Great Web Entrepreneurs – Life Lessons for Entrepreneurs
Published May 6, 2011 | 
“Life is short and if you’re looking for extension, you had best do well.” – Ben Harper
“Life is short, the art long.” – Hippocrates
“Life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest.” – John Walters
Life teaches us so many lessons entrepreneurs use to successfully start and operate their businesses. We just have to observe and notice life events as they occur to determine what can work in the entrepreneurial business world. Here are just a few life lessons I have observed that entrepreneurs might be able to look closely at, and apply to business with success:
Make sure you always have the right tools. 
No matter what your task is you always need tools to accomplish what you set out to do. Of course, many times people begin a task unprepared with sometimes even no tools, and they have to stop and go through the process of determination of the tools needed and then gathering the tools before proceeding. This takes up valuable time and effort that we can never recover.
Delays caused by not having the right tools can and do ultimately cost the unprepared entrepreneur the success they want badly and are striving for. They should also clearly understand what’s needed and carefully include in the plan the right training, knowledge and skill-sets as well as actual tools.
Set goals. 
It is important to select only one to three important goals on which you can then focus greater attention. Understand that if you establish too many goals, in most cases you will be unable to dedicate enough energy, and more importantly time to each. The common result from too many goals may be failure to achieve some of them, or even worse yet – any of them.
So your understanding should be that if you limit the number of goals and are very specific in the details of each one, you significantly increase your chances to be more successful. The more often you experience success, the more committed you will become to the plans and processes you have developed to achieving success.
The achievement of success in both business and every area of your personal life will become easier if you use the same principles for the determination and establishment of goals. And when you are able to frequently enjoy consistent levels of success, you will take pleasure in a much greater sense of satisfaction.
Always practice your skills a lot in advance of the real business performance. Many times you will be unable to practice and perfect your business skills under the same circumstances as in the live business. A great example of this is when you are to make an important presentation in the very near future it’s hard to account for the same pressure of the live presentation in front of your prospective customers or clientele. 
But if you are able to practice your pitch enough times in front of a soft friendly audience, your presentation skills will improve.
I have always found it fascinating that the fear of speaking in front of any size group is the number one fear on any list of fears ranking survey. Believe it or not, most people fear public speaking even more so than the fear of death.
Make sure to always have fun. Success in life is all about working hard and having fun. I’m know there are countless people who want to own a business, but don’t. They create excuses that they can’t find time to develop many skills and the knowledge needed to be successful, and they are just way too busy with work, or school, or any number of other things they let take their valuable time.
You should understand clearly that while the journey to your success is relatively long, not only do you have to be happy when you get your destination of success, but even more important, you have to enjoy the journey as well. So work hard, but remember to make sure you have a lot of fun too along the way. As they say, life is short.
The Next Great Entrepreneurs – Social Entrepreneurs
Published March 31, 2011 | Social Entrepreneurs are individuals with adaptive innovative solutions to bring change in social behavior brought about by technology in today’s ever-changing global economy. 
They are an ambitious and persistent lot, engaging in major social shifts and offering new creative ideas that address the wide-scale and sometimes generational shifts in market demands and needs. Many problems were unknown and non-existent just a few months ago and now appear seemingly overnight at the forefront of present and future market trends.
Social Entrepreneurs find what is needed and solve the problem by changing and streamlining processes for greater efficiencies, even creating new processes and tools to address rapidly changing and new technology introductions into the global market. 
By adapting and spreading the solution(s), global societies are ready and therefore easily persuaded to take new leaps along with the Social Entrepreneurs.
Social Entrepreneurs frequently appear to be obsessed by their ideas and dreams, consigning their life-energy to shifting the market’s direction to their concept and innovation. Social Entrepreneurs are both visionaries and ultimate realists at the same time, sharply focused with the practical implementation of their idea and vision above everything else.
Each Social Entrepreneur presents ideas that are easy to use, logical, principled, and engage widespread market support in order to capitalize on market habits that have become socially acceptable and very widespread, making it easier to implement with the best results. 
In other words, every leading Social Entrepreneur is a student of market change makers, a strategic market role model, influencer and many times a first adapter that channels their passion into action.
Over the past two decades, global markets have slowly discovered there is nothing as powerful as a new idea in the hands of a Great Social Entrepreneur.
Why “Social” Entrepreneurs?
Just as Entrepreneurs can change the look, feel and face of business, Social Entrepreneurs act as technological change agents for the global market, seizing opportunities others have overlooked and miss, improving systems and processes, conceiving new methodology and tactics, and creating solutions to change and improve markets for the better. 
While a great business Entrepreneur might create entirely new never seen before industries, a Social Entrepreneur comes up with new solutions to market routine and procedure problems, and then puts them into practice and operation on large scalable projects.
Here are a just a few recent or fresh Social Entrepreneurship ideas. Believe it or not, the very best ideas have demonstrated and proven to be simple ones that don’t require a large investment.
- Simplicity coach: Helping well-off people to downscale their lives (minimalism), replace “stuff” with important meaningful activities, and give to commendable social causes.
- Wellness coach: Helping people adopt a more natural and health-centered lifestyle tradition including weight loss, healthy eating, less drinking (alcohol), moderate exercise, and reduced stress.
