A summary of things you should know about Building Your Booming Business according to David Mitchell: Introduction In this episode David Mitchell reveals all his insights on Building Your BoomingRead More
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]]>In this episode David Mitchell reveals all his insights on Building Your Booming Business where he discusses 5 foundations every organization must have to succeed.
In his book Mitchell delivers step-by-step business strategies and advice that will not only take your business to the top, but will help you systemize your business, build an effective team, provide high quality customer experiences, and drive more sales. The goal of the book is alleviate the consequences that come with unmotivated employees, escalating business issues, and an overworked schedule.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who own a business that is experiencing stagnant sales, a lack of employee motivation, and an inability to scale.
In my book I write in a conversational tone so I use a lot of examples both from my own life and from some of my client’s lives. I gather all the information and put it in one place where a business owner can pick it up and have the basic nuts and bolts they need to create a business that’s going to be successful. A lot of the business books that I have found out there are very niche oriented and I wanted a book that ties it all together.
I tried to create a progression that if someone were to sit down and start at page one they could read it all the way through. But I also structured it in a way that you can jump in and out where needed.
In everything that you do in your business you need to be thinking about the next step.
The subtitle of the book is The Five Foundations Every Organization Must Have to Succeed. Everything that I do is built around five foundations which are Marketing, Leadership and Management, Operations, Finance, and Systems and Controls.
I started the book with Marketing and the reason why I started it with this topic is because nothing happens until somebody sells something. We don’t have a business until we put it out on the market and somebody pays us for the value that we provide them. I help the reader walk through everything from defining their product well, understanding who their target market is, pricing it appropriately and also creating marketing strategies that actually encourage action.
When I go into the Leadership and Management section I really dig deep into the leader verses the manager. They are two very different skills, a leader leads people, and a manager is somebody who manages things, processes or systems. But in order to move your organization you have to do both and sometimes you do have to manage people. At the same time you need to help inspire them so I talk about how to do that and how to develop leadership styles that are appropriate for the stage of team development.
Operations are about working with your clients to develop operations and create one that not only delivers a great experience but also is able to deliver consistently.
In the section on Finance I talk about how to get more consistently with your clients and I also discuss cash management.
The Systems and Controls section dives down deep into how to get all of these different sections to talk to each other.
At the end of the book I throw in an extra foundation called Your Personal Foundation. This discusses things like building your integrity and how people don’t judge us on our intentions but rather on what we do. So we discuss how to follow through, time management, and rounding it all out with how to prioritize between work and family.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:48
“As business owners we are plate spinners and as plate spinners we can’t start all 20 of our plates that we are trying to get spinning at the same time.” –Unknown
I am a business coach, consultant, and professional key note speaker. I take an entrepreneurial and business view to business leaders, owners, and entrepreneurs to help them build their business.
As I was working with business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders I found that I was saying the same thing over and over again. So I took the same concepts and principles that I taught to my clients and combined it all in one book.
Leadership and Self-Deception by Arbinger Institute
Buy Building Your Booming Business by David Mitchell on Amazon today
Visit BuildingYourBoomingBusiness.com to learn more about the book
Visit BoomMyBusiness.com to learn more about David and het his weekly business tips
Follow David Mitchell on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Winning the Long Game by Steve Krupp
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
5 Simple Ways Entrepreneurs Can Attract Customers
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>4 Common Reasons Why Startup Companies Fail You have a superb business idea. The question is – how do you know it will be a success? The answer is simpleRead More
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]]>You have a superb business idea. The question is – how do you know it will be a success?
The answer is simple – you don’t. And unless you try it out, you will never know it for sure. You need to take the step to find out whether your brilliant idea will transform into a successful business.
But before you take the step, be cautious.
The facts can be dampening – 8 out of 10 startups fail. But if you are aware of the common pitfalls, you can try to steer clear of them. Why exactly do startups fail? Often a combination of reasons works together and ultimately leads to failure.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
Let’s take a look at the most common reasons why startup companies fail:
The idea may be too small, and attract only a small niche market, in which case you won’t be able to attract investors. Or, it may be the solution to only a really frivolous problem, in which case you won’t get customers.
Another possibility is that the product or service you offer really isn’t necessary, but only an addition to whatever is already available. In each of these circumstances, the possibility of building a successful new business will remain a distant dream.
Tip: The best way to assess the potential of your idea is to present it to investors.
Perhaps you miscalculated how much you may need, or you spent more than you can afford, or you misjudged the time you will need to break even, or maybe it was some other reason. Whatever it is, it can spell doom for a startup.
Also, if you want to run it as a lifestyle business, you may not want to involve investors. But this strategy won’t work if you want to build a big business. Running out of cash can forestall any chance of success, and eventually lead to shutdown.
