So you want to launch a business...

What to do next...

Focus.  Mastery.  Measurability.

Success has a lot to do with focusing limited resources.  Here’s an exercise to start you on the path to that focus.

Make at least three copies of the simple outline that appears below.  You fill out one of them.  Ask two or more of your Mentors to do the same.

I’m facing a wall.  Success is on the other side.  If my new enterprise is to succeed, to penetrate the wall, it must excel at each of the following Three Dominant Factors:

1.     
2.     
3.     

I will gauge progress toward the Mastery I seek according to these clear Measurability criteria:

1.     
2.     
3.     

 

If there is some level of disagreement on the Three Dominant Factors (and that is highly likely), repeat until opinions converge.

Another kind of Magic - gratitude

Captain Kangaroo nailed it.

For 30 years Bob Keeshan gave life to Captain Kangaroo, first on CBS, then briefly on PBS.  Those of us who are old enough to have watched his gentle, calm approach to children's programming will never forget his regular advice.  He told us to remember the magic words - abracadabra, please, and thank you.

"Thank you."  It's so simple, so easy, so inexpensive, yet so incredibly rich with power to transform relationships.  And, unfortunately, so neglected.

"Please" gets remembered more, I think, probably because it is attached to a request, as a condition of having a desire fulfilled.  In some sense, though polite, to be sure, please is a selfish word.

Thank you.  Thanks.  Thx.  That's not selfish.  There's no ego in it.  It's about the other person, an acknowledgement of the their value to you.

If you are reading this post you have a computer and access to the internet.  I speculate that you also have plenty to eat and a place to sleep comfortably each night.  And much more, no doubt.  With all that in mind, I invite you to join me in a communal "Thank You" as we celebrate our national day of thanksgiving.  But I also challenge you to spread words of gratitude around freely and generously every day of the year. 

Thank you.  How convenient that something so intrinsically worthwhile could be so simple, easy, and inexpensive, and, oddly enough, so good for business.

Excellent is good enough.

I just finished my first book, and it's not perfect.

But I'm sending it to be printed anyway, because its time has come.  In an earlier post (and in the book) I have quoted Vince Lombardi, who advocated a "relentless" chase for perfection that would enable achievement of excellence.  Why would I not wait, edit, tinker, tweak, and publish a more perfect book?  Simple.  I would never finish.

The book points out, in a section about avoidable mistakes, that "excellent is good enough, costs less money, and might actually get to market."

So, too, with the book itself, then.  My Mentors have reported that it's good enough for me to send to press.  I sure hope they are right.  You can only lose your reputation once.  Oh, well.  Off it goes.  It'll be available early in 2009.  Watch this space!

The name?  MOXIE, and other fundamental entrepreneurial concepts.

Wanna be incubated?

Mentors come in many flavors.

I spent Monday and Tuesday this week learning and networking at the annual conference of the Virginia Business Incubation Association.  There are 30-odd spots in this state where an entrepreneur can go to receive serious start-up assistance - everything from how to get a business license to subsidized space.  Nationally, there are about 1500 options in this category.  You can find one near you through the National Business Incubation Association.

The Small Business Administration operates a network of Small Business Development Centers - another option for start-up and growth advice.

At VT KnowledgeWorks, where I hang out, we call ourselves a "business acceleration center," because we work with companies at all stages of development, not just the incubation phase.  I have the unique privilege of spending my days with energetic people committed to exciting visions - people like Anne Clelland of Handshake 2.0, Kami Razvan of Click and Pledge, Michael Fleming of TORC Technologies, and Matt Hull at NANOSAFE.  You can get a taste for the fascinating diversity of our clients and our neighborhood at our blog, Inside VT KnowledgeWorks.

Mentoring is great fun!  As best I can tell from observing my clients' behaviors, being mentored must be fun, too, not to mention useful. 

Simple is good!

Why your elevator pitch is so important...

When I was in college I occasionally played chess with my roommate.  Now this guy was/is a wizard - Phi Beta Kappa as an Economics major, Harvard Law School, president of a billion dollar company.  You get the idea - one smart dude.

If I tried to compete with him on a full board, I would lose every time, and badly.  Chess is a complex game, and he could quite simply deal effectively with more data at one time.  BUT... I found that if I traded him pieces until there were only a few left on each side, I could WIN, at least some of the time.

I had found a way to make the game simpler, to increase my chances of success against a powerful adversary. 

The ability to reduce your strategy to its essence lowers your risk.  It permits you to understand very clearly (in most cases) what is required and what will result.  It also enables you to make things understandable to your employees, your allies, your clients, and your investors. 

