Your Employees With Leadership Training
Most organizations only offer leadership training to supervisors and managers, but in order for all employees to successfully take on leadership roles, they must first be properly trained. Since not all hires have experience in leadership, it's important to offer training to all employees. Pair experienced leaders with followers and encourage them to learn from each other and to switch roles when appropriate.
3. Encourage Employees to Act
Every employee has the ability to make a positive impact on your organization and on your customers and clients. Show your employees that you value them and their contributions while actively encouraging them to take initiative to act and to try new approaches to old problems. The most successful companies have figured out the importance of making their employees feel important--and they actively take steps to do it.
4. Throw Out the Org Chart
Okay, while you might not be ready to toss your organization chart into the trash, why not stick it in a drawer and forget about it for a while? Instead of deciding who the leaders in your organization are or who they should be, let them emerge on their own. Leaders tend to lead, and you will soon know who wants to step up. You'll also soon know which employees would prefer to let others lead. That's okay--every organization needs leaders and followers.
5. Reward Leadership Behavior
Taking on a leadership role can be very intimidating for many employees--especially those who have never been in a formal position of leadership before. Encourage your employees to lead by rewarding and reinforcing leadership behavior. Give raises or promotions when your people are willing to take on higher-level roles and responsibilities--or to set the bar even higher--and you will find more employees from all levels of your organization who are willing to lead.
By expanding your leadership circle, you will tap into the full potential of your people and your organization. With the economy still on the mend, you need your employees' contributions now more than ever.
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About the Author
While Peter Economy has spent the better part of two decades of his life slugging it out mano a mano in the management trenches, he is also the best-selling author of Managing for Dummies, The Management Bible, Leading Through Uncertainty, and more than 65 other books, with total sales in excess of two million copies. He has also served as associate editor for Leader to Leader for more than 10 years, where he has worked on projects with the likes of Jim Collins, Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and many other top management and leadership thinkers. Visit him at petereconomy.com and follow him on Twitter: @bizzwriter.
Does Education Trump Experience When Starting a Business?
By Rieva Lesonsky
When you’re starting a business, does education or experience matter more? That’s a question that’s been debated, well, as long as I can remember—and it seems even the business owners themselves can’t agree on an answer.
Does education matter more than experience when hiring employees for your small business? Apparently not. In a Manta survey earlier this year that polled nearly 1,000 small business owners, half say they hire staff who don’t have a college degree. What’s more, more than 60 percent say they see no difference in performance among employees with varying education levels. Desire, drive and the willingness to work hard matter more to the business owners in the study when it comes to choosing who to hire.
But it seems small business owners don’t extend themselves the same leeway. Most entrepreneurs in the study (more than 60 percent) predominantly credit their education as an important factor to their own successes as small business owners. Almost 70 percent of those polled have at least a bachelor’s degree.
It’ obvious a degree is valuable (even essential) in some fields, such as consulting or professional services. But if you want to start your own restaurant, open an auto repair shop or start a hair salon, is a college degree more crucial than real-world experience in your chosen field? Perhaps in some industries, street smarts and hands-on learning outweigh anything that can be learned in a college classroom setting.
Maybe when small business owners tout the value of education, what they really mean is the ability to think things through and plan a path to growth. Entrepreneurs in the Manta study cited a strong business plan as vital to getting their businesses off to a good start. Over one-third say a business plan is the most important startup success factor—more important than capital, networking or mentorship.
The role of business plans has changed in recent years. With our economy changing rapidly and disruptive businesses sprouting up, many feel the traditional business plan that looks out five or 10 years into the future is outdated. But while your business plan may not be as “etched in stone” as it used to be, I agree with the entrepreneurs Manta polled that it’s of great value.
About the Author
Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at
[email protected], follow her on Google+ and Twitter @Rieva, and visit her website SmallBizDaily.com to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.
