How to Hire Positive Employees for Your Business

No entrepreneur is an island. You were created to work with others in a positive environment.

Your business success depends on you attracting customers and employees with whom you work well together. Such cooperation challenges the familiar notions of achieving success by becoming a self-made person and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Despite its familiarity, such a notion is simply a myth. You’ve been the beneficiary of working with others since before you can remember.

Do you remember your mother and father getting up at two o’clock in the morning to feed you? Of course not. Even though it happened night after night for months, depriving your parents of much-needed sleep, these gracious acts of compassionate kindness your parents offered just because they loved you slip through your memory.

There are other gracious acts of cooperation others have done for you that similarly slip through. All of these cooperative acts combine to make you who you are today -- a unique human being capable of a positive workstyle.

Cooperating completely with others presupposes that you are incomplete alone, but complete with others. Sometimes, our ego gets in the way of understanding this concept. Part of the challenge for entrepreneurs is that we are really good at so many and varied tasks that we buy the lie that we can truly do it all. The truth is if we really want to make our dreams come true, we must redefine our egotistical reality of "I can do it all" to "There is something I missed."

One of the most essential ingredients of working positively and cooperatively with others is that how much you think you accurately perceive in life, there is something you miss -- or some subject that someone else knows more about than you do.

No matter which direction your business is going -- up or down -- you can use some help. The good news is you have it. The universe is designed to partner with you, to provide resources beyond your control for your business’s well-being, including relationships with others who can help you.

The key to leveraging these relationships is to become the kind of person that you want to attract into your business life. You should be someone you would want to do business with.

Consider these questions in shaping yourself to attract positive business partners and clients:

1. What are my core values, i.e., those character traits that I want to exhibit in my business relationships? What would my family members say are my core values?
   
2. What are my life priorities--those matters in life that I consider most important not just in word, but in work behavior as well? How do my calendar and bank statement reflect these priorities?
   
3. What is my unique contribution to make in the world through my business and how do I live into it daily?

Just as "birds of a feather flock together," you literally attract people with whom you share core values and life priorities. For example, if you conceive your business more positively, you will attract similar people with whom you can grow your business--and whom you can also help in their lives and businesses. Those who resonate on this frequency are drawn to you because of your common business life pitch.

Conversely, if your business life is more negatively grounded, you find people coming into your business--whether as customers/clients, employees/suppliers--who are more of a negative persuasion.

Do you ever find yourself complaining about your customers? They don’t pay their bills on time, or maybe they’re constantly trying to get something for nothing. Who attracted them to your business?

What about your employees? Ever hear yourself saying, "You just can’t find good help these days" or "Nobody wants to want work anymore"? Who hired these employees?

Now stop, and ask yourself: "How am I attracting these people? What is there about me that attracts them, that pitches them in my direction?"

One of the greatest challenges in creating a positive workstyle is understanding that like attracts like. These people onto whom you shift responsibility for your challenges are in your work life because you chose them. You attracted them by way of your business’s core values, your business priorities, and your business’s unique contribution.

Once you perceive your work life in a positive light, then, because you are created to cooperate completely, you begin to attract others to your team who share your positive direction. Those who choose to work positive will find their way to you.

The people around you--customers/clients, employees/employers, family/friends, and vendors/suppliers -- are there for you to lean on when the weight of doing business is too much for you to stand alone . . . and when isn’t it? These people are your team.

The article is taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222548

The Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes

It’s been nearly seven years since I posted Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes on this site. Looking back and reading the post again today, I think the list holds up very well. Still, I can’t resist making a few changes. So here is my revised version for 2012, incorporating what I wrote back then that still holds true.

1. Misunderstanding the purpose: It’s the planning that matters, not just the document. You engage in planning your business because planning becomes management. Planning is a process of setting goals and establishing specific measures of progress, then tracking your progress and following up with course corrections. The plan itself is just the first step; it is reviewed and revised often. Don’t even print it unless you absolutely have to. Leave it on a digital network instead.

2. Doing it in one big push; do it in pieces and steps. The plan is a set of connected modules, like blocks. Start anywhere and get going. Do the part that interests you most, or the part that provides the most immediate benefit. That might be strategy, concepts, target markets, business offerings, projections, mantra, vision, whatever. . . just get going.

