5 Keys To Personalized Team And Customer Connections

The days of leadership without engagement are gone. With interactive social media and video everywhere, everyone needs to feel they have a relationship with their leaders, and every brand needs leader personification for customers to relate. Soon you won’t be able to name a business as one of your favorites if you can’t personally visualize and relate to company leadership.

In the same way, great entrepreneurs and company leaders should no longer rely on faceless and nameless processes to drive business strategy and innovation to stay competitive. The old way doesn’t work, and results more than ever in slow decision-making, lack of real connection with employees, and ignorance of what customers really want.

The new principles of engagement, as well as the dysfunctions of the old, are well illustrated in the insightful classic book, “Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?” by Steven D. Goldstein. He speaks from a wealth of personal experience in private equity, as well as top executive positions at American Express, Sears, and Citigroup.

He found the dysfunctional engagement that sent snow blowers to his store in Miami every year. As a result of this incident and many others, he defined five key engagement principles which resonate with me as just as relevant for new business founders as mature business executives. Here is my adaptation of his engagement principles for all the aspiring entrepreneurs I advise:

1. Learn to adopt an outsider’s perspective. Every entrepreneur, even though confident in his domain, needs to fight complacency in a world that changes almost daily. You need to look at everything through fresh eyes, continually ask questions not usually asked, and actively listen to contrary views. No change means you are falling behind as a leader.

2. Interact with employees and customers on a regular basis. Authentic communication at all levels and encouraging feedback is how you find out what is really going on. More meetings in your conference room won’t get to the truth as well as simply talking to people who interact with customers directly. Never be too busy to talk to real customers.

3. Focus on two or three pertinent metrics in any situation. Keeping it simple is the best course. No one can remember your top ten priorities and measurements. Unbundle projects into smaller elements, and personalize the top couple of metrics for each team. These simplified targets are crucial to motivating a team, and getting the focus you need.

4. Help people know more, so they can do their job better. Knowledge is power, and good information flow and collection tools are of the utmost importance. Information that is relevant and timely needs to be shared widely and efficiently. It’s also important to share the evaluation insights, and to tie the next action steps directly to current results.

5. Accept that whatever speed you are going is too slow. Time is the enemy in today’s global marketplace. Follow the guiding motto of Andy Grove at Intel, “Only the paranoid survive.” It’s vital to get quick wins, learn rapidly from failures, and get comfortable with constant change. Waiting is never an option, as competitors will always be moving.

In the same fashion, these engagement principles must be applied to customers. More and more, I see evidence that customers want to be pulled to your company by engagement, rather than feel that you are pushing yourself on them. There are a multitude of opportunities through social media to engage your customers, as well as getting out of your office into the marketplace.

Customer business leadership through brand icons, such as Ronald McDonald and Aunt Jemima, is fading fast. Customers as well as employees want to relate and engage with real people as leaders, and business leaders need to interact with real employees and customers to stay vital and current.

As an entrepreneur, you need to start this focus early, with the same passion you currently apply to your new idea and solution. Have you taken a hard look recently at where you are spending most of your time?

Marty Zwilling

8 Priorities When Offering A New Product Or Service

Every one of you business owners I know periodically introduces new products and services to sustain growth, fight off competitors, or take advantage of new technologies. Often, despite your passion and expectation, customers don’t immediately see the value and need that you see, and you have no idea why the initiative is stuck, and what could be the real customer issue or fix.

In my experience in business, and as a consultant, I have found a common set of challenges that every new initiative has to overcome for widespread adoption and the business growth you need. Even though many of these can be mitigated by testing and early customer feedback, you will find that it pays big dividends to do your homework before building and rolling out every new initiative:

1. In today’s customer data overload, marketing is essential. Customers won’t buy what they can’t find or don’t understand. No matter how great your innovation, don’t count on word-of-mouth to save you. The cost of any new product these days must include education and rollout marketing, perhaps equal or greater than the development costs.

   Even more important than solution marketing is building your brand. Make sure new solutions offered actually build your brand, rather than dilute it. New offerings which build your brand will increase acceptance and sales of all solutions, not just the new one.

