5 Keys To Sustaining A Positive Attitude In Your Team

In my experience as an employee, up to an executive, in large companies as well as small, I’ve found that people who are consistently negative and complain are a big constraint on productivity, as well as the most difficult management problem that most business leaders face. The challenge is to get negative people to see themselves as part of the problem, rather than the solution.

If you are one of these people, you probably also don’t realize that for you personally, negativity has serious consequences for your mental and physical health, as well as the health of your company. Perhaps you just see it as "venting," and rationalize that by getting your emotions out, you will feel better, and everyone else will finally see you as the victim of the real problem.

As a business advisor today, I find that even seasoned managers and executives are frustrated by this phenomenon, and often ask me how they can correct it, or even prevent it. I have to admit that I have no magic formula, but I do offer the following recommendations from experience to get you started, and minimize negativity in both employee teams and all levels of management:

1. Make yourself a consistent example of positivity. Whether you are the company CEO, or a stock room clerk, you can make a difference by refusing to succumb to the negativity of others around you. Offer positive solutions to your business challenges, rather than just highlighting the problem, assigning blame, or delivering angry diatribes.

   If you are unsure of what you can do to keep a positive mindset, don’t hesitate to ask for some personal coaching with experts in this area, or review the many articles on positive habits that will make your life better, as well as make you a role model for other people.

2. As a leader, publicly reward positive feedback. This means highlighting positive contributions to the whole team, as well as in performance reviews and bonus reports. It also means providing private and specific feedback to people with a negative attitude, since many do not see themselves as others see them. They may really want to change.

   Zappos, for example, has earned global accolades for their strategic “Zappos dollars” peer-to-peer recognition program, where employees share low-cost, high-frequency rewards with each other. The result is a positive and productive work environment for all.

3. Administer regular morale and satisfaction surveys. Proactively look for signs that negativity is impacting morale and productivity in your organization, and use the survey and follow-up to credibly identify specific sources and people to counsel. Do not publicly call out specific people, but provide private feedback and coaching to negative offenders.

   The three most relevant types of employee surveys include employee satisfaction surveys, employee culture surveys, and employee engagement surveys. With senior management support, all of these can be developed and administered by your HR team.

4. Remove or retrain repeat offenders on a timely basis. How quickly and effectively you deal with people who won’t or can’t change will be the best message you can send to others. Some negative or angry people may just be a bad fit for your company, while others may just be dealing with personal problems, where a job adjustment is required.

   Failure to deal with consistently negative employees only exacerbates the problem and the impact on your business. Some experts have estimated that the cost of keeping the wrong person for a given organization can be up to fifteen times his or her annual salary.

5. Hire only people with positive and can-do attitudes. Resumes are good for prior experience assessment and relevant skills, but indicate very little about attitudes and work style. Use the interview process and really listen to responses. It’s easy to spot negativity and complainers, which should be a major red flag in every hiring process.

   In fact, many experts believe that hiring for attitude is more important than hiring for skill. They believe that focusing on a candidate's softer qualities is better for your company in the long term, as you can't anticipate the hard skills you will need in the future anyway.

Your coaching to marginal employees should include the fact that optimists lead more satisfying lives, personally as well as professionally. Negativity also tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, which will impact your ability to do your job well and reap the rewards. Now is the time to do your own self-assessment, and adopt the positive habits you need to succeed.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 09/14/2021 ***

10 Keys To Getting A Role With The Startup You Desire

In a corporate environment, the focus of a job interview has long been demonstrating your match to the skills and experience outlined in the job description. In my experience with startups, that is still necessary, but not sufficient. Today’s business world has become totally customer driven, so customer-centric and people abilities really make the difference between winners and losers.

I found these required attributes outlined well in the classic book, “Customer Service the Sandler Way,” by customer care expert Anne MacKeigan. This book is focused on strategic customer support jobs in every company, but I believe the hiring rules apply equally well to every job in a startup, since customer focus has to be pervasive from the beginning in modern new companies.

As a job candidate for any highly desirable position in a startup, here are ten key attributes that will give you the winning edge over other candidates:

1. Bias toward action. Today’s business landscape is constantly changing, dealing with many unknowns, and the amount of data available on the Internet is overwhelming. Customers and competitors won’t wait, so every new business is looking for people who can make a decision and get things done. Talk about results, not job assignments.

2. Sense of personal responsibility. When problems arise in a startup, blame is a useless tool. People who can demonstrate that they take responsibility for required actions, with no excuses, are extremely valuable in any position. Show that you have done in previous jobs more than you were paid to do, without anyone watching.

3. An ability to step outside the process. Stepping outside the process means you need to recognize the need for a process, but also be willing to go beyond it when the process fails or is incomplete. Winning job candidates show that they have used good judgment to handle process boundary exceptions, based on a high level of customer sensitivity.

4. Success in building business relationships. If you don’t show your people skills during the interview, you probably won’t show them later with customers and peers. Startups know that hiring employees who build good relationships will result in higher internal morale, less burnout, and higher customer retention. Highlight your good relationships.

5. Tendency to question and qualify. In a startup, it’s everyone’s job to more fully understand requirements, competition, as well as customer satisfaction. In an interview, be sure to show your curiosity, ability to ask good questions, practice active listening, and the analytical ability to ferret out relevant meaning behind the data.

6. Persistence with tough challenges. Smart interviewers will be checking for candidates that are not resistant to hard questions, and are quick to dig deeper into situations they are not familiar with. No candidate wants to be viewed as an inflexible management challenge, or a potential turnoff to customers. Highlight your record of persistence.

7. Ability to quickly “read” a situation. People-smart candidates, meaning good communicators, socially intelligent, and skilled at reading body language or emotion, are invaluable on small teams as well as customer-centric activities. Things are rarely black and white. Don’t let your ego bias your reading of interviewer expectations.

8. Low need for approval. Candidates with this attribute are always confident and business-like, friendly but not necessarily best friends. Use examples of achievements that required initiative and determination, without orders from above, to show your ability to handle tough startup situations and customer requests with minimal support.

9. Strong empathy for others. This attribute is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to see what they see, and feel what they feel. When you display deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy depletes and their positive energy rises. Show how you have changed a confrontational situation to a positive and relationship-building one.

10. Good manners and etiquette always. Good manners are a two-sided positive tool; they not only convey respect to everyone with whom you interact, but they also command respect from those people. Good etiquette contributes to personal presence. Make sure you are really present and engaged with your interviewer, and watch your manners.

Good resumes and LinkedIn profiles may get you an interview, but they won’t get you the job, in a startup or a corporate environment. Entrepreneurs and investors have learned that success in the marketplace today is usually more about the people focus and customer focus of the team than the quality of the product. How many of these attributes can you highlight in your next interview?

Marty Zwilling

7 Ways To Get Satisfaction From Your Next New Venture

A common request I hear from aspiring entrepreneurs is for an assessment of their latest idea. I don’t even try to assess things at the idea level, since I can’t read minds. I can assess execution plans, if you have any. Yet I believe that business success is more a function of the person than the idea or the plan, so the best idea is one that is a best fit for you, and only you can assess that.

The best new idea for any entrepreneur should first be based on their own personal interests, skills, and lifestyle, rather than the characteristics of a given market or technology. I found some great insights along these lines in the classic book “Find Your Balance Point,” by renowned executive business coach Brian Tracy, and work-life balance therapist Christina Stein.

