A winning effort begins with preparation. —Joe Gibbs, former NFL coach, race team owner At a recent entrepreneurship conference where there was a panel with angel investors, an audience member asked the following questions, “Do you take cold calls? And if you do, what should I, as a business owner seeking capital, say?” One of […]
View Post Capital Growth, Daymond John, Forge Intellectual Capital, Joe Gibbs, Timothy Reese, Valerie Gaydos
Two heads are better than one. —John Heywood, English playwright. One of my favorite events in the Summer Olympic Games is the 4×100 meter relay. In this event, a team runs 400 meters total, once around a regulation athletics track, with four teammates running 100 meters each. Currently, Jamaica holds the world record time of […]
View Post Bill Gates, Eduardo Saverin, Fear, Google, Greed, Jamaica, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Johnson, Olympic Games, Olympics, OmniPublisher, Paul Allen, Pride, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Track & Field, Usain Bolt, World Record, Yohan Blake
Competition is very good. . . . It’s what makes one strive to be better. —Christine Lahti, actress, film director. Ninety-five percent of the time, arrogance leads entrepreneurs to believe that they have no competition in the marketplace. However, on rare occasions, arrogance isn’t the true cause of this belief. Instead, arrogance is an effect […]
View Post Back to the Future, Contrave, DeLorean, FDA, Food and Drug Administration, New York Times, Orexigen Therapeutics, Road and Track, Segway, Zipcar
Timid salesmen have skinny kids. —Zig Ziglar, author, motivational speaker Reality hit us like a Mack truck and stopped us dead in our tracks. Although we reached our goal of creating OmniPublisher, one of the first content management systems built specifically for newspapers and other periodicals, we realized that we forgot to include the most […]
View Post Apple, Eduardo Saverin, Facebook, George Cloutier, Goldman Sachs, Mack Truck, Mark Zuckerberg, Netflix, OmniPublisher, Pandora, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Twitter, Webvan, Zig Ziglar
Everybody can tell you how to do it, they never did it. —Jay-Z, recording artist, entrepreneur. Since I started my business, I have been fortunate to have excellent mentors who have helped me to grow as an entrepreneur. In fact, not only have they been great advisers, but they have also brought me valuable clients. […]
View Post Advisory Board, Angel Investor, Board, Fear, Initial Public Offering, Mentors, Mentorship, Venture Capitalist
You don’t pay taxes. They take taxes. —Chris Rock, comedian, actor I was anxious out of my wits as I sat in my chair waiting for the calculations to tabulate. I had dreaded this day ever since the previous January, when I knew I had only three months left until the deadline. On that early […]
View Post Chris Rock, EIN, IRS, Taxes
Systems are the essential building blocks of every successful business. —Ron Carroll, entrepreneur, business coach As a computer science major in college matriculating with some of the brightest students from around the world, I quickly learned that my computer programming skills were not the most economical. I could get the job done, but not in […]
View Post Henry Ford
The man who has no problems is out of the game. —Elbert Hubbard, writer, philosopher. When checking my e-mail one morning, I noticed an urgent subject: “Web Site Down. Call Immediately.” This wasn’t a good sign. I knew then that it was going to be a long day—and it was. Until that moment, I had […]
View Post Customer Service, OmniPublisher, Software, Strategy, Technology
Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. —Tony Robbins, author, professional speaker. As an entrepreneur, your success depends greatly on your ability to ask the right questions. However, few people understand the enormous value of mastering this art. I would argue that several entrepreneurs—business professionals, too—have no idea that […]
View Post Competitive Advantage, Customer Objections, Marketing, Paul Cherry, Sales, Skills
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. —Henry Ford, founder, Ford Motor Company. The two kinds of entrepreneurs are those who create markets and those who do not. On the one hand, the entrepreneur who creates markets is considered a revolutionary. On the other hand, the entrepreneur who […]
View Post Amazon.com, Blue Ocean, Blue Ocean Strategy, Cirque du Soleil, College, Forbes, George Lucas, Harvard Business Press, Henry Ford, Jeff Bezos, Lexus, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Dell, Nike, Phil Knight, Profit, Ralph Lauren, Red Ocean, Renée Mauborgne, Revenue, W. Chan Kim, Wall Street