2. Solution may require new category development time. Major leading-edge (also called bleeding-edge) products or technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) or the Internet of Things (IoT), involve new concepts, time for acceptance, and focus on understanding value. Don’t count on these as short-term solutions to a growth problem.

   These disruptive technologies also have the potential for exposing your business to new competitors, including a wealth of startups that can jeopardize your core business, and redefine the marketplace. If you go this route, make sure your solution is strategic.

3. Customers need supporting approvals to fully benefit. Often products that introduce disruptive new technologies, such as electric vehicles or healthcare solutions, are dependent on supportive infrastructures, operational regulations, or insurance approvals before benefits can be realized. Your rollout plan needs to factor in these requirements.

   The challenge here is that supporting infrastructure decisions are usually outside your control, and may be political or emotionally driven. To win in this environment, you may need to expand your leadership in industry conferences and community activities.

4. Target audience may be limited or new due to price. Premium products may have high feature value, but may push you to a new level of customer, and prevent mass market appeal. This may require you selling exclusivity, doing channel development, or alliances with new partners. Another approach is to expand your scope geographically.

5. Even in the face of real value, customer change is hard. Most new solutions I see are easier to use, more productive, more fun, or cheaper than existing alternatives. You will find that customers discount advertising, and look for user testimonials, online influencer reviews, and return-on-investment examples from industry experts. Incent these early.

6. Customers fear liability potential or see risks you don’t. These fears need to be offset by early success stories, educational case studies, or advice on ways to reduce risk. Also fears can be mitigated by warranties provided, complementary service options, or money back guarantees. Don’t forget to address the risks and cost of doing nothing.

7. New solution highlights additional functional needs. Your new solution may seem straightforward and complete to you, but customers find complexity and new feature requirements that are difficult to solve. The result can be a host of new competitive and price challenges which can stall growth or require excessive resources and time.

8. Customer may decide to wait for the next new thing. Your release of one cool new product may set unreasonable customer expectations for regular follow-ons. Instead of really expanding your market activity, you may find things slowing down as customers wait for the next wave of enhancements. Marketing costs will continue to increase.

Even though many of these challenges may seem obvious to you, I still see them often overlooked by aggressive business leaders, resulting in a large percentage of expensive new initiatives that fall well short of growth and revenue expectations. With the rapidly changing and competitive worldwide marketplace we live in today, do your homework early before you jump.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 05/11/2023 ***

7 Keys To Making You A Team Leader And Future Manager

One of the things I’ve learned in working with aspiring entrepreneurs is that managing and leading a team is a scary venture into the unknown for many people, even if they have worked as a business professional for years. Having worked in my own career on both sides of the fence at various times, I recommend that everyone practice thinking like the boss in every role to prepare.

This will improve your effectiveness in your current role, and give you a head start towards a future role, such as startup founder, where you are the boss. You will find that the same key principles apply in both situations, and that every business professional has a boss, and should be a leader in their own domain to others with less experience and expertise.

I found some good insights and details on this approach in the classic book, “How To Be A Great Boss,” by Gino Wickman and René Boer, who speak from years of experience working with leadership teams of both small and large companies. Here is my summary of their key principles on being a great boss, which I will characterize here as applying to any business professional:

1. Surround yourself with great people. As an entrepreneur, executive, or team member, you are most impacted by the people you gather around you. The smartest team members and the smartest bosses spend more time with people who are smarter in the relevant domain than they are. Then when you have to hire people, you will pick the best.

2. Make more effective use of your own time. We all know bosses and peers who are always too busy, but never seem to get much done. Make sure that person is not you. Free up time for others by eliminating low priority tasks, and delegating items to the right people. Work on habits that improve your productivity, and find better tools every day.

3. Understand both leadership and management. In business, leadership consists of creating the vision and direction, while management is primarily about gaining traction to achieve it. You don’t have to be a boss to be a leader or a manager. You should be practicing both in every role, and there will be no surprises as your career evolves.