The Next Great Entrepreneurs – Innovation
Published March 21, 2011 | 
Have you ever contemplated what it is that distinguishes great Entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology most often focus on innovation and creativity, high tolerance levels when it comes to taking on risk, and of course the intensely motivating desire for achievement. Most would agree these are extremely enviable traits that, unfortunately, the average person can’t learn, since the traits are not very teachable.
A strong common trait that is shared by many Entrepreneurs is that while they are brilliant improvisers, they don’t begin with concrete goals. They instead, constantly measure how to use their inventory of personal strengths and no matter what resources they have at hand to develop new goals as they operate, while quickly and creatively reacting and adjusting to contingencies.
The ability to identify new business opportunities presented in the market is a skill some true Entrepreneurs are gifted with. Others have to sharpen and refine their market senses through a detailed analysis of the existence and sources of new opportunities and the sources of course will have differing importance at different times. This is where purposeful and systematic innovation begins.
True innovators are always consciously analyzing opportunities and their sources in whatever the situation, because of the fluidity and ever changing trends in the global market. Innovators are constantly on the outlook, asking the precise questions and listening for the correct answers they are looking for.
Successful innovators are both analytical and insightful, observing potential customers to study their expectations, their values and their needs, and analytically evaluating exactly how and more importantly if the innovation is going to satisfy the identified opportunity. 
They must have the instinctive abilities to look at the market as a whole including customers and trends both past and future, and with their keen insightfulness be able to quickly identify opportunities to meet demands and solve market problems with their innovations.
A good rule to always follow if at all possible is that an innovation has to be simple to be most effective, and in the innovations focus there is but one extremely important thing to avoid, and that is confusing the customer. The innovator’s quest should be to hear simple yet golden praise like “It’s so simple!”, and “It’s obvious!”
Understand that all great innovations share one characteristic of above all others, and that it is hard work rather than genius that the delivers the final innovative realizations and solutions. It requires the accumulation of knowledge, and through that knowledge the development of ingenuity, all the while constantly remaining focused throughout the process. 
Now while innovators are of course talented in a wide range of areas, the greatest of innovators remain highly focused and are able to maintain valuable momentum.
So if you aspire to be an innovator and an entrepreneur, constantly reevaluate the way you spend your time, and evaluate whether you are creating the next great innovation in a favorable environment that is mandatory for the development of innovations? Are you focused with an eye to the future and what’s going to happen when your current product or service becomes obsolete, and are you developing something that is difficult or even impossible to copy, gadgets or social inventions?
It is exceedingly likely that the next great wave of lasting companies to leave their impression and significantly impact and change markets will be built not by technical or product visionaries, but Social Visionaries. 
They will be Social Entrepreneurs who see, recognize and clearly understand the realities of society’s changing human nature and creative trends, and develop new ways, new processes, methods and tools of organizing human effort and inspired creativity.
Contrary to well-established business planning principles, Entrepreneurs truly believe that to the degree they can control the future they really don’t need to predict it. That may sound like a monumental error in judgment. With that said, 
we must clearly see it differently, as an expression of Entrepreneurs’ assurance and strong belief in their highly-effective abilities to recognize, respond to, and restructure opportunities as quick as they develop.
Finally, understand that Entrepreneurs thrive in the world of contingency, and the very best ones extemporize their way to an outcome that in retrospect feels ordained to them, almost magical.
Most Important Business Questions – Employee Morale Part 3
Published March 2, 2011 | How do you keep the staff happy?
You should never lose sight of the fact that if you’re lucky enough to find excellent and talented people to join your business, remember to always do your best to encourage them, and clearly understand that pay checks are just part of the business success equation. Relationships developed and nurtured within businesses are just as important as building strong relationships with customers in the market.
Feedback, Coaching, and Challenge
Challenge yourself: As leaders, we tend to get so busy giving out guidance and offering feedback that we easily fail to remember to examine our own performance and behavior, and the influence it has on contemporaries. 
If you really want to get serious and know just how your behavior is being interpreted and coming across with your business colleagues and clients or customers, stop looking in the proverbial mirror and flattering yourself. Let your colleagues take the place of the mirror and reveal to you what they see.
To put it into practice, at the end of each month or another timeframe of your choosing, have members of your team(s) take time out to give each other honest feedback. You might examine how they’re performing on the team’s top two or three main concerns or priorities. Each team member might also pick two areas in which to improve individually. Colleagues can provide each other with feedback on how they’re doing with those areas of improvement.
This specific approach will cultivate open, honest communication and can keep team members tuned-in and focused on improvement, both as a team and individually as team members. 
Teams really do exhibit measurable improvement when a strong sense of mutual accountability and perpetual self-discipline is present.
I think it’s safe to say that Entrepreneurs and business owners everywhere have waited a long time for business to start to show signs of improvement again. As conditions get stronger, it’s tempting and in many market conditions and circumstances, indeed extremely vital to charge ahead with innovative products, timely marketing campaigns, and much improved business processes. 
Yet, in the outbreak of activity, it’s essential not to lose sight of the requirements and needs of the people, who are at the end of the day the cornerstone of your business success. When they are satisfied, focused, and engaged, you see the sometimes dramatic results in the bottom line.