They emphasize, and I agree, that true success and satisfaction is most likely to happen when all your actions and choices are guided by a profound adherence to your deepest personal values, vision, purpose, and goals. Here are seven key considerations for how you should make your own best entrepreneur business idea decision in this context:

1. Pick something you really enjoy doing. If your passion is social change or sustainability, with financial value creation further down in priority, you should choose to be a social entrepreneur. Don’t pick a technology idea that someone else believes will make you rich and famous, or a business area you are not intimately familiar with.

2. The idea or technology was easy for you to learn. If you feel an idea was born inside you without thought or effort, or you learned the details easily, it’s a great idea for you. The next step is to do homework on the business issues that are common to all ideas, such as market size, business models, and marketing. Then ask me about execution.

3. You look forward to learning and contributing more. Every new idea is only the beginning of a long journey, and the actions you take along the way will determine your ultimate success and satisfaction. You need to enjoy the learning along the way, as well as the destination. If all you see ahead is stress and pain, look for another idea.

4. When engrossed with this idea, the hours fly by. The best and most successful entrepreneurs, such as Elon Musk, known for PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors, routinely work hundred-hour weeks, but never complain about the hours, and don’t even think of their activities as work. He doesn’t need or ask anyone to assess his ideas.

5. Working on this idea gives you renewed energy. Everyone develops a sense of what activities build their energy, and which ones drain energy from them. As an introvert, I lose energy quickly working a room full of people, while my extrovert friends come away from a social gathering more fully energized. Find ideas that energize you.

6. You continually strive to sell and communicate the value. Smart entrepreneurs develop quick elevator pitches for their ideas, good product and business stories, and are eager for the opportunity to communicate and learn from feedback. As an investor, I’m not attracted to startups where the founder sends in a marketing person to do the talking.

7. You love to associate with the top people in the business area. The best ideas are ones that get attention from experts and key constituents in relevant business areas. Part of the satisfaction of being an entrepreneur is being able to interact with and learn from the people you respect most. Test your ideas on them, and listen to the answers.

Finding the balance point in your life’s work is not an easy task, but it is critical to long-term success and happiness. Establishing the right professional identity and commensurate business is equal in importance to maintaining your health and finding the right personal relationships and family life. You can never satisfy everyone, so you need to start by satisfying yourself.

So before you poll the world on what they think of your next great idea, be sure you assess your own drivers along the lines listed here. If everything fits, build a plan to make it a business. If you can’t build a plan, or your advisors and investors find it unconvincing, it’s time to give that idea to someone else and try a new one. I see more than enough great ideas to match any entrepreneur.

Marty Zwilling

7 Reasons That Investors Won’t Fund Inventions Alone

Every inventor seems to think their invention is worth a million dollars, but I haven’t seen anyone pay that much for one yet. In fact, I often have to tell aspiring entrepreneurs that their inventions have zero value, at least not until they are put in the context of a business plan, with qualified people committed to executing the plan. Early-stage ideas fall in the same category.

Don’t get me wrong. I have the greatest respect for inventors and idea people, who think outside the box to envision and even create solutions never before seen. But I have also learned from experience that there is often quite a distance between a great invention and a great business. A business is about making money, while inventions are more about spending money.

According to an old Harvard Business Review article, many people in history, famous for their inventions, like Thomas Edison, were entrepreneurs who only later were remembered as inventors of the products they commercialized. In fact, entrepreneurs will always tell you that the invention was the easy part, and building an innovative business was the real challenge.

Of course it helps to have innovative technologies before you start building a business. In other words, inventions are necessary but not sufficient to create real value for investors and customers. So what do investors look for in qualifying you for that million dollars you need to take your invention from your garage to the market? Here are some reality checks you should apply:

1. It takes a business team to build a business. If you have been working alone, perfecting your idea, with no new business track record, your best strategy is to license the technology to a company or team with real business startup experience. You may get that million dollars someday in future royalty payments, but don’t expect anything today.

2. Commercialization requires infrastructure. Many great technology solutions, like hydrogen engines for cars, look great on paper, but are extremely difficult to make a business. The value is tied to infrastructure outside your control, such as a pervasive network of fuel stations, trained service facilities, and new government regulations.

3. You need a viable business model and customers. Investors expect proof that your invention can be manufactured in volume, and can justify a sales price at least double the cost, to a large customer set that has money to spend. I see too many technology solutions to world hunger, where constituencies don’t have money to sustain a business.

4. Take a hard look at the alternatives. Just because your technology is “cool” doesn’t mean that it solves a painful problem that customers are willing to pay for. People like to complain about global warming and the plastics pollution problem, but they may not be ready to buy alternative energy at twice the price, or change bad habits for global gain.

5. Lock in your sustainable advantage. Technology limited to a single product is seldom enough for a business. A long-term advantage usually also requires intellectual property, such as a patent, trade secret, or trademark. Investors look for technologies that can spawn a family of products, rolled out over time, for continuous innovation.

6. Experts and market research agree you are first. Just because you haven’t heard of anything like your invention, doesn’t mean you are ahead of the pack. Even a patent search won’t uncover work in progress that may be well ahead of you in the business cycle. Test your idea with experts, scientific journals, and trade publications.

7. Truly disruptive technologies carry an extra burden. Investors realize that big changes in technology usually take a long time, several false starts, and more money than expected to commercialize. They, and most customers, really are quicker to adopt evolutionary rather than revolutionary products. Early adopters are not a big market.

Ultimately you need to remember that customers buy solutions to problems from business people they trust – they don’t buy technology from inventors. If you really want your invention to change the world, maybe it’s time to give it to a proven entrepreneur, and split the ownership of a new company. The million dollars will come in due time.

Marty Zwilling

8 Strategies to Thrive in a Constantly Changing World

In my role as a business advisor, I find that most still resist change, especially change they can’t control and did not choose, rather than accept it as the norm, and seek to capitalize on it. I believe that that by adopting a more positive change mindset, you can actually make surfing the waves of change much more manageable, and even make your business and career fun again.

Thus I was pleased to see support for my perspective in a new book, “Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change,” by April Rinne, who is emerging as one of the leading futurists and change navigators for businesses, and individuals alike. She offers some key strategies, often counterintuitive, which I will outline here, to drive a change mindset that we both recommend:

1. Slow down and appreciate what really matters. When everything is in flux, we often feel stress to run faster to get ahead of all the changes. In fact, slowing down to evaluate what is really important to you is a better strategy, by reducing burnout, enhancing your productivity, and focusing you on items that allow you and your business to flourish.

2. Look for a change that most people don’t see. What you need to thrive in this world of change is to develop the ability to perceive what is beyond the obvious, to discover new solutions that fit your aspirations and interests. This mindset will allow you to alter your direction in the most positive way, and drive customer change rather than be driven by it.

3. Seek out the unfamiliar, outside your comfort zone. Adopt the mindset of a traveler, anticipating new adventures that will challenge your view of the world and reality. Remember back when you looked forward to these emotions as a challenge, expected to enjoy and learn from them, and they inspired you to new heights in your life and career.

4. Start with the trust that change is good, but verify. We have all been burned at least once by trusting someone, but mistrust leads to inaction and fear. Learn to question all aspects of change, look for positive implications you can verify, and act on them. As a leader, you build trust in your team by communicating clearly, and implement change.

5. Reinforce your values in dealing with flux. As change happens, it’s important to relate back to your base values and passions. Don’t let change lead you away from your personal values – dig deeply to find your fit with the new environment. The result will be just enough to meet your needs for growth and success in the business, without the pain.