Tip: Plan your budget; and double it. Also, keep aside an emergency fund.
Put together a directionless leader, an unmotivated team, and no advisors – and you have the perfect recipe for disaster! A startup needs a team with all the components right; and one that knows how to manage a startup.
You need to come up with a management that understands how to build up a new business, a team that works together with the same vision, mission and ethics, and advisors who can help overcome the hurdles on the way.
Tip: Don’t take it all on yourself; it will go haywire if you have to stay away for a week.
Unless your startup involves an original invention, you have to worry about competition, even in the first phase. Be it selling pencils or managing yacht charters, many new businesses are outcompeted by the established ones.
Again, sometimes your product may be too complicated to use, or your service may really be unnecessary. And customers prefer the time-tested solutions to innovations. If there’s a gap in your strategy, your idea may never become a successful business.
Tip: Do thorough market research, especially about your competitors, in advance.
A startup may fail for any of these, or some other reason. And even if yours does, it’s no cause to think of it as a failure and regret your step. Even Edison failed 1000 times before he came up with the light bulb.
Instead, analyze why you failed, and learn from your mistake. It’s the only way to success.
How to Ruin A Business Without Really Trying by MJ Gottlieb
The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz
Zero To One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
The Startup Survival System by Kurt Won
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Lean Enterprise according to Jez Humble: Introduction In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise whereRead More
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]]>In this episode Jez Humble takes a deep dive into his book, Lean Enterprise where he uncovers how high performing organizations are able to innovate at scale.
In his book Humble sifts through case studies, principles, and patterns of very successful well-known companies providing you with an action guide to help you rethink how to run your business. The goal of the book is to teach you what it takes to implement the methodologies he presents, manage large-scale projects, create a non-traditional management style, and accelerate innovation.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who run a well-established organization that is having trouble adapting to changing market conditions and need a fast, innovative approach to scaling up.
I don’t think anyone has written a book that talk about how to transform enterprises that need to be able to win creating digital products in this environment where you have short product cycles. There are books about how to change culture, there are books about leadership, but there is no book that really ties all these things together in the context of building digital products for large enterprises.
This book is very dense and the first two chapters need to be read straight through. The rest of the book you can dip in and out where needed.
For me the real epiphany of the book is this idea of taking a scientific method and adopting it for product development and for process improvement.
We start off by talking about the fact that lean enterprise is the result of culture. Even though the book is about how to work in a domain of technology the point of technology is really to enable humans to collaborate more effectively and more rapidly. In an enterprise context it becomes really difficult because you got a large number of people with a wide variety of backgrounds who all have to work together in order to achieve a common purpose. And the question is how do we do that rapidly at scale? The answer to that comes from military doctrine. The book is primarily about how you create alignment at scale, how you enable everyone in the organization to make the best decision from the organizational point of view despite their limited knowledge.
The second chapter dives into the product cycle and the product development cycle and there are a number of well named models for the enterprise portfolio. This is increasingly important in the modern world where product development cycles are so short.
Part two of the book describes how to work in the explore domain where exploring a number of ideas knowing that most of them won’t be successful. This explores how to adopt the lean startup methodology in an enterprise context.
Part three of the book describes how to work in the domain where you have validated products and you need to actually exploit it and develop it at scale. The key part of exploiting is actually around driving down cost, improving quality, and improving value to customers and that demands a completely different approach. For that we need to pursue process improvement which means enabling the people doing the work to actually try out new ideas to experiment new ideas in terms of how to increase quality.
There is a piece on engineering practices because engineering practices are poorly understood. Most people are going into management in large companies not necessarily to really understanding how to work in the digital domain and how to build products where software is a competitive advantage. And so we spend a bunch of time discussing how to do that and how to take an experimental approach through product development.
The last part of the book is about how to create a culture of innovation. As an enterprise you can’t afford to hire the top of market people who have exactly the skills and behaviors that you want. You have to invest in developing your people so there is a whole section on growing a culture of innovation rather than taking shortcuts. We talk about financial management and how you can do budgeting, how to do IT in a way that creates a competitive advantage rather than being a cost center, and how to get started using a case study from the UK government digital service.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 05:19
“All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at the given time is a function of power and not truth.” –Unknown
I am a Vice President at Chef, a lecturer at UC Berkeley, and before Lean Enterprise I wrote Continuous Delivery. My background is in software engineering and I’ve worked in multiple industries, in multiple companies, helping organizations get better at delivering high quality valuable software products.
Lean Enterprise is about how you create organizations that are able to work in short development cycles, build products rapidly, and get feedback. And that requires us to change the way we think about portfolio management, financial management, culture, and pretty much everything else. All these things need to be a bit different in order to compete in this world where we have these very short product cycles.
