paulsponcia.com

This is a re-post from a blog post written by Helen Coster:

Fifty-three billion smackers. That’s how much telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu, the wealthiest human on the planet, is worth by Forbes’ latest exhaustive count. (Actually, the tally was $53.5 billion—when you’re dealing in 10 digits, every decimal place counts.)

Those kinds of numbers can’t help but make you think: What exactly does it take to amass that kind of wealth? More important, do you have it?

“People who are very successful have an incredible sense of optimism,” says Joan Kane, a Manhattan psychologist who treats many a high-powered executive. “They don’t have the sense of limitations that most people have. There’s no limit to their capacity to achieve and keep going. Age and family commitments don’t deter them.”

Unbounded optimism. Insatiable need to win. These are but two characteristics of the stratospherically wealthy. There are many more.

Self-Assessment: Are You Born To Be A Billionaire?

It takes serious guts to abandon the comforts of an office, a two-week paycheck and a decent health care package to start a small business, let alone build an empire. Billionaires have a confidence bordering on arrogance that checks their fear and doubt—even as the bets grow larger and more complicated. Put another way, they have an uncanny ability to shrug off failure.

“Highly successful entrepreneurs view failure as a way to gather data,” says psychologist David Ballard, head of the American Psychological Association Health Workplace Program. “That’s how they learn. It’s part of the process instead of being the end of road.”

Do you have billionaire DNA and just don’t know it yet? Before you set off on a course for prodigious wealth (and risk ruining your life in the process), ask yourself 13 hard questions, inspired by Ballard, Kane and executive psychologist Debra Condren, who has worked with the likes of 3M,Chevron and Hewlett-Packard. Here are just a few (for the complete list, see our slideshow:

Why Go Big At All?

Mapping out your long-term goals for the business is critical before you decide to kick growth into high gear. Aiming to sell out in a few years? Fine. Suffused with competitive desire? Okay. Just want to be left alone to trick out your product, with little care for the bottom line? Stay small.

Can You Tolerate and Manage Ambiguity?

Successful entrepreneurs can see through a jungle of conflicting data. The chief operating officer might want to expand into Asia, but the chief marketing officer thinks the move is premature. “There’s no obsessing over irrelevant details,” says Kane. “Highly successful people have a laser focus and the ability to compartmentalize.” If ambiguity doesn’t grind you to a halt, then you might have what it takes to go big.

Are You Willing To Make Tough Decisions For The Growth Of The Company?

Sure, your sister and college roommate helped launch your business, but they may grow less useful as the business outgrows them. If you’re not comfortable supplanting (or firing) them, stay small.

Do You Like Speaking In Public?

Companies of any significant size need a public face. Entrepreneurs who thrive on public performances—weekly meetings, shareholder gripe sessions, even television interviews—have an easier time than those who prefer to stay out of the spotlight. If public speaking isn’t your forté but you still want to grow, find a confident substitute who can sell your story. (See also: “Top Tips From 28 Public Speaking Pros.”)

Are You A Consensus Builder?

In most cases, the bigger your business, the more input you need from those around you. That means being willing and able to marshal consensus. Entrepreneurs with a my-way-or-the-highway mentality should think about staying small.

Can You Delegate?

The bigger your business, the less time you’ll have to interact with your employees. Clearly you can’t know what’s going on in every department all the time. If you can’t delegate, forget about growing.

Can You Deal with Isolation?

Being a billionaire can be lonely. “Friends” appear out of nowhere, and authentic relationships are harder to develop. Balanced billionaires can sniff out parasites and cultivate a loyal inner circle of people they trust and enjoy.

Chasing billionaire status—and not courting misery along the way—is as much about knowing thyself as it is about knowing how to nab new customers or manage inventory. Who knows? Maybe a modest $100 million would be a better fit.

This is the most elite special forces team, arguably, in the world. So, this author wonders what does it take and what can we learn from them. Here is the article and a link:

In a previous post, I speculated about the books that publishers might publish after the bin Laden operation. On my short list was a book about the Navy SEALs Team Six, the elite, special ops team that killed Osama bin Laden. Turns out a few publishers already have rushed Navy SEAL books in their pipeline into publication.

SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper, by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin (St. Martins May 2011), chronicles Howard E. Wasdin’s life and experiences inside Navy SEAL Team Six where he was their best sniper and a veteran of many combat missions.  A major portion of the book chronicles Wasdin’s service during the savage and ultra-violent urban combat of Mogadishu, Somalia, where Wasdin fought during the battles chronicled in the film and book Black Hawk Down and suffered severe gunshot wounds in both of his legs.

