passion

Your Dream or Your Nightmare: Keys to Successful Small Business Development

Your Dream or Your Nightmare: Keys to Successful Small Business Development

This is supposed to be your dream come true. Finally, your business is up and running. You’re breathing life into your big idea. You no longer have to answer to the boss because you are the boss. You’re working your business plan.  You’re finding your path to financial freedom. You know your target market and you’re finding new clients. You have positive feedback on your products and services. You’re developing new technology. You’re finding additional funding. You’ve finally found the right team to work with. You have the right workspace. You can feel the exciting energy when you walk into your business each morning. (more…)

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Passion: Blinded or Balanced

Passion: Blinded or Balanced?

Ann Marie Sastry has a big idea. With over 70 patents and 80 scientific publications to her credit, she describes herself as a “happy warrior who’s driven by doing the next new thing.” That drive leads her to put in 100 hour work weeks and spend over two decades in pursuit of developing new battery technology application for use in electric vehicles. She’s scrapped the traditional chemical lithium technology to rethink the basics of energy, power, mass, volume, cost and safety, all in search of a new approach. She’s also raised $30 million from a variety of backers in support of her grand idea.

Sastry has an entrepreneurial zeal for her product that compels her to pursue any and every approach and perspective to accomplish her goal. She has a passion and optimism for success that propels her forward, and expects that within a year or two her product will be in full production. But for every successful entrepreneur, there are many more whose dreams never turn into reality. That’s because the same passion that propels her forward with a clear focus on success, can be blinding to others and cause them to miss the obvious cues that unfortunately their grand idea won’t get off the ground.

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What Defines Your Leadership?

What Defines Your Leadership?

In the April 9, 2012 issue of Fortune magazine, an article on The 12 Greatest Entrepreneurs of Our Time – and What You Can Learn From Them by John A. Byrne provides a brief but insightful look at what makes these successful men tick (three women received honorable mention but didn’t make it to the top 12).I’d like to provoke your thoughts by sharing the critical success factors about the top four.

Steve Jobs – Apple– Didn’t rely on consumer research, but instead “connected the dots” about relationships between technology and life experiences.  He believed that it wasn’t consumers’ responsibility to know what they wanted, especially if they haven’t seen anything like it before.  In essence consumers are often limited by their own experiences and imagination.

Bill Gates – Microsoft– Picked smart people and put them to work on important things. Both his business partner (Paul Allen) and his successor as CEO (Steve Ballmer) fall into that category.  These are people who he bounced ideas off, and who in turn would come up with even better ideas.  Gates believes that brilliant people should work on the best and most important projects.

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Fred Smith – Fedex– Learned about logistics from his experience serving in Vietnam where he saw the importance of integrating ground and air operations to move material and equipment, and to support the troops.He also learned the importance of investing in the right first line managers to make good decisions, and to praise them publicly for their work.

Jeff Bezos – Amazon– Takes a mini-retreat every quarter. This is time for him to reflect on the past, and plan for the future.His time alone with no phones is spent web-surfing for new trends and ideas that he then writes in a memo to himself and other members of his executive team for follow-up and action. These ideas typically take on a life of their own as others add to them until something develops. (more…)

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