Toyota Kata by Mike Rother
Buy Lean Enterprise by Jez Humble on Amazon today
Visit ContinuousDelivery.com to learn more about Jez and his books
Follow Jez Humble on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Exponential Organization by Salim Ismail
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Startup Survival System according to Kurt Won: Introduction In this episode Kurt Won reveals all the insights on his book, TheRead More
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]]>In this episode Kurt Won reveals all the insights on his book, The Startup Survival System, where he shares how a startup can thrive in the first 2 years of business.
In his book Won gives you a simple systematic approach to prioritizing your business, narrowing your focus, and increasing your results to ultimately keep your business from failing too early. The goal of the book is to help you prepare for the consequences of entrepreneurship, build a foundation for your startup, improve operations, drive more sales, and maximize profitability.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are ready to launch a new startup company and need an easy, actionable guide to help them get started.
The Startup Survival System is a very easy read and I’ve made it fun with very simple language for the reader to understand. I think the biggest difference that sets it apart is that I use survival in the wilderness as a metaphor for surviving as a startup which I think helps engage the reader throughout the book.
Because this book is a very simple read I suggest the reader read through the entire thing. I found that the more you read this book and answers the questions I give you the more you’ll get out of the book.
I would really want the reader to take action on the 5 C’s to complete confidence which I introduce in the book. This is a framework that having worked with so many people I have found really works. Learning this framework will allow you to help others on your team but also in your life to build their confidence which helps them to increase their productivity and also helps your business.
Just imagine that you are stuck in the wilderness all by yourself and without any tools. If this were really the case more than likely the first thing you would do is look for shelter or build shelter for yourself. I think this is also one of the things you need to do as a startup at the beginning. And chapter one is all about exploring ways for you to protect your business.
When you are starting up a business at some point you are going to experience some testing times and any entrepreneur can attest to that. And those times will test your spirit and also push you to the brink of nearly quitting your business. And so chapter two is really about getting clarity on where you are in your business and your bigger purpose other than making money. Because when the times are tough the thing that’s going to keep you in your business and doing what you are supposed to do is having a personal mission. And so in chapter two I will ask you questions to help you gain clarity on your purpose, your mission, and what’s really driving your desire to start a business or stay in business.
If I take you back into the wilderness, once you set up your shelter you need to find fresh water and fresh food to give you the energy to survive and find your way out. In business you need sales and cash flow to sustain all of the operations that happen on a day to day basis. In chapter three I share with you tips and also a proven process to help you to increase your sales more quickly and also make more money.
In chapter four we explore what to do in order to keep predators away from stealing your ideas, sales, and intellectual property. You will see that protecting your ideas can really help you create long-term wealth. If you are in a position right now where you have a very unique product or service that you don’t want people to steal than this chapter is really for you.
Once you protect your ideas you move on to chapter five which is called Surviving the Storm. I titled it that because no matter how things are going you are going to get the good times and also the bad times. In this chapter I share with you tips and strategies on how to deal with those rough times.
Chapter six is about what I call Tribal Survival. This chapter is about look at who is on your team, who you need to get on your team, and how to become and better leader.
Chapter seven is about taking the time to really look at the big picture and what all you have achieved.
In chapter eight I explore how to leave tracks for new customers to find you. I help the reader to get clear on how to establish the branding and also your marketing strategy.
Chapter nine will really help you to gain insights on how to put systems around your processes so it’s easy for you and your team to replicate the success that you’re having.
In chapter ten we look at the finance side. What happens to your money when it comes in to your business? Do you put some of that money away or does all of it get spent? In this chapter I help you to get clarity to better engage with your money flow on a weekly basis and ensure that you don’t get caught in what I call a cash trap.
In the final chapter I talk about the need to build a business in such a way that allows you to extract yourself from the business if you choose to do so.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 5:14
“Build a business that people can rely on, not a business that relies on you.” – Kurt Won
I was born and raised in South African and have been living over in the UK for the past 15 years. I am a multi award winning consultant for startups and small business owners. I am a speaker and now I’m an author. I’ve worked with over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners across 15 different countries to help increase sales and drive results in their business in a much quicker time.
My mission is to be able to help empower and support as many startups and existing small business owners as possible. Over the past five years I have worked with over 1,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners and I found that there are really so many people I can help with the amount of time that I have. I knew that writing this book would be a great way to help serve more people and make a bigger impact and help more startups survive and thrive in their first years of business.