The book narrates in Wasdin’s voice his rough childhood, his ambition to join the Navy SEALs and his combat experiences.  The book offers details about the ruthless and grueling selection process of becoming a special forces operative.  I enjoyed the combat narrative, but read the book to learn more about the training, performance, and leadership culture of SEAL Team Six, a unit held in awe even by other members of US Special Forces.

What does it take to develop human performance that excels in the most dangerous and unstable conditions? How do you find and evaluate the best of the best for missions that can’t afford to fail? I came away with these five conclusions:

1. Developing elite performers means ruthless competition, and most aspirants will lose. As Wasdin progresses through basic training, underwater demolition, SEAL training, and Team Six finishing school, very few trainees endure to graduation. There is no favoritism.  There are no favors.  Instructors deploy little subjective judgment about who survives.  As the men are pushed to the limit of physical failure and injury, they can opt to “ring the bell” and leave the program.  Hundreds do so.  Even those who manage to stick through a course or training can be kicked out if they later fail to meet the metrics.  ”A number of the racehorses [fastest around the obstacle course] were the biggest crybabies,” Wasdin and Templin write. “They’d probably been number one much of their lives, and now when they had their first taste of adversity — BUD/S– style–they couldn’t handle it.  What the hell is wrong with these prima donnas?”

2. Each member must be totally confident in his/her ability to fulfill the mission. Members of Navy SEAL Team Six and similar units not only out-perform their peers consistently on the course and in operations, but have no doubt about their ability to do so.  To overcome a series of highly exhausting goals in a complex environment, elite team members simply have to believe they will succeed at the end: “In psychology this belief is called self-efficacy.  Even when the mission seems impossible, it is the strength of our belief that makes success possible,” Wasdin and Templin note.   This trait is seen in Wasdin’s battlefield performance in Somalia, where he continued fighting despite nearly losing his leg until shock set in–not because he was brave, but because he believed he could not be stopped.

3. Performing at a high level means being able to make snap decisions, often with limited information. Wasdin recounts how the length and intensity of SEALs training, and the diverse field experience of SEALs Team Six members, gives them the mental clarity to make decisions and improvise under fire, when younger soldiers, even Army Rangers–often fall back on what they’ve been told, even when there are lives on the line.

4. Even superior performers will fail without learning humility and humanity. Wasdin makes clear his most profound experiences arrived after he’d arrived as a Team Six member.  In a number of situations, he came to realize that he shared a common humanity with other combatants, with citizens in foreign lands, and members of the military far below him in rank and prestige.  During Desert Storm, he saw and recognized vulnerability in the starving faces of enlisted Iraqi military men, his enemy.  In Somalia, he disobeyed orders to help a young Somali boy with a gangrenous leg–and recognized in an old man working for the militia, a victim of circumstances to be spared.  These moments mattered because they improved his judgment, not just his humanity.

5. Great warriors eventually retire, and get a chiropractor’s degree. I loved the final section of the book where we see Wasdin cope with transition to civilian life, experience a variety of humbling jobs, learn how to be a Dad, remarry and become a loving husband, and find the job of his dreams–as a chiropractor–because he wants to help people.   Even those legendary Team Six operatives who raided bin Laden will someday leave the service and need new skills, and a new start in civilian life.   Wasdin wants us to remember that ultimately Navy SEALs are people, not superheros.

(Source: bit.ly)

I have to say as a small business owner I do not feel this way. I’m not bullish, like we have people beating our doors down to do business, but I’m not so downbeat either. We, myself and my business partners, are looking at unique ways to grow and invest in our business - and to find unique merger or acquisition opportunities, in and out of our sector. This is a good time to buy, integrate and build. 

I respect Jeff Cornwall a ton. I’m not sticking my head in the sand and not accepting reality, but I’m also not going to buy into more pessimism. Instead, let’s be cautiously optimistic and wise as we develop plans to grow our businesses. This is a great time to grow because it requires you do it wiser, leaner, cheaper and more creatively than ever before.

(Source: drjeffcornwall.com)

http://www.bnet.com/blog/harvard/harvard-mbas-bit-by-startup-bug/11467

I am starting a series of Leadership Lessons from Andy Stanley. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Andy as a leader and a communicator. While his primary leadership role is in a church his gifts extend well beyond into all realms of leadership.