Lessons for Entrepreneurs From A Navy Seal
By Martin Zwilling
You have to be extra tough mentally to be an entrepreneur. While thinking about it, I realized that it’s really not that different from the toughness required and trained into America’s elite military force of Navy SEALs, who are known to be cool under fire, able to sense danger before it’s too late, and never give up on achieving their objective.
I just finished a new book “The Way of the SEAL,” co-authored by Mark Divine, who spent many years with the SEALs, and has since started and built six multimillion-dollar business ventures. He now teaches the key principles to busi
ness leaders through his Unbeatable Mind Academy, focusing on the following lessons and strategies, which I recommend for every entrepreneur:
1. Lead from the front, so that others will want to work for you. To be an entrepreneur or a Navy SEAL, you must first have vision, focus, and the courage to step up to lead. That means visibly walking the talk and willing to clear a path for others. People want to follow leaders they can learn from, who demonstrate excellence and commitment in all they do.
2. Focus on one thing until victory is achieved. SEALs call this front-sight focus, or the ability to envision your goal to the point that you see it, believe it, and make it happen. Every entrepreneur needs this kind of focus to build a minimum viable product, target the right customer segment, differentiate from competitors, and drive business growth.
3. Think offense, all the time, to eradicate fear and indecisiveness. Indecision leads to doubt, then the two blend and become fear, which signals defense, resulting in being overrun in the business world, as well as the military world. Offense, for entrepreneurs, means leading with a new business model, new marketing, and new technology.
4. Never be thrown off-guard by chaotic conditions. Smash the box and think outside the box. In the world of the entrepreneur and the SEAL, chaos is the norm, not the exception. Plan for it mentally and physically, and you will see opportunities rather than problems in the chaos. Winning is finding opportunities, rather than fighting problems.
5. Access your intuition so you can make “hard right” decisions. Your intuition is really your knowledge and awareness of your business environment, which must be honed with practice and focus. This knowledge is required for you to turn quickly or pivot based on new input from the market, without loss of competitive position.
6. Achieve twenty times more than you think you can. Set your targets high. Nobody knows what they are truly capable of, with the right discipline, drive, and determination (three Ds). SEALs challenge themselves to find their 20x factor, and entrepreneurs should accept no less of a challenge. Leverage the resources of mentors, investors, and peers.
By teaching and practicing the principles behind these six lessons, Mark Divine was able to improve the pass rate of Navy SEAL candidates from less than 30% to over 80%. I see the same potential for improving the success rate of new entrepreneurs from the current 10-year survival rate below 30%, to a new high target of 80% in this new era.
Expanding...
He suggests that you start with a self-assessment against the “five mountains” to be climbed on the path to self-mastery and success, with my adaptation for entrepreneurs:
• Physical: business as well as technical skills required for the domain you want to enter.
• Mental: ability to persevere, make decisions, focus, and visualize success.
• Emotional: resilience, open to relationships, keep negative emotions under control.
• Intuitional: level of awareness, listen more than speak, strong self-esteem, insightful.
• Spiritual: strong values, at peace, willing to make sacrifices, see the big picture.
I agree with Divine that if you desire serious change in your life, you can’t get there by focusing on what you don’t want. Becoming an entrepreneur is a great lifestyle, but it is a serious change from other career alternatives. If you decide to be an entrepreneur because you don’t want a boss, on don’t like regular business hours, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
Apply the lessons from the Navy SEALs and you too can be an elite warrior who leads and succeeds in the new global business paradigm. Are you up to the challenge?
About the Author
I am the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides services to startup founders around the world. My background includes a 30-year track record as an executive in general management, computer software development, product management, and marketing. I'm now in "give-back mode" as a mentor to startup founders, and an Angel investor. My experience with investors includes roles on the selection committee of two local Angel groups, and working from the other side of the table with several VCs in Silicon Valley. In addition to blogging, I recently released my first book titled “Do You Have What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur?” You can contact me directly at
[email protected] Feel free to Circle me on Google+.