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Buy The Startup Survival System by Kurt Won on Amazon today
Visit TheStartupSurvivalSystem.com to learn more about Kurt and his book
Follow Kurt Won on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Business in Blue Jeans by Susan Baroncini-Moe
Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder
Profit Hacking by Steven Daar
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Financial Mistakes That Devastate Startups
5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make With Marketing and Branding
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Fail Fast or Win Big according to Bernhard Schroeder: Introduction In this episode Bernhard Schroeder reveals his insights on his book, FailRead More
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]]>In this episode Bernhard Schroeder reveals his insights on his book, Fail Fast or Win Big, where he reveals how the right kind of risk and embracing fast failure can really pay off.
In his book Schroeder teaches you how to create a quick prototype of your product or service, develop a business model, test it repeatedly with customers, and continue to refine your business model. The goal of the book is to help you determine quickly whether your business idea is worth pursuing, needs new direction, or should be abandoned altogether.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are starting a brand new business and need help figuring out the best way to create a business model, test a product or service, and pinpoint any failure.
I think there are some great books and content out there on entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur who has built a billion dollar company and helped build multiple others and so I have a lot of context and experience. I wanted to give the reader a book that was full of rich content on how you can actually test something quickly and that’s the idea behind Fail Fast or Win Big. I’ve taken some of the best principles that have come out in the last five years and I put them all together in this book.
I designed the book to be read jumping in and jumping out but if you wanted to read the whole thing you could.
The main concept would be that you really weren’t born to do anything and you should do what you want. I wasn’t born to be an entrepreneur, I became one.
I am on a college campus and I am teaching college kids in 2008 how to write business plans and at the same time I am looking at what is happening with the recession. I am looking at the idea that it’s not about business plans anymore, it’s about moving faster. It takes too long to write a business plan. I have met people that have spent a year writing a business plan only to see someone else move into the market. So in chapter one I explain why we are at the end of business plans and what you have to do next.
In chapter two I introduce the lean model framework and the four elements. The four elements are customer truth, business model, lean resources, and rapid prototyping.
The title of chapter three says it all, Ideas Are Great but Business Models Rule.
In chapter four I get into another element of the framework which is lean resources and the chapter is titled Lean Resources, Less is More. This chapter explains what the lean resources are that are out there that you can leverage.
Chapter five is about rapid prototyping. I don’t know if there has been a better time in the history of the world for creating a company. In this chapter I explain why rapid prototyping is important and how you can test it with customers so that you can get the right feedback to know whether or not you have a good idea to move forward.
In chapter six I talk about a really critical element of the model which is the customer truth. Since I started my marketing career I believe that if you really want to understand the customer you have to meet them face to face. In this chapter I explain how you can get at customer truth and what are all the ways you can get it very cost effectively.
In chapter seven I talk about why we might not need BC’s in the future. I explain regular crowd funding and I explain the new crowd equity funding that the SCC is now getting ready to release the rules on. This chapter is titled Entrepreneurs have a New Investor, the Crowd and I honestly believe this is an amazing way to fund a small startup or to get a company started without giving up very much at all. I explain exactly how to go about it including how to create a crowd funding or a crowd equity campaign.
In chapter eight I talk about where I see opportunity today. In this chapter I explain what I think the top 10 to 15 opportunities are and how people can go after them.
In chapter nine I provide people with something they don’t have easy access to and that is the first two to three years of the back story of what top entrepreneurs did to make it.
And in chapter ten I sum it up and I talk about the steps people can take if they want to be an entrepreneur.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 4:57
“As an entrepreneur you are not in the business of writing business plans.” – Bernhard Schroeder
I am a director of Lavin Entrepreneurship Center at San Diego State University. I also teach in the entrepreneurship program and I was a career marketing guy who happened to build a billion dollar company with three other people and launch some amazing companies like Amazon and Yahoo.
After I built my marketing career and a billion dollar company I decided that none of that was motivating anymore and I wanted to somehow figure out a way to help other people have an amazing life. I decided to go back to a college campus and teach and as I was teaching I was asked to Speak at a Ted event. The topic at that event was Why Failing Fast is Great. The next day I got an e-mail from a publisher in New York who said he’d heard about the talk from a friend of his who attended and he wanted to see the power point because he thought it was a book. Before you know it he gave me feedback that this is the kind of thing that can help a lot of people and so I wrote the book.
Spin Selling by Neil Rackham
Buy Fail Fast or Win Big by Bernhard Schroeder on Amazon today
Visit BernieSchroeder.com to learn more about Bernhard and connect with him
Follow Bernhard Schroeder on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
How To Ruin A Business Without Really Trying by MJ Gottlieb
Selfish Scared and Stupid by Kieran Flanagan and Dan Gregory
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Relevant advice and tips:
5 Important Things That Every Entrepreneur Needs To Know About Starting a New Business
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Fail Fast or Win Big with Bernhard Schroeder appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
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