4. Train yourself to follow leadership best practices. If you practice all the key elements of leadership in every role, you will make a great team member or a great boss. These elements include giving clear direction, providing tools and training to the right people, getting out of the way, walking your own talk, and reflecting regularly on the big picture.

5. Focus on demonstrating accountability for your actions. Accountability is everyone’s obligation, to accept responsibility for their activities, and to disclose your results in a transparent manner. Accountability cannot be imposed on you by a boss or entrepreneur – it’s a practice that you must learn to impose on yourself to be effective and appreciated.

6. Develop productive relationships with people around you. Effective relationships, inside your business and outside, are critical in every professional, management, and leadership role. The most productive people get things done by working in concert with others, not demanding actions and results, but by orchestrating win-win relationships.

7. Learn to deal effectively with people who disappoint you. While highly productive relationships lead to success, dysfunctional relationships make you a poor employee and a bad boss. People issues cannot be solved by avoidance or edict. If you surface and manage relationship issues early with respect and minimum emotion, you will be seen as a good team member and a good boss.

Thus, putting yourself in your boss’s shoes to see what they see, and act as you would expect them to act, is the best way to assure success in your role today, or prepare you for the startup founder role you dream about. In fact, the best team members and managers I work with always see themselves as their own boss. Try it – you may find and train that great boss you never had.

Marty Zwilling

5 Keys To Capitalizing On Nondisruptive Business Growth

Most of the entrepreneurs and aggressive business owners I meet in my consulting practice are focused on finding new disruptive solutions and killing competitors as the key to success. If you are one of these, you may be missing win-win opportunities to incrementally expand existing markets, create new ones enabled by new technologies, or do good for society in this new age.

For example, witness the current creation of the space tourism industry, vaccines to control new viruses, or simply providing a free product to the needy for every product sold. Not all innovations have to be as disruptive as the Netflix digital download was to Blockbuster’s DVD business.

I found many non-disruption recommendations in the new book, “Beyond Disruption,” by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne. Both authors are recipients of numerous academic and management awards for leadership thinking, and I will summarize here their key strategy insights, combined with my own experiences:

1. Lead with a focus on finding customer value. Begin with a perspective on improving the current market reality without needing to disrupt what is. This means flipping your mental script from rebuilding current platforms to envision what could be, by creating new realities, changing the environment, or creating an additional world with different actions.

   Don’t confuse the means with the ends. It’s easy to be seduced by innovative technology, but customers and the market need to see direct value to them, to offset the learning curve and infrastructure changes required. Seek innovation with non-disruptive value.

2. Address an emerging or unexplored problem. A new opportunity may be one that has long existed, but has remained unexplored because it hasn’t been seen as solvable or a viable new market. Also look for emerging new needs beyond existing industry boundaries. I encourage you to dream big, but start small, and size these opportunities.

   In my experience, the biggest winners in business are those who excel at “seeing around corners,” or predicting customer needs and problems before they actually occur. To do this, you need a mindset of always looking ahead and reacting quickly to new trends.

3. Find ways to unlock and capture the opportunity. This starts with debunking the existing assumptions that have concealed the opportunity and then reframing it with today’s technology to find a solution. Have the courage to develop an independent point of view and be prepared to ignore discouragement and assumptions from the pundits.

   I have found that the most innovative business leaders use reframing to change their perspective, think differently, and reduce anxiety. Reframing means re-conceptualizing a problem by look at it from a different perspective and identifying alternative solutions.

4. Use your confidence and competence to succeed. Key enablers required along the way include capitalizing on the resourcefulness of you and your team, marshalling internal resources, and fostering a “can do” mindset. As with any innovation, you need to get market feedback by conducting rapid market tests with real people you intend to help.

   As a mentor to many business professionals, I find many who are risk-averse or not confident in their own abilities to make forward-looking decisions. You as a business leader must counter these fears by highlighting successes and rewarding risk takers.

5. Aim high to build a better world for customers. There are many areas currently ripe for nondisruptive innovation, including aging of the world’s population, managing world energy demand, and probing deeper into our place in the universe. Any of these will provide business growth without socially disruptive or existing business consequences.