6. Rethink your career as an evolving portfolio of jobs. In this world of change, careers are no longer a singular path, but more likely a portfolio of evolving experiences and skills. For you smart professionals with endless curiosity and a desire to learn, the current gig economy has the potential for much more personal satisfaction, growth, and success.

7. Thrive by using your humanity to help others. In a world with more robots, it’s more satisfying to use your humanity to serve other humans. I see a major change in consumer expectations for a total memorable human experience in guiding their loyalty, versus a technical transaction. Your worth and success depends on your value in helping others.

8. Let a better future emerge outside your control. Letting go and minimizing your resistance enables a better future to evolve. Don’t allow yourself to get stuck in the past, fearing the future. Let your mindset shift from negative predictions and hesitation to positive preparations for new opportunities. Make the unknown a positive challenge.

The underlying message here is that we all must accept change in the marketplace as a given and an opportunity, not a painful and expensive problem that has to be solved. By adopting a change mindset, our chances for success and satisfaction in our business and our career will be greatly increased. With the pace of change constantly increasing, don’t wait any longer to start.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 09/07/2021 ***

7 Ways To Highlight Your Personal Value To Investors

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have enough resources to bootstrap our own startups, so we are completely dependent on investors to help turn great ideas into great businesses. Yet in my experience on both sides of this equation, I find that many aspiring entrepreneurs focus only on the best idea, assuming that it will attract the right investors. In reality, that’s only half the story.

The other half is you. You need to work just as hard to convince investors that you are the best person to take your idea from a dream to a successful business, and provide an impressive return on their investment at the same time. Here are some key strategies that I have seen to enhance your position as an attractive investment opportunity, independent of your idea:

1. Highlight a greater sense of purpose than making money. Of course, you need to show how your business will make money and provide an impressive investor return, but that should be only the beginning. Emphasize your real ambition to change the world, through helping the underprivileged, improving healthcare, or saving the environment.

   For example, Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes attributes his ability to raise a seed round and build a $400M company to his commitment to provide a free pair of shoes to the underprivileged for every pair sold. He didn’t have any big technical shoe innovations.

2. Develop a personal story as a visionary and learner. Investors love entrepreneurs who come across as constantly on the lookout for new ideas, and able to grasp the larger implications for market change. Your story should include childhood initiatives, industry organization leadership roles, and online influencer organizations that you support.

   Many of his original investors still remember when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg first related his personal challenge to only eat meat that he killed himself, in an effort to learn sustainable farming and consume resources responsibly. His campaign only lasted a year, but it convinced some that he was a potential visionary and a constant learner.

3. Show that you love change, but understand reality. Above all, good business people have to remain practical, not be perfectionists, and be able to get the job done. That means you need to show examples of your ability to get results, when all around you are bogged down on details, or unable to face the harsh challenges of the real world.

4. Offer an attractive and viable investment equation. As you may have seen on the Shark Tank TV show, offering a tiny equity amount for a large investment will not endear you to investors. They need to believe your valuation, based on current revenue and intellectual property, and feel the equity offered gives them a real return for the risk.

5. Display real commitment to a plan, with milestones. Passion and confidence are a good start, but every investor wants to see a credible plan, with specific milestones along the way. These show a focus on the business elements required for success, and metrics for ensuring accountability, management control, and feedback along the way.

6. Emphasize the value and skills of your team. Founders who present themselves as a lone entrepreneur may develop an innovative solution, but building a business requires a team. You need to show that you have a powerful team, and can attract and lead people with strong skills complimentary to yours for marketing, finance, sales, and operations.

7. Demonstrate flexibility, resilience, and determination. Smart investors know that no matter how certain you are that your solution is right, you will probably need to pivot at least once as you learn from the marketplace. You need to show you have a “Plan B,” and a never-give-up mindset, in handling any competitive threat or customer reaction.

The message here is that it is just as important to develop and communicate your personal innovative strengths as it is to pitch your solution’s innovative features. As an investor, I have seen many great ideas fail by the wrong entrepreneur, and other less grandiose ones sail to success by world-class entrepreneurs. Never underestimate the power of you.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 09/09/2021 ***

8 Advantages To Building Your Own Startup Prototypes

Back in the early 2000s, the Maker Movement took hold in California, based on the emergence of such do-it-yourself (DIY) tools as 3-D printers, and now sites such as SketchUp and Makerspaces have all the tools you need to make almost anything computer related. Thus entrepreneurs were able to build prototypes and design new products without the traditional huge prototyping cost.

The movement has long since spread across the country and across the globe, spawning innovative products such as the MakerBot Digitizer and all the things you can access from Thingiverse.com. Events for enthusiasts, formerly called Maker Faires, now stretch across the USA and into many other countries. They have also become great networking events for meeting other like-minded entrepreneurs.

I believe the Maker Movement and hardware startups with limited resources are made for each other. Here are some key positives from an entrepreneur perspective:

1. Shorten the time and cost from idea to prototype. In today’s fast moving market, the basic product development cost and time are critical to survival. They come at the early stage while a startup has no revenue or valuation, so professional investors are hard to find. Low-cost design and fabrication tools are extremely valuable.

2. Place to build skills and become familiar with new tools. Makerspaces, sometimes called hackerspaces, have sites and events, including tutorials, where people with common interests can meet, socialize and collaborate. With the new rapid prototyping tools, products can be physically built for analysis, rather than just conceptualized.

3. Network with potential cofounders and strategic partners. Relationships are best built while working and learning together, rather than over drinks at a mixer or industry conference. There are already more than 1500 active hackerspaces worldwide, with info on Hackerspaces. Countless startup teams have already been spawned from these.

4. Opportunity to meet investors and support organizations. Venture capitalists and investors are where the action is, to see first-hand what is possible, and who are the leaders. Makerspaces are becoming the new incubators and accelerators for startups, and support contacts, like lawyers and marketing groups, will be easy to find.

5. Open your mind to new entrepreneurial opportunities. With low-cost digital design and fabrication tools, such as 3D printing and the ability to digitize almost any object, bold new innovations become apparent. Very young entrepreneurs get to “touch and feel” the results, and can experiment to their heart’s content. These ideas can grow quickly into real products.

6. Meet the new consumer demand for customization. Customers today increasingly demand solutions that are customized just for them. Hobbyists and craftsmen have made custom solutions for a very long time, but companies have resisted this requirement to keep costs down. Maker tools are changing these economies of scale.

7. Accelerate the trend to higher purpose startups. The new do-it-yourself capabilities and low entry costs mean that you don’t have be a Bill Gates to offer solutions that have an impact on society. The Maker Movement is already poised to transform learning in our schools, and offer low-cost solutions to solve environmental and third-world problems.

8. Diversity breeds success. By collaborating with the Maker Movement, artistic entrepreneurs work with the technology freaks, and both benefit from other cultures around the world. New products emerge, as diverse as networked-art installations, Internet-of-Things innovations, and many other hybrid software-hardware solutions.

Makers are becoming real entrepreneurs, rather than just hobbyists and inventors. The new shared culture emphasizes learning-through-doing in a social environment, as well as fun and self-fulfillment. Have you tried it yet?

Marty Zwilling

8 Brand Strategy Rules From Elite Consumer Companies

Every new business dreams of becoming the premier brand in their space, like Starbucks is to coffee, and Apple is to consumer electronics, but they have no idea how difficult that is to achieve. In fact, only 100 of the 10,000 multimillion-dollar consumer companies around the world can claim to be an “apostle brand” – one that inspires enduring trust, loyalty, and endorsement.

