Many times we use sports in the business world to support, inspire, and show examples of how to improve. With the start of a new football season upon us, I find this time of year very exciting! I live in a town that is all about SEC college football, boating, and tailgating. There is something special about cruising up the Tennessee River on a beautiful fall day, seeing Neyland Stadium, and tying up next to it with the Vol Navy. What an experience!
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The Value of Connection!
Who are you connected with? What is the value of connection? If you read any of my blogs over a period of time, you could pull out the frequent topic of connectivity. So why is it such a major theme? Even marketing guru Seth Godin discusses the importance of connecting in his recent blog “First, connect.” Let’s take a look back at a little science and history, and then we will come back to how it is relevant in business.
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Real Commerce With Mobile!
In last week’s blog, we discussed how we are entering the Web 3.0 world. That world consists of mobile. We talked about creating real value for customers and real commerce for merchants. I recently came across some really great examples of this in an article called Web 3.0: The Mobile Era written by Jay Jamison, who has a venture company that invests in early stage mobile companies.
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What Is Your Word For Success?
People are often looking for the magic to make a business work. When you listen to a successful person talk, they typically get asked, “What is the one word you would pick that is needed to be successful?” My word for that question is determination. As I listened to Randy Boyd speak today at The Legacy Centre Speaker Series, he answered the question with the word PERSISTENCE!
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Power of One
Having a business and being an entrepreneur, you attempt to make a difference in your life, sometimes in the lives of others, and not so often, in the world. I see this on a daily basis because running a company is integral in the lives of many people around me.
You usually see the small things but not the larger impact that you might make someday in the future. For example, you may have created some great product that improves the lives of others in a meaningful way, or you may go public in an IPO and share stock with your early hard-working employees that one day generates more money than ever imagined.
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I Built This!
Given some of the recent comments by those in the White House, I must share the experience of my own entrepreneur journey and how it differs from these recent statements.
When I was starting a mutual fund, I dealt with many people and agencies of both the state and federal governments. Their job was to ensure I met every regulatory obligation they could think of, and they seemed to come up with even more. I found nothing but roadblocks getting in my way as I tried to get this mutual fund off the ground.
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Price vs Value
As business owners, customers, and people, when we buy something, we like to think we are getting the same amount of value for the money we are spending. This is true if we spend $50, $500, or $5,000. We don’t care as much about the dollar amount as we care about the value. If we were only concerned about the price, we would all stay at $59 per night hotels, and obviously that doesn’t always happen. In fact, we will spend $100, $150, or $250 for a hotel to have a high-quality experience. After all, we don’t just want to sleep anywhere, right?
The same can be said for just about everything we buy. As a business, we must provide value relative to the cost of our product or service. This value is what would incentivize people to purchase from our business rather than another.
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Success Takes Time
We held our quarterly meeting this past week, and with it came some great discussions. Most of these conversations were centered on our direction and reaching our Big Hairy Audacious Goal, as introduced by Jim Collins. One major point that came up: How do we get where we want to go when we’re consumed by our day-to-day work activities?
We also discussed the Flywheel concept, as Collins examines in “Good to Great!”
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5 Keys to a Great Team
In previous blogs, I have shared my admiration for Robin Sharma, best-selling author and business coach, and when I viewed some of the mostly highly watched videos from him, I wanted to share one that most resonated with me. The video “How Remarkable Entrepreneurs Build Winning Teams” had a great message and had accumulated almost 18,000 views.
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Moving Past the Struggle
I have written many blogs, and for the most part, I talk about the opportunities in the marketplace, the people, the freedom, the places, and the experiences of being an entrepreneur. Rarely have I discussed the struggle and how being an entrepreneur can be downright difficult at times. This is part of the environment that you take up when you choose or, for some, are forced into this path. The allure of the business owner draws you in, but are you prepared for the reality that will inevitably follow?
Ben Horowitz, with the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, reminded me of this in his recent blog entitled “The Struggle.”