   That higher purpose motivates people in a way that financial wins alone never will. For a company to grow and thrive, it needs to find and broadcast its purpose in all that it does. Today’s generation of customers and workers also assigns real value to higher purpose.

With these steps, you can use innovation to create win-win outcomes in a world where economic growth and societal good are not trade-offs. The classic approach to change, involving disruptive innovation, is painful for all, and takes too long. I recommend this new strategy based on positive-sum thinking to build a world of business that is viewed most positively by today’s consumers.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 05/08/2023 ***

10 Ways To Get The Capital You Need For Your Startup

One of the most frequent questions I get as a mentor to entrepreneurs is “How do I find the money to start my business?” I always answer that there isn’t any magic, and contrary to the popular myth, nobody is waiting in the wings to throw money at you, just because you have a new and exciting business idea.

On the other hand, there are many additional creative options available for starting a business that you might not find for buying a car, home, or other major consumer item. If you have the urge to be an entrepreneur, I encourage you to think seriously about each of these, before you zero-in on one or two, and get totally discouraged if those don’t work for you.

Of course, every alternative has advantages and disadvantages, so any given one may not be available or attractive to you. For example, professional investors put great priority on your previous experience in building a business, and they expect to own a portion of the business equity and control for the funds they do provide. These are tough for a first-time entrepreneur.

Thus it is always a question of what you qualify for, and what you are willing to give up, to turn your dream idea into a viable business. Here is my list of the ten most common sources of funding today, in reverse priority sequence, with some rules of thumb to channel your focus:

1. Seek a bank loan or credit-card line-of-credit. In general, this won’t happen for a new startup unless you have a good credit history, or existing assets that you are willing to put at-risk for collateral. In the US, you may find that the Small Business Administration (SBA) can get you infusions of cash without normal backup requirements.

2. Trade equity or services for startup help. This is most often called bartering your skills or something you have for something you need. An example would be negotiating free office space by agreeing to support the computer systems for all the other office tenants. Another common example is exchanging equity for legal and accounting support.

3. Negotiate an advance from a strategic partner or customer. Find a major customer, or a complimentary business, who sees such value in your idea that they are willing to give you an advance on royalty payments to complete your development. Variations on this theme include early licensing or white-labeling agreements.

4. Join a startup incubator or accelerator. These organizations, like Y Combinator, are very popular these days, and are often associated with major universities, community development organizations, or even large companies. Most provide free resources to startups, including office facilities and consulting, but many provide seed funding as well.

5. Solicit venture capital investors. These are professional investors, like Accel Partners, who invest institutional money in qualified startups, usually with a proven business model, ready to scale. They typically look for big opportunities, needing a couple of million dollars or more, with a proven team. Look for a warm introduction to make this work.

6. Apply to local angel investor groups. Most metropolitan areas have groups of local high-net-worth individuals interested in supporting startups, and willing to syndicate amounts up to a million dollars for qualified startups. Use online platforms like Gust to find them, and local networking to find ones that relate to your industry and passion.

7. Start a crowdfunding campaign online. This popular funding source, where anyone can participate, per the JOBS Act in the US, is exemplified by online sites like Kickstarter. Here people make online pledges to your startup during a campaign, to pre-buy the product for later delivery, give donations, or qualify for a reward, such as a tee-shirt.

8. Request a small business grant. These are government funds allocated to support new technologies and important causes, like education, medicine, and social needs. A good place to start looking is Grants.gov, which is a searchable directory of more than 1,000 Federal grant programs. The process is long, but it doesn’t cost you any equity.

9. Pitch your needs to friends and family. As a general rule, professional investors will expect that you have already have commitments from this source, to show your credibility. If your friends and family don’t believe in you, don’t expect outsiders to jump in. This is the primary source of non-personal funds for very early-stage startups.

10. Fund your startup yourself. These days, the costs to start a business are at an all-time low, and over 80% of startups are self-funded (also called bootstrapping). It may take a bit longer, to save some money before you start, and grow organically, but the advantage is that you don’t have to give up any equity or control. Your business is yours alone.

