Reinvigorate Your Business to Grow It

According to Patricia Ryan Madson, author of "Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up," an effective way to improve your business to take a fresh look at what and how you are doing in your business. Learn to work with situations that used to be interpreted as mistakes in a new light. Improv consultants can help alter a work environment by creating novel situations and encouraging individuals to react in new ways. This addition of humor and decrease of the fear of making mistakes can help reduce tension in the workplace. Ms. Madson and other improv consultants, including a team out of Portland, Ore., called On Your Feet (www.oyf.com), are hoping to create "a culture of yes." Developing a culture of yes can allow entrepreneurs to consider ideas that they previously may have discarded. Often "happy mistakes" can occur when one idea opens the door to another pathway of thinking. Robert Poynton, a co-founder of On Your Feet said "if anything, we know rather less about what is coming next, and how it will affect us, than our ancestors did," in "A Turtle and a Guitar Case: Improvisation and the Joys of Uncertainty." The On Your Feet site also refers to a "cool mistake," something seemingly negative that has a positive outcome when interpreted in a different light. As all business owners know, even the best made plans can fail. According to Ms. Madson, "improvisers avoid spinning their wheels because they see quickly what isn't working, or simultaneously, what might be successful that didn't occur to them at first. Improvisers, by definition, take risks and make mistakes, lots of them, but that's what leads them in fresh directions." Ms. Madson acknowledges that this change away from structured planning can be difficult; however, she suggests that this method can still help your business move forward. Mike Kwatinetz, a venture capitalist who is co-founder and general partner at Azure Capital Partners in Palo Alto, embraces improvisational thinking as a way to get companies moving. This way you are reacting to what is happening around you and making appropriate changes and improvements.

Build a stronger business by letting go of the future.

Understand First In Order to Motivate Yourself and Others

According to Parker-Pope, in "In You Find the Motivation, Exercise Follows", in The New York Times, a Consumer Reports survey found that 40% of individuals who own home exercise equipment use then less than they expected. This is a massive population, considering consumers spend an estimated $4 billion on home exercise equipment, yearly. The purchase of home exercise equipment appears to influence whether people start an exercise regime, but research suggests that those with home exercise equipment are less likely to stick with an exercise program, over time. These studies are showing that ownership of personal is not the most important factor in sticking with an exercise plan; rather, self-efficacy is more influential. Self-efficacy is one's true belief that they have the ability to achieve their goals. The journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine reported that individuals who scored high on measures of self-efficacy were "nearly three times as likely to be exercising after a year as those with lower self-efficacy scores, whether or not they owned an exercise machine." Your ability to meet your own expectations was also shown in influence whether you stuck to your exercise plan.

Research has shown that individuals often fail to take these factors into account when they embark on a new exercise plan. David M. Williams, assistant professor at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, suggests the following to help increase your chance of sticking with an exercise plan:

• work out with friends or family members
• master an exercise
• work with someone who motivates you (ex. a personal trainer)

These changes to your exercise plan can increase your confidence and improve your chance of continuing it. Along this line, Ravi Dhar, director of the Yale Center for Customer Insights and a professor of marketing and psychology, suggests that "'most goals we set for ourselves tend to be unrealistically high.'" Therefore, when one purchases a home exercise machine, they tend to focus only on the positive without taking the barriers into account, such as giving up spending time with friends or on the Internet. In a study of undergraduates, those who were guided in making decisions based in the reality of life were willing to spend less money for home exercise equipment, as they understood the disparity in their expectations and what they would more likely accomplish. It is important to understand the difference of an ideal setting and the actual life that you live. Kurt A. Carlson, assistant professor at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, clarifies that "we're not telling people to stop buying treadmills. The question is how to get the right people to buy them. Everyone else should recognize they don't have the motivation, and take the money and use it on a personal trainer or something else that's going to get them motivated."

Build a stronger business by setting realistic expectations.