3. Finishing your plan. If your plan is done, then your business is done. That most recent version is just a snapshot of what the plan was then. It should always be alive and changing to reflect changing assumptions.

4. Hiding your plan from your team. It’s a management tool. Use common sense about what you share with everybody on your team, keeping some information, such as individual salaries, confidential. But do share the goals and measurements, using the planning to build team spirit and peer collaboration. That doesn’t mean sharing the plan with outsiders, except when you have to, such as when you’re seeking capital.

5. Confusing cash with profits. There's a huge difference between the two. Waiting for customers to pay can cripple your financial situation without affecting your profits. Loading your inventory absorbs money without changing profits. Profits are an accounting concept; cash is money in the bank. You don't pay your bills with profits.

6. Diluting your priorities. A plan that stresses three or four priorities is a plan with focus and power. People can understand three or four main points. A plan that lists 20 priorities doesn't really have any.

7. Overvaluing the business idea. What gives an idea value isn’t the idea itself but the business that's built on it. It takes employees showing up every morning, phone calls being answered, products being built, ordered and shipped, services being rendered, and customers paying their bills to make an idea a business. Either write a business plan that shows you building a business around that great idea, or forget it. An idea alone does not a great business make.

8. Fudging the details in the first 12 months. By details, I mean your financials, milestones, responsibilities and deadlines. Cash flow is most important, but you also need lots of details when it comes to assigning tasks to people, setting dates, and specifying what's supposed to happen and who's supposed to make it happen. These details really matter. A business plan is wasted without them.

9. Sweating the details for the later years. This is about planning, not accounting. As important as monthly details are in the beginning, they become a waste of time later on. How can you project monthly cash flow three years from now when your sales forecast is so uncertain? Sure, you can plan in five, 10 or even 20-year horizons in the major conceptual text, but you can't plan in monthly detail past the first year. Nobody expects it, and nobody believes it.

10. Making absurd forecasts. Nobody believes absurdly high “hockey stick” sales projections. And forecasting unusually high profitability usually means you don’t have a realistic understanding of expenses.

10 Habits of Effective Startup Mentors

1. Always start by defining the fundamental idea behind a product or service:

What is the problem they are solving?

Who is the customer?

How they are solving the problem or meeting the need?

Make it as clear as possible, 1 sentence max.

2. Prioritize the startup’s biggest risks

You want teams to priorize their biggest 2 or 3 risks and the assumptions for each. The key is making sure the team is looking across all aspects of the business:

What is the business model? (Who pays for the product, how, and do they have money?)

What is the market size? Are their expectations of market size realistic?

Who is their competition and why are they better?

What are their guesses for customer acquisition?

Are their any technical risks to creating the solution?

3. Get practical on the tactics to empirically mitigate risks

For the identified “biggest risks”, drill into the specific tactics they will use to empirically validate a way to mitigate these risks. Ask yourself:

Will those tactics deliver useful data to validate or invalidate assumptions?

Can the tactics be streamlined in any way?

Can you come up with any other test-tactics that would benefit their process?

4. Use your network to find them potential customers

Think about how you can facilitate their tactics — this is especially important when the team needs to get to an unusual type of customer. Can you make an introduction and get them on the phone with someone? Are you friends with someone who could? External people often are happy to help.

5. Challenge, play devil’s advocate, and poke holes in arguments

Don’t shy away from tough questions. Force the team to stress-test their assumptions and stretch their thinking.

6. Let the team come to its own conclusions

Never put things forth as an answer or fait accompli. Do not hesitate to point out risks, competitors or precedents you have seen before, but make the team come to a conclusion themselves after reviewing their learning.

7. Less mentorship may be better

Rove around but be careful how you interrupt teams. You can often quickly tell if a team is struggling or busily productive with just a couple questions. If the former, let them execute. If they seem to be struggling, or haven’t gotten out of the building enough, then be more forceful.

8. Don’t spoon feed, keep feedback crisp

The teams have a lot to do in a short period of time, so manage your interaction so that it remains high-impact and efficient. Don’t be afraid to politely but firmly cut someone off who wants to spend a lot of time explaining their great solution and all the features.

You want to keep the team moving. Sometimes it makes sense to speak to team members individually or in smaller groups so that they can divide and conquer. Prioritize and break up your own mentoring as needed — you do not need to be comprehensive in one sitting.

