Entrepreneurship Tips — Business Tips

There are too many to list individually, but most come from having someone with experience. People often confuse smart with experienced and think they can do anything new well. Science and logic says this is not possible with anything complex. Few things are as complex as entrepreneurship. Hardly anyone would read a book on flying and hop in a plane alone to fly it. Or try to climb Mount Everest alone. But everyone thinks they can build a new business for some strange reason. As a result, we have an 85% failure rate of new businesses. Ones with coaches and...

I see the question “What one quality must an entrepreneur have?” and I never answer it because it is a dumb question. Listing one would be imprudent, as any entrepreneur needs many qualities to be successful. No one will ever make it on a single quality, and I would not want to mislead people. Here is my list of several that I believe are all necessary, not optional, to create a significant business: Raw intellect to do critical thinking and analysis so they can make data driven decisions Management experience to hire, fire, coach and manage people. I do not...

I would not say they are “In vogue” at all. They have always been a fundamental building block of good management. Recently the term OKRs has become more common because it has been used and promoted by some VCs, Google, Intel and other successful companies. However, OKR is almost identical to Management By Objective (MBO) that was created in the 1960s by Peter Drucker, The Father of Management. This is a classic management principle that any professional manager should understand, which most business schools fail to teach well. It is the “Blocking and tackling” of management that cannot be ignored. Sometimes...

I wrote an eBook to answer this exact question, title The Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail and How to Avoid Them. It is based on some research. You can download it free here: top20 I have also created a 3-part video course here reviewing this question from the perspective of what learning and tools are required to avoid these twenty mistakes called The Entrepreneur's Journey here. How to Raise Millions for Any Company - Online Video Course Bob Norton is a long-time Serial Entrepreneur and CEO with four exits that returned over $1 billion to investors. He has trained, coached and advised...

And what to really look for when hiring Age should never be a factor. Experience, or years doing that exact job, is a big  factor. Of course, there is often a correlation between experience and age. Some people continue to learn for life, while others stop learning all together at a young age.  So, you are asking the wrong question, really.  When hiring there are 100+ variables, and you should always hire for these, with age not really mattering, except maybe for exotic dancers. Here are some factors I think are far more important: Raw intelligence and curiosity that drives...