In describing your prospective business, this amounts to communicating four things, clearly and concisely.

• What will you do? 
• For whom will you do it?
• Why do they need it?
• Why will they pick you?

Make no mistake, however.  A simple strategy is generally a good idea; but simple does not mean unsophisticated.  Remember Thoreau's apology to his friend: "Please excuse me for having written such a long letter, but I did not have time to write a short one."

And a simple strategy does not automatically make success come easily.  Even though I managed to give myself a fighting chance to win at chess, I didn't always win.

This has been said and written many times by many people, but I'll give credit to someone who said it in my presence just two weeks ago.  "Never confuse simple with easy."  Brian Engleman, SRI International

How much do you want it?

Will you make the Hall of Fame?

My friend George Roberts was a really fine natural athlete.  I watched him put the sweet spot of a tennis racket right on the ball almost every time; and that was back when tennis rackets were small, and made of wood.  And by then George was about 50.  He was also a fine golfer, and a mainstay of the church softball team.  George had "game."

It clearly ran in the family.  You see, George's big brother, Robin Roberts, won 286 games as a major league pitcher, and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the ace of the Phillies' staff from 1948 to 1961.

I once asked George what it was like having a star athlete as a brother.  He said, quite modestly, that as a young player he had actually outperformed Robin.  He had as much, if not more, natural talent.  The difference was, as George put it, that Robin "wanted it more."

Bingo!!

Robin Roberts had Moxie!

How much do you want it?

What the heck happened?

Surprising success!

Shocking failure!

A recent Roanoke Times news article about formation, growth, sale, and dis-mantling of New River Pharmaceuticals points out how point of view means everything.  The company was an investment grand-slam home-run, but an economic development fizzle.  In the 2008 government statistics, it will go down as a business that closed up shop.  Never mind that its investors pocketed 2.6 billion dollars.

If you root around in the entrepreneurship literature, it becomes clear that everything is unclear, hopelessly confused by the nature of the collected data and the imprecision of the questioning. For example, "not surviving" can include successful sell-outs like New River as well as companies that were never serious attempts at business building in the first place. Many (most?) single proprietor home-based businesses are either hobbies or temporary experiments, rather than solid runs at building something permanent.

Of course, once-published, often-quoted. Pretty soon everyone says that 90% of new businesses fail early.

My conclusion is this: most businesses that are ill-conceived fail; most businesses that are well-conceived succeed. Ill-conceived businesses are sometimes saved by outstanding downstream management. Well-conceived business are sometimes ruined by poor downstream management.

And sometimes, as elsewhere in life, nobody can figure out what the heck happened.

Who owns your company?

What? 

You probably thought YOU owned your company, or at least that your shareholders did.

Shareholders do, of course, own the net assets of the company and the rights to future profits.  But there are any number of additional stake-holders.  The list includes employees, suppliers, distributors, and, most important of all, customers.

On numerous occasions I have felt compelled to encourage wild and crazy entrepreneurs to tidy up their workplaces.  Often the response to my incredibly polite suggestion goes something like this:  "It's my company.  If I like it messy, it's nobody's business." 

Would you put your money in a bank with a messy lobby? 

Your customers, along with your employees, and every other stake-holder on your particular list are putting their money in your bank.  They are counting on your company to look after their best interests.  In return, they work together to deliver profit to you and your shareholders.  They "own" your profit before you do.  Without their cooperation, you have no company. 

A tidy office is a personal decision.  A tidy company is a necessity.

Tax incentives do not create jobs! Well-conceived businesses create jobs!

What do the experts say?

"...experience suggests that governments incur considerable losses in tax revenues from tax-related employment programs without certainty over how many new jobs will be created or how much related social expenditures will be reduced."  [1996 Canadian Department of Finance study]

"Recent research on government sponsored business incentives has revealed little, if any, correlation between government-sponsored business incentives and county unemployment rates."  [2007 Ohio study]

"...a company's decision whether to invest in a particular region has more to do with factors other than tax incentives."  [2003 Canadian Parliament study]

In the US, almost all the new jobs are created by a handful of "high-impact" companies.  Only 2-3% of all firms fulfill the high-impact criteria (extraordinary revenue growth plus expanding employment).   [2008 US Small Business Administration study]

Please consider this audacious proposition: Companies do not hire people because they will get a tax break.  They hire people because the business is growing and demands more productive capacity.

Market, Magic, Mentors, Moxie.  It's all about the fundamentals!  Create an outstanding response to a compelling need and you will create jobs - period.  If somebody offers you an employment tax credit, accept it politely and spend the money on product improvement.