9. Collaborate with other mentors

If you are feeling stuck, or want help coming up with more efficient tactics, don’t hesitate to pull in another mentor. No one has all the answers, and sometimes it can be really tricky to decide what advice to give. However, if you pull in another mentor, brief them first yourself and don’t make the team do the entire download process again.

Common instances when you might want a second opinion:

When a team struggles with a pivot/leap

When a team is internally conflicted on priorities

When your gut tells you that their tactics will be low-return, but you don’t have better ones coming to mind

10. Be a mentor, not a CEO

Remember that you are a mentor, not a team lead. Participants go through Lean Startup Machine as much for the process as anything. Reading about “lean startup” is fine and good, but this stuff only sinks in when you actually start to put the ideas into real practice. They might need to be pushed to get out of their comfort zone, but teach them to fish — don’t give them the fish.

Three financial resolutions that can benefit your business

Ringing in the new year with a few resolutions? As you make plans to eat more healthfully and finally run that 5K, it might also be a good time to set some business goals. While the best resolutions will vary from business to business, here are three key promises most companies should keep.

1. Tune into 2011.
Don't just close your books and kiss 2011 goodbye. If you hit speed bumps or found new opportunities over the last 12 months, that may be an indication of where your company should turn its attention now, says Michael Carney, founder of MWC Accounting in Chicago. Did you struggle with cash flow management? Find a new area for growth? Study the actions that led to such occurrences and see if you can avoid or duplicate them to make your business stronger.

2. Look for savings.
Sticking with the status quo can cost you: January is the best time to trim budgetary fat, says Richard Stone, a principal in the Valhalla, N.Y., office of national accounting firm MBAF-ERE CPAs. Find better rates on insurance, telephone service, supplies and other business expenses. Cancel unused service contracts or subscriptions. It's a tough market out there for refinancing, but interest rates are low, Carney adds. Investigate refinancing real estate or other loans.

3. Find your replacement.
Succession planning is an area that is "widely overlooked by small-business owners," Stone says. The new year provides a great opportunity to address the next generation of your business, regardless of when you plan to retire officially. Once you identify a successor, Stone says, you can craft a plan to transfer business ownership incrementally. That way, you afford yourself the greatest flexibility and tax advantages.

Startup Mentor is a place for all the Startups to find their virtual mentors. The forum is dedicated to giving ideas to the aspiring entrepreneurs and the first generation entrepreneurs. If you fee that you can contribute to the community of entrepreneurs by providing your articles, opinions, analysis and case studies, please send an email to startupmentor@gmail.com

Is an Office Vampire Draining Your Productivity?

You don't need to go trick-or-treating to see vampires. Odds are good that they're in your office, and they're ruining your business life.

As a consultant on workplace morale issues, I often find that bad morale stems from one or two workers in the office who have a poor attitude about the place. Office vampires drain valuable time and energy you could be using to run your business, or simply enjoy your life.

If you have a worker who is so frustrating to deal with that you find yourself thinking of the situation while you're spending time with your family, or hanging out with a friend, you may have a vampire in your office.

Luckily, there are tools you can use to deal with these vampires. Think of it as a vampire-slayer utility belt. Here's what you can bring to bear on them:

Pull out the garlic. Redirect the office vampire when he or she expresses something negative by changing the flavor of the subject right away. "So how about those Atlanta Braves?" OK, maybe don't talk about the Braves right now, but you get my point. Change the subject abruptly.

Hold up a mirror. In the same way that vampires can't see themselves in mirrors, most of the problems expressed by the office vampires don't turn out to be there when a mirror is held up to them. Whatever they thought was negative doesn't actually exist. The mirror actually involves recasting or reframing the conversation, acknowledging what was said, but then challenging the opinion with a more positive point of view. They might complain the weather is getting cold, but you can respond that you're looking forward to hunting season, or the holidays.

Pull out a UV flashlight. I know it can be tough, but sometimes you need to get rid of the vampire. I actually find this is hard for many business owners because they try to empathize with the vampire in their midst. But you're running a business, not a self-help group. Don't let the vampire waste your time, energy, or attention. Instead let him or her go in the quickest and most humane way possible.