Today we are starting with assumptions. I would suggest listening to Andy’s podcast and following along in the series. This can be found on in the Apple iTunes store under “Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast” - Now for the notes:

The Role of Assumptions in an Organization:

Remember, assumptions work underneath the surface, therefore as a leader we have to work to first:

• Identify the underlying assumptions in your organization
• Bring underlying assumptions into light with your team
• Align them with your organizations plans, goals and rocks

In the process you MUST keep this phrase in mind:

“The assumptions a team has held the longest or most deeply are likely to become its undoing”

One of the best ways to identify your underlying assumptions is to ask this question, which is a question Andy Grove (the founder and former CEO of Intel) asked his team: “If we got kicked and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do? Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in and do it ourselves?”

Will you ask this question? Many times we won’t because ALL of us are emotionally in love with the way we do things. Even though the way your are doing things  may not even be working, you love it anyhow! We are all guilty of this.

So, then ask yourself “What if someone with fresh eyes and no emotional attachment walked in, what would they do different and why don’t we do it instead?” The answer is because long after our methods are ineffective we stay emotionally attached.

Next Step: Ask yourself these two questions:

1. What is in decline in our organization?
2. We are you manufacturing energy around something in decline?

Once you ask those three questions (What if someone else looked at it, and the two above) you will begin to unearth and be able to start to evaluate all of your underlying assumptions.

Keep in mind the danger of these assumptions - they are usually those things that are driving our decisions and we don’t even know it anymore.

Once you have taken these steps, next you have to:

1. Acknowledge what’s not working.
2. Own up to why you aren’t willing to do anything about it.
3.  Next, actually go do something about it!

Final thoughts:

Anything you created you fall in love with and therefore you will naturally extend its usefulness. Therefore, instead of falling in love with what you created, fall in love with the mission and vision of your organization and don’t go beyond infatuation with your own ideas. 

Anonymous: hello how do i start a small business with no money

Well, that’s a loaded question. Typically to start a business it takes some capital, very few are built without it. I would look to the Small Business Administration first, and then friends and family. The key is to have an idea you are passionate about, the ability to articulate how you will monitize and a willingness to sacrifice.

This years Mayoral race is one of the most pivotal in years, regardless of where you live. Knoxville is at a tipping point and the next mayor is going to tip the scale one way or another. Regardless of where you lean it’s important to be:

• Aware
• Educated
• Informed
• Involved

Read a little about two of the candidates, Mark Padgett and Madeline Rogero:

Mark: http://bit.ly/lxxYyy

Madeline: http://bit.ly/lPKOsY

This is from Michael Hyatt’s Blog. Excellent interview:

In this 10-minute interview, Hyatt talks to him about his most recent book How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. Hyatt asked him five questions:

1. In the book, you talk about “markers” that demonstrate when a company is moving into “Hubris Born of Success” (chapter 1 in the book). Are there also markers that demonstrate when an individual is moving into ego?
2. If humility is so critical to sustained success, what happens if an organization’s primary leader doesn’t have it? Can the organization succeed or is it doomed?
3. Can a company diagnose itself in terms of the five stages of decline or does it take someone from outside the organization to do it?
4. Since greatness can be twenty or so years in the making, what are the markers that tell you whether or not you are on-track?
5. How do leaders help their organizations acknowledge progress, so they keep getting more of the behaviors that lead to sustained success?

Link to it and listen in.

(Source: michaelhyatt.com)

Being an entrepreneur, being a CEO, being around other CEO’s and having worked with other CEO’s I find this to be an important blog post from Ben Horowitz

“By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it, and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.

At risk of violating the sacred rule, I will attempt to describe the condition and prescribe some techniques that helped me. In the end, this is the most personal and important battle that any CEO will face.”

Timely and well written thoughts on buying an #iPad2 from @MichaelHyatt

http://michaelhyatt.com/three-questions-you-should-ask-before-you-buy-an-ipad-2.html

I’m still thinking through this.

Check out CSK @ http://www.csktech.com

Being an entrepreneur is rad. Running a business, leading people is the best job in the world. Why? For a lot of reasons, You make a difference, you influence lives, you cast vision, you create hope, you inspire, you motivate, you teach others to do the same, you have accountability to results, you get to create legacy of hope and change, and so much more. 

I agree with this article, right now is the greatest time - but so was last year, and 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Right now is the best time to do whatever it is you want to do and love. Fear is an illusion. There is never a “bad” time and there is never the “best” time singly, it is simply when you are ready to make the leap and go for it. I do think it’s easier when you are young, less attachment, less risk, less holding you back and you are more idealistic and usually naive’ - that is all good.

So, go do it!

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-now-is-a-great-time-to-be-a-young-entrepreneur-2011-2

Great blog by Jeffrey Bussgang:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/should_i_become_an_entrepreneu.html

Read this article if you are a business owner, entrepreneur or business leader.

http://www.inc.com/articles/2011/01/obama-orders-review-of-small-business-regulations.html