One of the reasons it’s so tough is that the rules are constantly changing on what it takes to win over customers, as customer attitudes and cultures change, and competitors continually strive to “raise the bar” on product and support. I found some eye-opening insights in the classic book, “Rocket: Eight Lessons to Secure Infinite Growth,” by The Boston Consulting Group.

They outline the new rules for existing brands, but I believe that every entrepreneur who doesn’t yet have a brand yet should study these carefully, as paraphrased for startups below. It’s a lot harder to recover from brand missteps made early, than it is to get is right the first time, so build your brand strategy accordingly:

1. Don’t ask your customers what they want next. The challenge of every startup is finding that balance between solving a real problem today, and giving customers the courage to make a leap forward. Existing customers can’t envision a new concept, or new behaviors. You have to excite their imagination, then show them the new world.

2. Turn your biggest fans into apostle customers. Your first satisfied customers define your voice in the marketplace. They see your strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. If you listen to them and respond, they will become your best apostles, delivering on average eight times their own value in new customers. That’s a winning growth trajectory.

3. Always welcome a customer’s scorn as a gift. Even in a new startup organization, it’s easy to become convinced that a percentage of unhappy customers is normal. Instead of scorn and dismissal, a comprehensive and deliberate response is the key to brand growth and vitality. Without the feedback, no change in the demand space will be noted.

4. People still judge a book by its cover. Consumers shop with their eyes, just like they eat with their eyes. Target all the senses all the time. Shame on you if you offer any product or service that is dull or unattractive. Steve Jobs was a master at this. Visual appearance and core values matter. Make your team as well as your customers proud.

5. Transform your employees into passionate disciples. A highly motivated front line engages customers and tells your story with passion. They are your greatest resource for generating new apostles and a cultural advantage. The result is higher repeat purchases and sales without promotion. Loyalty in the ranks creates loyalty in the customer.

6. Ramp up your virtual and real relationships. The digital age is making virtual relationships with customers indistinguishable from real relationships. It’s a lot easier and faster to grow virtual relationships, and they are both real for online purchases. Your startup needs to use blogs and social media to establish interactive relationships early.

7. Take giant leaps rather than timid steps. It’s hard to really change the world with incremental advances and consolidation. Be clear and vibrant in your claims and in your deeds, or you will never get noticed in the flood of messages we have to deal with every day. Startups have the advantage in starting with a dream and no feet stuck in the past.

8. Don’t ever assume that your brand is stable. All relationships are in a constant state of flux, so don’t assume your customer relationships will remain stable. At any moment, your brand will be lifted high or knocked down low by cultural changes or external events. It’s up to you to track the data, recognize a change early, and intervene proactively.

The overall goal of these eight new rules is to help your startup forge the tightest possible emotional connection with the most customers in the shortest amount of time. These customer advocates lead to more love, loyalty, advocacy, and the exponential growth of an enduring brand. It’s the only way to make your startup the next Starbucks.

Marty Zwilling

7 Most Effective Routines Of Notable Business Leaders

In my years of working with entrepreneurs, I have heard many times the promise that their new idea will create the next Amazon or Apple, but I rarely hear the more important promise that the founder will practice all the good habits of winning entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. You see, I’m convinced that the entrepreneur makes the company, not the other way around.

This seemingly radical concept of people making all the difference in business has been around for a long time, perhaps most visibly in the classic book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” first published by Stephen R. Covey over 25 years ago. Yet I still see most of the focus in the startup community on creating the best technology and process, rather than practicing the most effective habits.

In that context, I’d like to restate and amplify in business terms the top attributes that I believe every entrepreneur should aspire and commit to, consistent with the seven most effective habits detailed by Covey many years ago:

1. Be proactive and take the initiative. Being proactive in a new business means starting with a vision of how to do things better, rather than following someone else’s success model. We have enough social network startups. Enlarge your circle of influence, and manage risk as an opportunity, not a negative. Keep commitments, with no excuses.

2. Make personal life goals drive the business. Begin with the end in mind - your definition of success based on your principles. You won’t be effective centering your life around someone else’s view of success, satisfaction, and happiness. Make sure you have a personal mission statement before you try to define one for your new business.

3. Willing to work on the business as well as in the business. Many entrepreneurs, especially technologists, relish building the product, and assume the business will build itself. Effective entrepreneurs always put first things first, expect needs to change, and manage with discipline. That means knowing when to delegate, enlist help, and say no.

4. Strive for win-win relationships and agreements. Successful startups are more about stakeholder win-win relationships than win-lose with competitors and vendors. In the same way, win-win performance agreements make for effective team members, partners, and investors. Win-win puts the responsibility on the entrepreneur to deliver results.

5. Seek first to understand, then be understood. Communication is one of the most important skills in business. With today’s interactive social media, there is no reason to assume that you know what customers want, or they know what you have. Collect their view and communicate. Don’t be an entrepreneur with a solution looking for a problem.

6. Build synergistic business relationships. Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy – the physical, mental, and emotional differences that might be used as stepping stones to new business and win-win opportunities. Different points of view, even healthy conflict, is the key to innovative solutions and timely required change.

7. Practice continuous learning and self-renewal. Renewal is the principle and the process that empowers entrepreneurs to move through an upward spiral of growth, change, and continuous improvement. This is often called sharpening the saw. It facilitates learning, committing, and doing business on an increasingly higher plane.

For many entrepreneurs adopting these habits is a paradigm shift, as challenging as the one from technologist to business professional, but it can be done and has been done by every successful entrepreneur. In addition, the power of a paradigm shift is that it opens up a new level of thinking, and a new level of power. It’s a great new asset, often more important than new funding.

Remember that investors continue to see thousands of e-commerce and computer startups, but only a few new entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. If you already have the effective habits I have outlined here, make those part of the story you lead with. If you don’t have them yet, now is the time to start.

Marty Zwilling

9 Messages From Sales Training May Save Your Startup

Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe that a great idea alone will assure business success. Experts argue that it’s more important to have a great plan, and personal business acumen. Hardly anyone mentions selling principles. Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business.

In fact, I believe modern entrepreneurs need to be super sales people, in the most positive sense, to their team as well as customers. I recently found the classic sales training book “Bootstrap Selling The Sandler Way,” by Bill Morrison, who has 20 years in sales leadership roles, and I was amazed at how many of his sales lessons are great lessons for new entrepreneurs as well.

Based on my many years of watching entrepreneurs struggle and too often fail, here are some of his key lessons for dedicated sales professionals that every entrepreneur should take to heart:

1. Focus on what customers want to buy, not what you want to sell. You can either find customers for your solution or you can find solutions for your customers. The smart answer is to find solutions your customers need. Putting all your effort into driving your favorite solution can lead to forgetting the problem being addressed in the first place.

2. Your first idea about where pain resides is nearly always wrong. Smart founders and smart salesmen look for customers with a painful problem, rather than pushing a nice-to-have solution. No pain usually means no sales. Then every startup has to learn to pivot, because their first understanding of the real problem is usually not quite right.

3. Your price and their value are not the same thing. Entrepreneurs set the price of their solution based on their costs, and their perception of value. Customers set value based on similar products found. For example, with smartphone apps, most are free. Thus, no matter what your value, it’s hard to build an app business that makes money today.

4. You and the customer have to be on the same side. Too many entrepreneurs, especially ones with work-at-home schemes and multi-level marketing, believe that someone has to lose to help them win. Like many salespeople, they see themselves as hunters. With the best solutions, the customer gets value which exceeds your revenue.

5. You are not the servant of your customer. At the same time, every customer isn’t always right. Entrepreneurs need to be customer advocates, but not a slave to their every whim. Businesses must part quickly with low-profit or abusive customers to focus on those who deliver greater return, and appreciate the value their solution provides.