Move quickly to ward off your vampires. I often find their negativity easily spreads. If you keep them around, your company could turn into a vampire clan. Then you'll really be in trouble.

know this is cliché, but you actually could be doing the vampire a favor by letting him or her go. I often find that vampires act the way they do because they simply aren't in a job where they can make a unique contribution that satisfies them.

I once worked with a broadcasting group where the office manager micromanaged everything and everyone. She even busted people's chops for taking too many pens and paper clips. The company managers finally made the call and decided to help her find something else.

She went back to school and is now a minister. She's actually an excellent preacher and loves her new life. She went from making everybody miserable, to inspiring them.

What success stories will you tell from slaying the vampires around your office?

Tips on Performance Review

Which is worse: receiving a performance review, or giving one? At least with the latter you have some control. When you’re the one conducting the review, try doing these three things to make it a productive experience.

• Set expectations early. Make employee-evaluation practices clear at the beginning of the year with individual performance planning sessions.
• Set the right tone. Everyone hates the “feedback sandwich”: compliments, criticism, then more niceties. Deliver a positive message to your good performers by mainly concentrating on their strengths and achievements. Confront poor performers and demand improvement.
• Avoid money talk. If possible, don’t mention compensation during the review; but if you must, divulge the salary information at the start of the conversation.

Startup Mentor is a place for all the Startups to find their virtual mentors. The forum is dedicated to giving ideas to the aspiring entrepreneurs and the first generation entrepreneurs. If you fee that you can contribute to the community of entrepreneurs by providing your articles, opinions, analysis and case studies, please send an email to startupmentor@gmail.com

Are You a Born Entrepreneur?

One reason is that our genes influence the decision to start a business. I don't mean that figuratively; I mean it scientifically. With colleagues at Kings College in London and the University of Cyprus, I have been investigating how genes affect entrepreneurship for more than five years. Through studies of twins, and more recently, through molecular genetics laboratory research, we have found that genes influence whether people start businesses, are self-employed, or have owned their own companies. Our research shows that the same genetic factors influence the tendency both to see business opportunities and to start companies, as well as how much money self-employed people earn.

At this point you may be wondering how researchers could determine that there's a genetic component to entrepreneurship. It's actually pretty straightforward.

With twins, it's a matter of comparing the choices of the two siblings. Identical twins share the same genetic composition, while fraternal twins have half in common. If pairs of identical twins make more similar choices, such as starting a business, than pairs of fraternal twins, then genetics must affect the choices, as long as a few scientific assumptions hold. In the molecular genetics research, we examine the different versions of genes people have and see if entrepreneurs are statistically more likely to have one version over another.

There are probably many ways genes influence whether or not we become entrepreneurs, but in the twins research, we have found initial evidence that one route clearly is through our personalities. The same genes that affect whether we are extroverted, open to experience, disagreeable and sensation seeking also influence our decision to start our own business. Furthermore, the same genes that influence the tendency to be open to experience also affect the tendency to identify new business opportunities.

Before you start worrying that this research will usher in the world portrayed in the science- fiction thriller Gattaca, we are a long, long way from any practical application of these findings. That will come only after many years of replicating the findings.

Moreover, there's no single gene or even set of genes for entrepreneurship. Our genes influence broader categories of behavior, such as whether we do things that involve a great deal or small amount of novelty. While entrepreneurship might involve pursuing novelty, so do many other human activities.

Further complicating the issue, hundreds of genes probably influence whether or not we become entrepreneurs. Thus far in the molecular genetics research, we've found initial evidence for just one of them--a version of a gene for a receptor for the brain chemical dopamine.

Geneticists have speculated that sensation-seeking people have versions of dopamine receptor genes that require more stimulating experiences in order to produce a given amount of dopamine in the brain. To get the higher level of stimulation, those people are more likely to engage in sensation seeking activities, including starting businesses.

While your genes influence whether or not you become an entrepreneur, experience matters, too. Genes don't determine anything you do; they merely influence what you do in the same way your life experiences do. Just as receiving a financial windfall increases your odds of starting a business, so too does having a particular genetic makeup. But just as some people without a penny to their name start companies, so too can people without the genetic make-up associated with entrepreneurship.

While the research so far is limited, it does mean that when you describe someone as a born entrepreneur, you really are onto something.