You can see that all of these options require work and commitment on your part, so there is no magic or free money. Every funding decision is a complex tradeoff between near-term and longer-term costs and paybacks, as well as overall ownership and control. Yet with the many options available, there is no excuse for not living your dream, rather than dreaming about living.

Marty Zwilling

7 Ways To Prepare For A New Venture As A Side Hustle

Many experts will tell you that you can’t succeed as a part-time entrepreneur, as any good startup will require a 100 percent commitment of your time and energy. But not many of us have enough savings to live for a year or more without a salary, fund the startup, and still feed the family. Thus I often recommend that entrepreneurs keep their day job until the startup is producing revenue.

Of course, if you have investors anxious to give you money, or a rich uncle to keep you afloat, there is nothing wrong with a dedicated and full commitment to the startup, with commensurate more aggressive milestones and growth expectations. We all understand the risk of competitors quickly closing in, and market factors changing before we can roll out our solution.

For those of you who do decide to keep your day job, here are some pragmatic recommendations I espouse on how to make the most progress in your startup, while simultaneously juggling your other critical family and employer roles. In fact, these suggestions have tremendous value, even if you are dedicated and committed full-time to your new startup:

1. Find a cofounder who can keep you balanced. Two cofounders, both working part-time are actually better than one founder full-time. You both need the complementary skills, ability to debate alternatives, and the tendency to keep each other motivated, that neither could match working alone. One still needs to be the agreed final decision maker.

2. Schedule fixed times and days for the startup, working with the team. Building a startup is hard work, and requires discipline to get it done. Working part-time doesn’t mean all working randomly alone. Commit to a regular weekend time and a couple of specific nights per week where you meet with the team and focus only on the startup.

3. Get better at saying ‘no’ to your friends. Learning to manage your own time is critical. Everyone around you enjoys adding things to your schedule, and reducing their to-do list. The key is learning to say no without offering a long list of excuses, or whining about how busy you are. It’s never possible to satisfy everyone, so be true first to your own priorities.

4. Set realistic milestones and take them seriously. It’s easy for part-timers to make excuses that other priorities caused you to miss milestones, but predictable results and metrics in this mode are even more critical than for full-time members. Use the 80/20 rule to maximize productivity – get 80 percent outcome from 20 percent of focused efforts.

5. Select a business idea that has a longer runway. Some startup ideas are dependent on a rapidly emerging fad, or have many competitors fighting for a limited market. You can’t move fast enough on a part-time basis to win in these areas. On the other hand, if you have a new technology, with patent applied for, maybe you more time to get it right.

6. Prepare yourself for a longer journey to success. Seth Godin is famous for saying that the average time for overnight success in a startup is six years, even working full-time. Like any startup solution, the first version will likely be wrong, and require one or more pivots. Learn to look for small indications of success to keep you motivated.

7. Make learning your full-time vocation. No matter how many full-time, part-time, and family commitments you have, you always need to carve out time for learning new things. Learning is not stealing from any employer, and it prepares you for all your futures. Don’t wait for anyone to pay your way to class, or give you time off for training. It won’t happen.

The advantage of quitting your day job early is that it removes all excuses, and all qualms from you and others, that the new startup is only a hobby. There is nothing that drives an entrepreneur like being hungry, dependent on the outcome, and seeing mounting debt. Without self-discipline, many aspiring entrepreneurs find that a single focus is the only way anything ever gets done.

There is certainly additional risk associated with working a paying job during the day, and working on your startup nights and weekends. First is the risk to your health and family life, which if you lose these, all the business opportunity in the world doesn’t matter.

Then there is the risk of antagonizing your current employer by missing deadlines, reduced productivity, or even getting embroiled in a legal conflict of interest or intellectual property ownership rights. I suggest it’s best to be up-front with your employer, with an honest commitment that your startup work will not impact company commitments or results.

Potential conflict of interest issues with a current employer should be explored openly, and resulting agreement documented, to preclude the possibility that you might lose everything later as your startup succeeds. On the positive side, your employer may like what you have in mind, and become your first investor and biggest supporter.