6. Proactively look for problems, rather than react only. In every new business, as in every sales territory, problems happen. Reacting to a customer crisis is always more expensive to recover, than to view a problem brewing, and head it off with proper actions. That mentality has to be part of the culture of every startup team member from the start.

7. Make the tough decision rather than no decision. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to postpone decisions in tough situations, in favor of more study. Yet a startup image can be destroyed more quickly than a big auto company, by not taking action on a customer problem today. Sales people alike, who won’t face their fears, lose in the long run.

8. Telling isn’t selling. Having a snappy presentation on your solution or startup is great, but it’s only half the battle. Entrepreneurs need to actively listen to customers, investors, and other constituents, just like sales people need to listen before they talk. Push marketing doesn’t work well today, in the age of interactive networking and peer reviews.

9. People buy from people and companies they like. Entrepreneurs who fail to invest in establishing rapport with their customers will suffer the same consequences as sales people who don’t put themselves in the shoes of their prospects. Through social media and customer interaction, you must convince customers that your culture matches theirs.

Morrison espouses a selling success triangle of good techniques, behavior, and attitude, to turn prospecting opportunities into business success and personal value. Again, these same attributes are equally relevant for an entrepreneur turning an idea into a business. So before you conclude that your technology alone will catapult you to riches, take a success lesson from some super sales people who have learned the hard way.

Marty Zwilling

7 Advantages For Being A Socially Responsible Startup

More entrepreneurs want to be socially responsible these days, but fear a negative impact on profits, growth, and the ability to find an investor. In the short run, there are real costs associated with the “triple bottom line” of maximizing profit, people (social), and planet (environment). But very quickly, it is becoming obvious to startups that the value and satisfaction exceeds the costs.

To legally facilitate startups who want to give top priority to socially conscious solutions, thirty-five states, starting with Maryland way back in 2010, have passed legislation allowing incorporation as a Benefit Corporation (B-Corp). The B-Corp status is meant to reduce investor suits, and gives consumers an easy way to spot genuine social commitment, without assuming it is a non-profit.

There are currently over 3,500 Certified B Corporations in more than 70 countries. I believe this option will continue to spread to other companies, states and countries. A few examples of well-known benefit corporations in the USA include Kickstarter, Etsy in New York, Patagonia in California, and Seventh Generation in Vermont.

Even without B-Corp status, entrepreneurs are speaking out more on the positives to support business models that benefit not just shareholders, but customers, workforce, the environment, and the greater community. Several good discussions take a whole chapter in the classic book “Mind Your Business: Thoughts for Entrepreneurs,” by international entrepreneur Toine Knipping:

1. Investors favor startups that integrate social responsibility. Investors believe these startups demonstrate more integrity and less risk, as well as being better positioned to deliver long-term, sustainable value to their stakeholders. Of course, investors still require a profitable business model, and the potential for high returns.

2. Startups can use social responsibility as a competitive advantage. Some customers and stakeholders don’t just prefer that an organization is socially responsible, but insist on dealing only with these startups. That’s a real competitive edge that you can use in your marketing and positioning.

3. Socially responsible products typically sell at a premium price. The anecdotal evidence is growing that consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainability, and have started to demand a discount for ‘un-sustainability.’ More startups are using this strategy to improve their profitability, and reduce financial risk.

4. Social responsibility opens the door to a broader customer base. By adding to perceived value, it can attract more sophisticated and demanding customers less expensively and more quickly. More and more customers choose a company based on their perceptions about the good that they do, as well as the price and service.

5. Customer loyalty is highest for socially conscious startups. Even way back in the recession, the Edelman Good Purpose study found that 68 percent of global consumers would remain loyal to a brand if the organization practiced social responsibility. We all know the cost of retaining customers is far less than the cost of new customers.

6. Being socially responsible improves organizational performance. Doing business is a human process. Team members interact on a daily basis with the stakeholders of the startup and the way they feel about the organization has a major and direct impact on how they perform their tasks and do their job at the end of the day.

7. It is easier to recruit and retain human capital. Employees tend to stay longer with the organization, reducing the costs of recruitment and retraining. This leads to better performance as employees become specialized in their tasks and experienced, but they are also more motivated to give back to the organization and ultimately, more productive.

More and more, the goodwill of the relevant customer community, in large measure, contributes to the success of any product and any company. For some business opportunities, like Facebook and Twitter, the community is the value.

Unfortunately, balancing social and environmental impact against making money for survival and investor return isn’t an easy equation. In the long-run, what your business actually does is what counts. Are you ready for the challenge ahead?

Marty Zwilling

5 Keys To The Survival And Success Of An Entrepreneur

You can’t survive as an entrepreneur without resilience, because you are going to fail at least once, maybe multiple times. That’s the nature of trying something that’s never been done before. Resilience means not giving up, and being energized by what you have learned. As Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work."

If you need more evidence that great entrepreneurs survived through resilience, just look into the backgrounds of more recent entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. They all experienced multiple setbacks along the way, but they persevered to become some of the most well known and respected entrepreneurs of our time.

In a classic book on the subject, “Stronger: Develop the Resilience You Need to Succeed,” by George Everly, Douglas Strouse, and Dennis McCormack, these experts on the subject of human behavior and resilience outline five key factors of personal resilience, which I believe every aspiring entrepreneur should understand and develop before initiating a startup:

1. Maintain active optimism. Optimism is the mindset to expect the best outcome from every situation. This gives entrepreneurs the capacity to pivot from a failing tactic, and implement actions to increase success. The key to building active optimism is observing how others were successful in similar situations, and believing you can do the same.

2. Courage to take decisive action. Decisiveness mitigates adversity, helps you rebound, take responsibility, and promotes growth. Building decisiveness requires eliminating fear, procrastination, and the urge to please everyone. Practice making decisions as a positive learning experience. Understand that any decision is usually better than no decision.

3. Let a good moral compass guide you. We all need a guiding light when adversity strikes. The four points of honesty, integrity, fidelity, and ethical behavior work best in business and personal life. Solidify your moral compass by setting virtuous goals, keying off the norm of inspiring peers, practicing self-control, and celebrating every successes.

4. Show relentless tenacity and determination. Decide that giving up is simply not an option. Learn that tenacity is self-sustaining when persevering actions are rewarded. Find tenacious role models, and garner the support of peers and friends. Great entrepreneurs become tenaciously defiant when told they cannot succeed. Then they get it done.

5. Gain strength from the support of others. Interpersonal support is believed to be the single best driver of human resilience. In business, this means that the people you surround yourself with are crucial – team members, advisors, investors, partners, and peers. Avoid toxic people like the plague. Practice active listening and show appreciation.

Very few entrepreneurs are born with the resilience needed. Yet, it is something any startup founder can acquire as an advantage in the ever-more-competitive business world. A good part of it is fighting the urge to revert back to our comfort zones, and fall back into old habits. From the pain of failure comes wisdom, from fear comes courage, and from struggling comes strength.

Resilience also comes from paying attention to your own needs and feelings. Entrepreneurs need to engage in outside activities that they enjoy and find relaxing, to keep their body and mind fit to deal with the unending challenges of every business. In addition, it’s important to have a higher level purpose in life, such as insanely great design, to guide your resolve and your decisions.

