Cash for Starting Green

The California Clean Tech Open is offering $50,000 in cash for the winning business model related to green transport, renewable energy, water management, energy efficiency, or smart power. The competition is an opportunity for green entrepreneurs to develop a winning business plan in return for a 'start-up in a box.' The package includes more than just cash. The winner will receive office space, accounting services, PR services, legal services and mentorship.

Check out the competition website: http://www.cacleantech.com/index.shtml?page=index&mode=0

Here again, make the world a better place for people and money will take care of itself. Just ask the Google guys.

Work

After meeting with several entrepreneurs and leaders, I have found one common thread. Each has their different management styles and ways of growing business, but each of them works exceptionally hard. This may seem like a given, but over and over their stories included how they outworked their peers consistently and take pride in outworking people.

The first key to working exceptionally hard is finding something that motivates you to work that all the time. For an entrepreneur starting and growing a business, you should ask yourself "am I working exceptionally hard today?" That is to say, are you consistently working harder and smarter than your peers and your competition? If you are, then most likely you have the results to prove it.

I found this very interesting article in Ramit Sethi's blog, www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com. It explains how seven top executives and leaders work.

http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/how_i_work/frameset.exclude.html

Bill Gates

In Bill Gates book, Business at the Speed of Thought, he sends a clear message.

"How you gather, manage, and use information [in business] will determine if you win or lose."

Gates gives numerous examples to validate the fact that in today's competitive markets it is vital to have a steady and efficient flow of information. Firms need this information in order to deliver constant learning and feedback to their teams. For many firms information is channeled to the executive team then percipitates down the chain. But Gates argues that while middle managers are often given less information they are the ones that require the most.

Gates asks the following question to diagnose your firm's information flow:

"Do you have the information flow that enables you to answer the hard questions about what your customers and partners think about your products and services, what markets you are losing and why, and what your real competitive advantage is?"

Overall the book is an insightful read and the ideas are easily applicable to your firm.

The Customer

Consider this way of doing business:

After becoming the president of Scandanavian Airlines Systems, Jan Carlzon led the firm from a loss of $17 million to a profit of $54 million in one year. How? He turned the organization chart upside down. He put people who dealt with the customers in charge of the company. The rest of the employees on the upside-down organization chart worked for those who dealt with the customers.

Jack Welch thought

I have adapted the following thought from an interview with Jack Welch, retired CEO of General Electric.

As an entrepreneur, early on the majority of your job function might be technical. At this point it is about you creating and serving different roles to make things work. But as soon as you hire a team and are a manager of people, it is imperative to recognize that your work is about the people you manage. In a growing start-up, you must smoothly transition yourself from a technical or do-it-all role, to focusing significant energy on building the people in your team, rewarding the performers and creating / maintaing candor in your firm's culture.

The interview with Welch is phenomenal, go to http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/audiovideo.html and find it towards the bottom of the page.

Rebel for a Day

I read the following in Worthwhile magazine, about successful entrepreneur Chip Conley who built a hotel empire. The subject is creating cool companies with diversity. One idea mentioned by Anita Sharpe is;

"Once a month, create a 'rebel for a day' program. Choose your more offbeat staffers during the first few months to get this program off on the right foot. The only rule of this program is that the rebel is charged with spending all day breaking the rules. The rebel is vested with the responsibility of coming up with at least a dozen radical changes she thinks ought to be implemented in the company"

What do you want to do?

While reading Juliet Erickson's book, The Art of Persuasion, I thought of the following. As an entrepreneur it is useful to make a list of three to five things that you want to do every day. It shouldn't necessarily have to do with your career. The exercise can take five minutes or it can take a week depending on how much consideration you put into it. An example from my list is "study another language for 30 minutes each day." The point is that if your entrepreneurial idea does not relate in any way to what you wrote on the list of things you want to do everyday then it might be time to rethink. For me, several good ideas came out of constructing the list because it clued me into what I want to be doing each day that is not career related.

Ease of use

Another CEO made the following point. As an entrepreneur during the intial phases (and throughout) of growth in your business consider; "how easy is it to do business with my company?" From the end user to your partners, ease of use must be continually monitored in order to garner and retain customers and partners that will speak highly of you.

CEO thoughts

While speaking with a successful founder / CEO the other day, I learned something that might seem obvious but is seldom accomplished. As a firm's founder you are there to communicate a clear vision to your managers, so take care to enunciate the vision well. Then empower the managers to play to peoples strength's in order to execute your vision. Don't let your managers worry about solving people's weaknesses, instead work hard to figure out and play to employee's strengths.

Meaning

Perhaps the 'stickiest' lesson gained from Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Guy Kawasaki, in his recent book, The Art of the Start, is to "make meaning." Increasingly I find attractive companies that "make meaning." That is, they make the world a more inspiring and fun place to live. Inevitably, these firms increase the quality of life for their end user which makes people smile. Such an idea presents a good benchmark to measure whether your entrepreneurial idea is worthy. Simply, does it make the world a better place?

Why blog?

I created this blog to help people sift through the massive amounts of information regarding the subject of entrepreneurship. Everyday, I read, listen, talk to someone and learn something new about becoming a successful entreprenuer. Teach Me Entrepreneurship is a journey for recent grads (me) to old business veterans; I hope the following thoughts help you build something great.