Entrepreneurship Tips — Business Tips

There are many factors, and it is too complex to offer a standard answer. You need to hire a consultant that is a CEO/Founder with lots of experience to discuss things for 1–2 hours. One way around this is to set hourly rates for the founders and track time to allocate it according to contribution. Shares are earned with seat equity. A simple spreadsheet with monthly invoices submitted by everyone is easy to do. There are plenty of software solutions for this too, but likely best only when it gets complicated with many founders. People and Founders are never “equal”...

Ideas are worthless. And it would be totally legal for them to steal them. Maybe you are confusing patents, copyrights and other intellectual property. An “idea” has no legal protections. And you can be pretty sure you are not the first one to have any given idea too. And if anyone can steal a single “idea” and replicate your business, it is a very bad business. What you need is lots more including many things like a business model, target market, product/service and hundreds of ideas. Companies need a team, plan and many protectable ideas. These are protectable intellectual property...

It all starts with a strong, documented values statement that is taken very seriously at every stage. This means enforcing it and using it as a basis for reviews, bonuses, and promotions in a visible way. Here are more key component of a process that will work: Training for employees in this and your company's value proposition. Including ethical behavior for long-term, mutual benefit. A win-win relationship with customers, not a transactional one. A culture of customer service. Employees are not allowed to bad mouth customers. That is attitude and can run off the rails if not limited. Use video...

Startups should never, ever, never compete with big companies. They must offer something different. “Differentiated” is the most important word in designing a startup market entry strategy. Look at this diagram and decide how you can adjust your company to be in the top right quadrant. Without that you have no chance of surviving, never mind profiting, because you will compete with companies 100 to 1,000,000 times larger than you with already developed marketing and sales channels and huge budgets.     Only these kinds of companies will attract investors (needed to grow) and top employees because they know the...

I have a free 1-hour course on the skills that must be possessed by the senior team collectively. This can be viewed here: The personality traits that a strong entrepreneur must have include: Tenacity and the ability to ignore naysayers when they have deeper understanding of the problem the company is trying to solve Vision - The ability to see the future trend they are either creating or trying to leverage Intelligence - The critical thinking skills to properly weigh the many factors that are needed for most business decisions Leadership - The ability to convince others to follow them...