The Steve Jobs story of resilience is a classic example of a higher purpose, woven into the five factors above, ultimately leading to success. His elegant design decisions may have failed him initially at Apple, but he went on to hone them at NeXT and Pixar, and finally won his legacy by coming back to Apple with winning innovative designs for the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Steve never gave up, and that’s the essence of resilience. That’s what I look for as an angel investor in entrepreneurs, and that’s what everyone looks for in a leader. What have you done lately to build and demonstrate your resilience?

Marty Zwilling

7 Scenarios Where A Business Plan Is Still An Asset

As a startup mentor and investor, I am approached regularly by aspiring entrepreneurs who assert that business plans take too much time, are inaccurate, and rarely add value. They cite sources like Profitable Venture Magazine, “Why Business Plans are a Waste of Time” and this Forbes article. From my perspective, much of this advice is urban legend and just plain wrong.

Based on my experience, a business plan always adds value to the entrepreneur – most people can’t build a complete plan in their head, and need the process of organizing it on paper to make it consistent and complete. The size of the document should be based on your style, but 10-20 pages or slides are usually more than adequate to outline even a complex business.

Beyond the value to the entrepreneur, let’s take a look at how and when a written plan might add value, or even be required, by other people who may be critical to the success of your startup efforts. Most of these scenarios involve attracting outside investors, strategic partners, or key team members:

1. You are the team and you don’t need outside funding. Tiny bootstrapped teams usually don’t have a business plan, and probably don’t need one. They can iterate and evolve their business idea with a low burn rate and minimal dependencies. A formal plan will only add value after they finalize a model, build a team, and are ready to scale.

2. You’ve built a successful startup before, and plan to use the same investors. If you have a proven track record, investors don’t have to see a written plan to believe you can do the job. In fact, they are probably in such a hurry to give you money that they don’t want you to waste time writing anything down and passing it along to new investors.

3. You need funding, and plan to get it from friends and family. Hopefully you know your friends and family better than I do, so you decide when a business plan is required. If your rich uncle is an accountant, or has his own business, I recommend a good business plan. On the other hand, your mother probably won’t read one.

4. You need money, and plan to do crowdfunding. Although the major crowd funding sites today, including Kickstarter and Indiegogo, don’t technically require a business plan, they do demand essentially the same information in a project format. Thus building a business plan ahead of time will improve your application and chances of success.

5. You need an investor, and want a document to mass-mail to everyone. Creating a business plan for this purpose is a waste of time. In fact, the whole process is a waste of time. Most VCs and Angel investors don’t read unsolicited proposals, unless they have met you first, or have a glowing recommendation from another investor or acquaintance.

6. You need an investor, and want to solicit professionals online. Major platforms are available online to find Angel groups or VCs, including Gust and AngelList. These platforms, and every investor who uses them to find entrepreneurs, expects to find a good business plan posted. You won’t even be considered without a business plan.

7. You find an interested investor or bank, and need to close the deal. Most professional investors, even if they like your story, and were properly introduced by a friend, will ask for a business plan at the due diligence stage. They want to see if you have done your homework, have reasonable expectations, and are willing to commit.

You might fairly conclude from these points that a business plan is only “required” if you want to close funding from professional investors who don’t already know you or know your track record. Since the best VCs deal primarily with known and proven entrepreneurs, it’s easy for them to say that they don’t read business plans.

On the other hand, don’t forget angel investors, who fund a large number of startups, to the tune of $25 billion last year, who start their search primarily from platforms like the ones mentioned above. A business plan may be a small investment to get a shot at that opportunity.

For the rest of you entrepreneurs, consider the value of a business plan when it is not required. Clemson University professor William B. Gartner looked at data a while back from the Panal Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, and found that writing a plan increased the chances by two and a half times that a person would actually go into business.

Of course, building a plan is not an alternative to getting out there and doing something. There is no substitute for knowing your customers first hand, and iterating on a minimum viable product to find the most marketable solution. Writing it down promotes both understanding and commitment.

Overall, I sense that not writing a business plan is more often an excuse rather than a time saver. Building a business is a long-term non-trivial task, like building a house. Would you give money to someone, without a plan, who had never built a house before? Hopefully you wouldn’t even build your own house without a plan. You should treat your new business with the same respect.

Marty Zwilling

7 Ways To Preclude The Most Common Investor Rejection

Almost every early-stage startup who has approached investors for funding has heard the innocuous sounding rejection “I love your idea, but come back when you have more traction.” What does traction really mean to investors, and how much is enough? Let me try to clarify the rules, and what it takes to win at this game.

First of all, a definition. Traction is evidence that your product or service has started that “hockey- stick” adoption rate which implies a large market, a valid business model, and sustainable growth. Investors want evidence that the “dogs are eating the dog food,” and your financial projections are not just a dream.

Obviously this definition is generic, so my first recommendation is that you take the lead in defining traction metrics for your startup, and then selling your results convincingly to investors. A graph that shows a hockey-stick “up and to the right” curve with at least three data points per key indicator is a great visual assist.

One or more of the following parameters are viewed by most investors as traction indicators, but good entrepreneurs are often creative and define their own to supplement these:

1. Start with sales to-date for a priced offering. As an investor, I would like to see one month of sales, and see how that compares to your projections. One customer is not traction, and beta tests with a thousand customers at no cost don’t count. Your graph should show that sales have “turned upward” per projections, beyond friends and family.

2. Free and freemium products need a solid base. If your product is free, with advertising revenue from click-throughs, you need a sign-up rate and page-view rate that approaches one million page views per month. I like to see at least 10,000 active users, or a user base, page-views, or mobile downloads that double every three months.

3. Market penetration. Percentages may be difficult at this early stage, but you need to get creative about slicing and dicing the market, sector, demographic, and sub-categories. For example, if your value-add is with first-time parents, show me a graph of how many 20-30 year-old moms have signed up each week the first month.

4. Average transaction size and revenue per customer. Often enterprise customers, or even consumers, test a new channel by signing up for a few small transactions or trial products. If your average transaction size, number per customer, or margins have been turning up dramatically, it should mean you have gained real traction in the market.

5. Customer acquisition cost. In an inverse fashion, real traction usually means that your cost to acquire a new customer is coming down rapidly, as your marketing kicks in, and your offering is known and accepted by the mass market. You need to position these numbers to investors as positive, based on your domain experience, before being asked.

6. Show acceptance by major customers and key distributors. Sometimes it is not the numbers that indicate traction, but who you have signed up. Signed contracts with big name customers, like IBM, AT&T, or Wal-Mart, is a strong indication of traction. The same is true if your offering has been accepted by major distributors in your industry.

7. Public statements from industry experts and groups. In the enterprise world, if your offering is even included as a new contender by respected industry groups, like Gartner Research, you should claim traction. In the consumer world, groups like Consumer Reports, will give you similar credibility, if positive. Start early to work these relationships.

You need to take the lead in choosing the key metrics that accurately and positively express, both quantitatively and graphically, that your startup has broken through the traction barrier. Don’t ask investors if you have traction – if you have to ask, you probably won’t like the answer.

But never forget that traction is necessary, but may not be sufficient, to lower the risk perception of investors, and assure an investment. The quality of the team, and overall financial health are equally important, as well as how your offering compares to competitors.

Overall, you should think of traction as that indicator or indicators which demonstrate that your offering has shifted from being an “idea” to being a profit-making “business.” As such, it should be just as important to you as to potential investors. Make sure you understand what it means to you, and communicate where you stand. If investors have to raise the subject first, you don’t have enough traction to win.

Marty Zwilling

5 Ways To Plan for Business Change Before the Crisis

Based on my experience as a business advisor, most businesses don’t think about the need for change until a crisis occurs. This might be the recognition that competitors are surpassing your own results, financial growth has disappeared, or the pandemic has eliminated loyal customers. Only then do they begin searching for that one-time fix that will restore their leadership position.