Avoid Looking for Excuses

Do you find yourself always looking for an excuse when something goes wrong? According to Edward R. Hirt, a psychologist at Indiana University, "this is real self-sabotage, like drinking heavily before a test, skipping practice or using really poor equipment. Some people do this a lot, and often it's not clear whether they're entirely conscious of doing it - or of its costs." This type of self-sabotaging behavior was coined "self-handicapping" by psychologists Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones, in 1978. According Dr. Hirt and other psychologists who have studied this tendency, this urge self-sabotage is more common in men than in women. Another study showed that if one thought that they had a good excuse for poor performance, they were predicted to have worse performance, since they could rationalize their execution. This phenomenon was studied by Dr. Dean McCrea, a psychologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

Build a stronger business by making commitments, not excuses.

Think Outside the Box

According to Delaney in "Google: From 'Don't Be Evil' to How to Do Good", in The Wall Street Journal, Google.Inc has engaged in a project which will merge the boundary between the profit and non-profit areas. In this $30 million proposal, efforts will be made to predict and prevent disease pandemics, increase the poor's access to public services, and create new jobs. They will also be joining other efforts to improve access to plug-in cars and renewable energy sources. According to the Foundation Center, these grants and proposals "make it larger than any in-house corporate foundation in the U.S." Both company and foundation resources are being utilized in this initiative. Other groups, such as eBay and Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network are also working to merger the profit and non-profit worlds.

Thinking outside the box and expanding your business's reach will build a stronger business.

Building Stronger Relationships Leads to Building a Stronger Business

According to “A Society of Men, Sharing Faith, Concerns and Wisecracks,” reported by Steele in The New York Times, men are coming together for fellowship and companionship in groups such as The New Canaan Society. This group began in 1995 by Jim Lane, a former Goldman Sachs general partner. He was seeking meaning in his life and male companionship. This group began with eight man and now the weekly meetings range from 175-250 men in attendance. The men are providing comfort and support to each other, which many of the highly successful men feel are missing in their lives. The group helps men to combat the isolation they often feel in their lives. Fellowship builds a stronger business.

Quotes

• Life is a series of commas, not periods.
  
• Matthew McConaughey in Details
• A person without regrets is a nincompoop.
  
• Mia Farrow in the New York Times
  
• Being an icon is overblown. Remember, as icon is moved by a mouse.
  
• William Shatner in Esquire
  

A New Way to Pay

If you're ten years old, you can't use your own credit card to buy dog food at the local store. But now you can buy digital dog food for a online pet in much the same manner - using Kwedit. As reported in The New York Times, a new payment option has just become available to anyone, no matter how young they are. In the new system, a "Kwedit Promise" is used to buy items in games by FooPets and Puzzle Pirates. The items can be paid off later using a regular credit or debit card; with cash sent in a provided mailer; or by printing a barcode, taking it to your local 7-Eleven, and paying cash there.

FooPets, which has over a million active members and signs up 20,000 to 25,000 new members each day, lets users adopt lifelike digitally animated pets and then buy virtual goods for them - everything from a bag of puppy chow for $3 to a bungalow for $333 - using Kwedit. "Buy now, pay later" is always a seductive marketing tool. Users are encouraged to pay the actual funds they owe by the fact that they accrue a Kwedit score, similar to a regular credit score, and more Kwedit is extended to each user based on his or her history of repayment. But since the marginal cost of virtual goods is negligible, there's no serious risk of major financial loss if the promise is not repaid.

Like FooPets and similar systems - considered "nurturing games" that encourage responsibility and other adult lessons - Kwedit is a way to introduce young people to important ideas in a relatively safe environment.

You can build a stronger business by applying the "nurturing games" concept to your customer service.

Quotes for the Day

A few great quotes for the day:

"Life is a series of commas, not periods."

• Matthew McConaughey in Details

"A person without regrets is a nincompoop."

• Mia Farrow in New York

"Being an icon is overblown. Remember, an icon is moved by a mouse."