The Threat from Within - When Mobile Imperils Your Business Security
By Philip Whitchelo
In today’s business world, data security is as important to small startups as it is to enormous multinationals. In the highly digitized 21st century, a single digital document, which in reality is made up of no more than intangible zeros and ones, could represent millions of dollars worth of company assets. Unlike traditional assets, this digital data is infinitely reproducible, and at a time when more business is being conducted on mobile devices than ever before, infinitely portable.
The benefits of online technologies and big data are vast and varied, and it’s nearly impossible to grasp the full extent of the online threats we’re exposed to on a daily basis. According to Fortinet in a security survey, the levels of ignorance of complex hazards is dangerously high.
Whether caused by inadequate safety measures or human error, the high number of leaks and security breaches reported in the news can make us wonder just how vulnerable our data really is. The evolution of cloud computing and the boom in tablet and smart phone sales leaves little room for doubt: the remote access phenomenon is moving ahead full steam.
“The access of data anywhere from any device or platform poses a very challenging security environment for organizations,” says Bala Venkat, chief marketing officer at Cenzik, a security solutions provider. “BYOD [Bring Your Own Device] further complicates the matter [by] driving companies to develop air tight security policies. Mobile security has thus become an urgent mandate on every company’s technology roadmap.”
This now poses the question: What should businesses take into account? Here are data security concerns to consider as businesses shift away from in-house office computing to “business on the go.”
1. Mobile Device Loss
One of the biggest concerns for businesses is data stored on devices that could potentially get lost or stolen. Fingerprint scanners, passwords, and swipe patterns may keep small time burglars away, but more experienced hackers can bypass these measures.
Doug Herman, managing director of the eDiscovery and Digital Forensics Practice of UHY Advisors FLVS Inc., acknowledges that “settings certainly make a difference in how easy it is for a person with malicious intent to access data. Enabling the requirement for a password or fingerprint scan to access the phone goes a long way; however, for someone that really, really wants access to the phone, virtually no ‘set’ of settings will help.”
According to Herman, some companies have implemented measures for that exact situation. He says, “An organization may require that a management application be installed on the phone, which forces the use of a strong password to access data. They may reserve the right to remotely ‘wipe’ the phone of all data (company and personal), should it be reported as lost or stolen”
2. Applications and Cloud Accounts
With dozens of applications with access to information, both personal and work related, gathered on your mobile device, users quickly lose sight of how much data is actually exposed.
“Storing unencrypted sensitive data on mobile devices is a significant cause for concern, but the often unsecured Web services commonly associated with mobile applications can pose an even bigger risk,” says Venkat.
A recently published survey on Web application security by Vanderbilt University suggests that 49 percent of applications online are unsafe. As a backup precaution, most remote device users automatically sync files to private cloud accounts like Dropbox or Google Drive. And according to Fortinet, 70 percent of employees worldwide use their personal cloud account for work purposes.
Peter Martini, cofounder and
COO of network security solutions provider iboss Network Security, explains that issues with private cloud service accounts can easily arise through lack of sufficient knowledge. “A rising threat to businesses is the ‘shadow IT,’” he says. “This is an industry term for when users use an unapproved SaaS account to share files with customers. The employee does so without malice and unintentionally violates company policy. The company data is now stored in this rouge SaaS account, which can lead to a compliance violation or potential data loss.”
It is called the public cloud for a reason. When storing files online, users believe access to be restricted, which is not necessarily the case. If you want to share confidential information you need to make sure to encrypt your data, which isn’t a feature open services usually provide.
3. Network/Connectivity
When on business trips, free WiFi might seem like the perfect cost-saving alternative to paying scandalous roaming fees. It does, however, pose a threat.
“Public WiFi hotspots at places like coffee shops and airports are notoriously dangerous for mobile users,” says Sunday Yokubaitis, president of Golden Frog, an online services provider. “Any business that has employees who work remotely at these types of locations should install a personal VPN service on their employees’ mobile devices. A VPN will encrypt the Internet connection so business tasks like email communication, data transfers, and web browsing are kept private and secure.”