My recommendation is that you plan to pivot your business on a regular basis, at least once a year, even before you see specific negative symptoms indicative of change in the market you thought you knew so well. In my experience, planning for change means creating the right culture in your organization, having a real change process in place, and effective team communication.

Here are some key steps to get the ball rolling if you don’t know where to start:

1. Establish the mindset that change is good. Because change often leads to crisis, you and your team can easily see it as a negative, and approach it with fear. Yet if you think back to when your business started, you capitalized on change as your opportunity. That’s the model you need to project to your team daily, and remind yourself regularly.

   Many smart business leaders believe that you can actually train your brain to get better at handling change through simple mental exercises, from noticing a few positive changes every day, to learning how to meditate. Change is inevitable, so accept it as the norm.

2. Keep an open channel to customers and influencers. Running an existing business is an all-consuming job, managing employees, vendors, and government regulations. It’s hard to find time to really study the market for new trends, and listen to customers. The right approach is to allocate time, maybe an hour a day, for these critical change drivers.

   In addition, it is important to stay actively involved in external activities relevant to your business, including industry conferences and panels. Maintain relationships with other industry movers and shakers, including customer support groups and media influencers.

3. Regularly update and publish your vision and goals. Reminding yourself and the team annually of the big picture is the best way to check your ongoing fit to a changing world. As a constant learner, your reminder will generate new insights that allow you to prepare for the future, without waiting for a crisis. Be sure to factor in the new realities.

   For example, many entrepreneurs have found that adding a goal today of serving a higher purpose attracts new customers as well as improving team commitment. TOMS Shoes now succeeds by providing a free pair of shoes to the needy for every pair sold.

4. Institute a formal change process with rewards. People must be incented to look for and recommend positive changes, rather than just incented to follow the existing processes. That means providing every employee with the authority and resources to make change decisions in their scope, and be rewarded based on value to the customer.

   Jeff Bezos credits much of Amazon’s continued success to his incenting of regular change “experiments.” He believes that if you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness, and keep ahead of the market.

5. Don’t let stress and emotion drive pivot decisions. Make sure that you use data and expert outside advisors, more than your gut, to prioritize the alternatives for a change. Decisions made in the heat of the moment are likely ones you will regret later. For your ongoing personal health and well-being, take the time to do the surveys and review data.

   Another way to raise your logic and decrease your emotional reactivity is by documenting the pros and cons of a potential change. The discipline of reviewing the facts will keep you rational about options, and prevent your emotions from getting the best of you.

Most entrepreneurs recognize that pivots are required to adapt their initial understanding to the real market. Once synchronized, they often forget that change is the only constant in business, and it takes a crisis to remind them. If you can make this acceptance of change a normal part of your business process, I assure you your business life will be more satisfying, as well as fruitful.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 08/27/2021 ***

5 Ways To Solve More Problems And Grow Your Business

As a long-time business advisor, and an investor in startups along the way, I’m always on the lookout for an entrepreneur who is responding first to a problem in the marketplace, rather than bringing a new technology to the market, assuming it will find a problem to solve. I assert that problem solvers are more likely to succeed, since every business comes with plenty of problems.

I personally love passion and technology, but these alone don’t make a business. If you haven’t yet realized the greater value of a problem solving mentality, I offer the following strategies that I believe should and can be followed by all aspiring entrepreneurs, and existing business owners, to start looking at problems as opportunities, rather than barriers to satisfaction and progress:

1. Adopt a positive view that problems bring opportunity. People who see problems as negatives to be overcome are doomed to a life of unhappiness. This saps their passion and energy, and limits their thinking and success. The entrepreneurs I respect actively look for the next problem, celebrate every success, and see failures as learning events.

   A few years ago, Safeway and other big retailers struggled with the growing problem of plastic bag cost and pollution, before realizing they could actually sell reusable cloth bags to customers, as a win to all. A recurring expense was turned into a recurring revenue.

2. Openly acknowledge current challenges in your business. Business leaders who see problems only as a burden tend to hide them from the team, or actually ignore them until a crisis hits. This prevents everyone from fully understanding the context, root cause, and steps to resolve it. The result is missed opportunities, emotional in-fighting, and blame.

   The current pandemic, for example, has been a hit to most businesses, both in terms of servicing customers, as well as protecting employees. The best have openly worked out new processes for both, including work from home, and home delivery or drive-by pickup.

3. Follow a fixed process to evaluate and resolve problems. Don’t let emotions control your efforts, so first stay calm and focused. Formally define the scope of the problem, followed by documenting the solution alternatives from team members and experts, and a timeframe for solution. Finally, make a timely decision and build an implementation plan.

   One of the most successful entrepreneurs today, Elon Musk, is an outspoken proponent of the First Principle method of evaluating problems, defined long ago by Aristotle. This requires challenging all assumptions and reverting to nature to get a root problem cause.

4. Avoid perfectionism – no problems have a perfect solution. In my experience, perfectionism is the biggest detriment to solving problems quickly. The search for a perfect solution delays progress, hurts morale, and blinds everyone to practical quick solutions which are good enough. The result is unhappy people, making no progress.

   Steve Jobs, by his own assessment, started out as an adamant perfectionist. With his obsession for detail, it took more than three years to develop the Macintosh. Over time, Jobs managed to temper his perfectionism and succeed in the bigger consumer market.

5. Tap into the collective intelligence around you. Too many business leaders fear that asking for help will make them look weak. I urge you to take full advantage of business advisors, expertise within your team, and direct communication with customers. They will respect and trust you for sharing, and you will get real insight from different perspectives.

   Building relationships with others, and effective listening, are the keys to utilizing the intelligence around you. Start by walking around and getting to know the other members of your team. Outside connections usually come by taking a more active role in your industry and community. The Internet and social media are also a key knowledge source.

The best part of adopting these strategies is that they can turn some of your most distasteful activities into satisfying ones, and lead to business success rather than failure. You may even decide to reboot your career from one of following someone else’s direction, to following your own dream of entrepreneurship and changing the world. There is no better time than today to start.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 08/24/2021 ***

5 Startup Environments That Can Spiral Out Of Control

Most entrepreneurs start their company with the highest of ideals, and wouldn’t dream of building one with a culture of indifference or downright unethical behavior. Yet all too many succumb to the pressures of survival, driven by demanding investors or a cutthroat competitive environment. How does a Founder recognize the warning signs, let alone know what to do about it?

Some key insights on this issue are provided for corporate environments in the classic book by David Gebler, “The 3 Power Values: How Commitment, Integrity, and Transparency Clear the Roadblocks to Performance.” I‘m convinced that the underlying points are even more relevant to entrepreneurs, with some adaptation for the realities of the startup world:

1. A switch to survival mode. When customers don’t appear as fast as the Founder projected, and cash runs short, everyone on the team starts to worry about losing their job. Suddenly “closing the sale,” no matter what is required, takes precedence over the grand team vision of changing the world.

   When a startup team is in survival mode, they need straight talk from leaders they respect and trust. Founders are often tempted to sugarcoat information. If you want employees to stay engaged, tell them the truth, with specifics on what is required to turn things around, and the team will surprise you with their commitment.

2. Big bad investor interference. Investors provide funding, but they also have their own set of expectations on how things should get done, with aggressive milestones. For the team in the trenches, these pressures can cause tensions to run high, and commitment to high level goals is lost. The culture changes to satisfy the investors at any cost.