If your conclusion after all these pros and cons is that the risk is too high for you, you probably need to keep your day-job long-term, and give your startup idea to someone else. There certainly isn’t anything wrong with a regular well-paid job and career, with health-care benefits, and a competitive retirement plan. But the entrepreneur lifestyle is still more fun, even part-time.

Marty Zwilling

10 Practices That Have Led To Multiple New Businesses

Entrepreneurs who experience success with their first startup are often amazed to realize that the risks and fears of doing it right the second time go up, rather than down. Encores are tough, especially in the high-risk world of startups, yet every entrepreneur I know can’t wait to start over and do it again. Sometimes their haste or ego causes them to ignore basics, and they fall hard.

Every startup success is a function of great people, products, and profits. But there is no magic formula on how to bring these together a second time, but I did see some good insights on the parameters in a classic startup business parable, “Endless Encores,” by Ken Goldstein, who advises startups and has built companies in technology, entertainment, media, and e-commerce.

I have pulled together here a few of our joint recommendations to every entrepreneur and startup that I advise. These work the first time, and are required every time for success:

1. Seek extraordinary people and revere talent. In the heat of the battle, when you have the least time and money to attract the best, it’s easy for an entrepreneur to settle for who is available, rather than who can bring real value and innovation to the business. Repeat leaders think more about talent, while short-term leaders worry first about output today.

2. Hire for character, competency, and compatibility. Hiring is the single most important thing you do as a leader, and firing is second. It’s more than filling an open slot on your team. You start with skills, but then you have to delve deeply into motivation, trust, ambition, chemistry, and experience.

3. Diversity on your team expands thinking. Hiring people who are just like you may eliminate revolts, but it won’t get you outside your own box. Creativity requires constructive conflict, a willingness to collaborate, dealing with failure, and boundless iteration. Solution and business model innovation require pushing the limits.

4. Self-demanding beats boss-demanding every time. Startup successes are never perfect. Too many entrepreneurs are their own worst enemy, trying to do everything right the next time. Remember to embrace pragmatic goals and solutions, and accept a little bit of luck and assistance along the way. Perfectionists never win in the startup business.

5. Leapfrog products invent and reinvent markets. Incremental product ideas do not change markets. It takes a paradigm shift, like autos to airplanes. On the other hand, making the user experience easier, richer, and more pleasant, as Apple has done repeatedly, can reinvent existing markets. Focus on the customer for repeated success.

6. Eat your own dog food. If you don’t, why should they? The basic premise is that if a startup expects paying customers to use its products or services, it should expect no less from its own team. There is no better way to get quick and honest feedback on strengths, weaknesses, and usability. Even encore startups should expect to pivot to get it right.

7. A business model is not an after-thought. Passion and ego are no substitute for a business model that makes sense. Some entrepreneurs are so enamored by their first success that they inherently believe that their next idea will make even more money. If your solution is free, or you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume.

8. Strategy is charting a course, not making a move. Implementing a strategy doesn’t force the answer you want, so it pays to map out the alternatives and envision the possible as well as the problematic. Markets change rapidly these days, so the strategy that brought you success the first time, may lead to your demise the second time.

9. Recurring revenue is the foundation for growth. Everyone loves the subscription model, since transaction costs exclude the cost of acquiring a new customer. Investors love this and other recurring revenue models because they facilitate growth through scaling. Sometimes repeat entrepreneurs forget that they must acquire new customers.

10. Use cash wisely, as if it were out of your own pocket. Every new startup has extensive cash flow out, before any flows in. Serial entrepreneurs, with new bigger ideas, often forget that part of the equation, and are caught short. Repeating successfully means the same focus and due diligence on cash you had the first time around.

Thus the path to repeat success in business is to utilize what you learned from your first experience, and subvert any illogical fear of being exposed as a fraud or a lucky accident. If you have been able to “bring the crowd to its feet” with the success of your first venture, the principles outlined here could bring you endless encores.

Marty Zwilling