   Make your investors part of the visible team at the startup, and make sure all key milestones are well understood up front. Then make sure you communicate regularly to your investors so they don’t get surprised. Investors are people too, and with regular communication, will trust people to do their job, without sacrificing integrity and ethics.

3. Misunderstood pivots. Virtually every startup has to make real-time changes to their product, plan, or market, as they learn from initial customer interactions. Without proper communication to the team, these changes look like random shifts in direction, which negate the efforts of team members, and raise a cloud of fear and indifference.

   Entrepreneurs must resist the urge to withdraw and isolate themselves as they deal with the pressures of changes to their original plan. Instead, they need to be more transparent, and spend more time listening to the team as well as communicating the value of a pivot.

4. Troubling talk around the water cooler. In every organization, large or small, there are people who become disillusioned or negative about the current direction or progress, usually due to personal problems. Negative people and messages are a virus that can kill your culture, and cause others to turn a blind eye to the real priorities of the business.

   Leaders need to pick up these negative messages quickly by listening and really engaging with their team, and then dealing with them with integrity. Non-productive complainers need to be moved off the team quickly, or everyone reverts to that level.

5. Lack of communication from the top. With today’s 24/7 flood of information and social media, the team expects to be constantly updated on what’s going on at the top. When they see the information they need is missing, outdated, or flat-out misrepresented, frustration is inevitable, and this will eat away at your culture.

   Make sure your team knows how decisions are being made, as well as what they are. Be transparent, set goals, and then tell internal and external stakeholders where you are in meeting those goals. Invite employees to join in and contribute to this process.

So commitment, integrity, and transparency are the catalysts that every startup team expects from their leaders to maintain a healthy culture, strong values, and superior results. When a good startup starts to experience slippage on any of these catalysts, the team can slip rapidly into disengagement, rationalization, and self-deception. Have you checked the signs in your organizations lately?

Marty Zwilling

10 Keys To The Teamwork Required To Run Your Business

Any entrepreneur with a vision can postulate a new business, but it takes a collaboration of many people to make it a success. Today the complexity of forces required for success include multi-disciplinary skills, competencies, and experiences in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Entrepreneurs who embrace the “lone wolf” approach usually live to regret it.

I remember the classic book, “The Collaboration Imperative,” by Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, which makes the case very well for why collaboration matters in every business, as well as startups. Every entrepreneur should heed the following lessons on collaboration derived from the authors work on the culture, process and technology of collaboration in hundreds of companies:

1. Consensus is the enemy of collaboration. Collaboration leaves everyone with a feeling of “win-win,” while consensus is “win-lose” or even “lose-lose.” Collaboration opens more possibilities, while consensus narrows them to a compromise.

2. Collaboration has to start at the top. Company culture is not set by words, but by the actions of the founder. That means treating everyone with respect, and providing regular constructive feedback. Trust is required for every successful collaboration.

3. The biggest barriers to collaboration are not technical. They are cultural and organizational in nature. Startup executives need to first build a culture and processes with communication and shared goals, rather than internal competition and bureaucracy.

4. Collaboration cannot be deployed – it must be embraced. Executives and managers must be willing participants, modeling collaborative behavior and embracing the technology tools, not just taskmasters. All team members must be committed.

5. Good ideas come from anywhere, so the more voices the better. These are critical in arriving at a clear idea of what is important, exploring what is possible based on constraints, and coordinating effective actions to produce successful outcomes.

6. Collaboration enhances personal communication skills. As team members interact and play to their strengths, they learn to be authentic and genuine, which increases their effectiveness as well as their skills. They reach agreement faster and communicate more.

7. You get out of collaboration what you put in. According to a global study of business conducted by Frost & Sullivan, the return on a collaboration investment progressively improves as better tools are deployed and a collaborative culture takes shape.

8. Collaboration success means changing both roles and rewards. This means creating processes that allow more perspectives, but make it clear who has decision-making rights. It’s essential to provide incentives to change ingrained behavior.

9. More interaction opens opportunities to create more value. Within any given startup environment (market, industry structure, competitors, product/service mix, etc.) opportunities exist that are often missed unless everyone is listening and communicating.

10. The average return on collaboration is four times the initial investment. From the study referenced, measured gains ranged from three to six times. This ROI comes from cost avoidance, cost reductions, business optimization, and faster business decisions.

In today’s highly competitive and unpredictable environment, it’s not enough to do one thing better than your competitors. You need to change your organization so that it can rapidly recognize and adapt to new opportunities and new threats.

Collaboration is the new imperative. It may be the only way to accelerate innovation, improve agility, increase adaptability and cut costs all at once. But building a collaborative culture is not an easy transformation for the traditional fiercely independent entrepreneur. How long has it been since you have taken a hard look at your own startup?

Marty Zwilling

5 Attributes To Look For In Your Perfect Startup Idea

Every entrepreneur wishes that he could predict whether his idea could be the “next big thing,” before he spent his life savings and years of energy on it. Investors, on the other hand, typically don’t even look very hard at the product or service, but prefer to evaluate first the entrepreneur, and secondly the business plan.

I define these products and services as “solutions” (customers buy solutions to a problem), but Guy Kawasaki more generically calls them causes, meaning any new idea, company, or service. Yet we can all agree that the quality of the solution or cause is very important, and there are attributes that reduce the business risk and make it more likely a success in the marketplace.

Many people have tried to outline and refine these important attributes, including Kawasaki in his classic book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.” He and I agree that product ideas must be assessed against the following five key qualities:

1. Depth. A deep product or service has a robust set of features. It means you’ve anticipated what your customers will need as they move up the power curve, For example, Google is a one-stop source for your online needs, ranging from simple search to managing your e-mail, to analyzing your Web site. The selection is incredibly deep.

2. Intelligence. An intelligent solution solves people’s problems in smart ways. Smart solutions are the ones that look simple in retrospect, don’t require a genius with an instruction manual to use them, and the benefits are easily quantified. In the computer world, the advent of the mouse for interface control and selection was such a product.

3. Completeness. A complete solution provides a great experience that includes service, support, and a string of enhancements. For example, the Lexus experience is more than the steel, leather, glass, and rubber. After-sales support, comfort, accessories, and brand image are as much a part of owning a Lexus as the car itself.

4. Empowering ability. An empowering solution enables you to do old things better and to do new things you couldn’t do at all. It increases your confidence and your ability to control your life. This feeling of empowerment is the essence of why young people love their smart phones and often consider their phone an extension of themselves.

5. Elegance. An elegant solution is not opulent, but embodies creativity and polish, and enhances the user experience. An elegant solution works with people. An inelegant solution fights people. It looks right. It feels right. It works right. And it doesn’t make more work for you. This may be hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

In summary, the best product or service is a full-featured one (deep) that shows you understand customer needs (intelligent), comes with support (complete), makes customers better (empowering), and is easy to use (elegant). As you create your solutions, ask yourself if they are deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant.

Of course, great startup solutions need great teams to implement them. Back to my comment at the beginning that investors evaluate the people before the idea, see one of my original articles for details on “Investors Look First At The Founder, Then The Idea.” The combination of these factors is why a new entrepreneur with his first idea usually has a tough road ahead.

As Guy says, “in a perfect world, you are so enchanting that your cause doesn’t matter, and your cause is so enchanting that you don’t matter.” In the real world, don’t count on either of these cases. You can best help yourself by doing the homework listening to customers and quantifying the pain points before you define a great solution. Then build a team, build a plan, build a great company, and have fun.

Marty Zwilling