• William Shatner in Esquire

Keep Your Mind Sharp...Surf the Web

Recent research presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience suggests that surfing the Web may help your brain function better. The study looked at the brain activity of adults ages 55 to 78, half of whom used the internet daily and half of whom were first-time users. Participants had their brain scanned, spent an hour a day for a week performing internet searches, then had their brain scanned again. At the first scan, first-time internet users showed significantly less activity in brain areas involved with working memory and decision-making. But at the end of the week, their brain patterns closely matched those of the experienced internet users.

Given these findings, the researchers suggest that online searching can be used as a brain exercise for older adults, and posited that doing so might even delay the onset of dementia.

Build a better business by strengthening your mind. Take a step in this direction today to build momentum.

Welcome Your New Hires

Although simply finding someone great to fill an open position in your company can seem like the most critical part of hiring, it's equally important to smooth the transition and make sure new hires are able to hit the ground running. Karen Lawson, author of "New Employee Orientation Training" and president of Lawson Consulting Group Inc. in Landsdale, PA, offers these tips for managers:

• Inform your staff of the new hire, even with a simple email. Informal meetings or memos can help ease tension and let everyone know how the new employee's responsibilities will dovetail with their own.
• Make sure the new hire has a space to call their own from day one, so they feel welcome and settled. Don't leave the arrangements until the last minute, since they can take longer than you anticipate.
• Take the time to greet new employees in person and show them the ropes. The first impression is critical. "This is not something that can be delegated," says Ms. Lawson. "It really sets the tone." It's also a good idea to keep the office's social network in mind. Assigning a "buddy" on the hire's level and pointing out who runs the office sports team can make the new hire feel more connected right away.
• Help the new hire feel familiar with your office culture by taking the time to mention the unwritten rules, like the need to clean out the coffee pot or where bosses tend to congregate.
• Sit down with your new employee to set clear short- and long-term plans. Management's expectations should be clear from the beginning, as should review processes. Ms. Lawson recommends weekly meetings for the first month or so: "Bringing an employee on board is a process that needs to take place over weeks and months. It's not just a one-time event."

Build a better business by preparing for new hires so they can get oriented quickly.

Our Environment's Unacknowledged Influence

We all let social cues from the people we eat with inform our own portion size. A recent study at the University of British Columbia, however, shows that even the body type of the other person eating has an effect on our choices. Study participants were asked to serve themselves some M&Ms before settling down to watch a video. A researcher posing as another participant took M&Ms first; though the amount taken by this confederate was always the same, the confederate was sometimes a size zero and sometimes a size sixteen. The results:

• 2.05 ounces of candy were taken by subjects when the nearby eater was obese.
• 2.62 ounces of candy were taken by subjects when the nearby eater was thin.

Build a stronger business by being aware of your environment.

Business Tips TV Launches

Bringing Improvisation to the Workplace

According to Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up, an effective way to improve your business to take a fresh look at what and how you are doing in your business.

Learn to work with situations that used to be interpreted as mistakes in a new light. Improv consultants can help alter a work environment by creating novel situations and encouraging individuals to react in new ways. This addition of humor and decrease of the fear of making mistakes can help reduce tension in the workplace. Ms. Madson and other improv consultants, including a team out of Portland, OR, called On Your Feet (www.oyf.com), are hoping to create "'a culture of 'yes.''" Developing a culture of yes can allow entrepreneurs to consider ideas that they previously may have discarded. Often "'happy mistakes'" can occur when one idea opens the door to another pathway of thinking.

Robert Poynton, a co-founder of On Your Feet said "'if anything, we know rather less about what is coming next, and how it will affect us, than our ancestors did,'" in "A Turtle and a Guitar Case: Improvisation and the Joys of Uncertainty." The On Your Feet site also refers to a "'cool mistake,'" something seemingly negative that has a positive outcome when interpreted in a different light.

As all business owners know, even the best made plans can fail. According to Ms. Madson, "improvisers avoid spinning their wheels because they see quickly what isn't working, or simultaneously, what might be successful that didn't occur to them at first. Improvisers, by definition, take risks and make mistakes, lots of them, but that's what leads them in fresh directions.'" Ms. Madson acknowledges that this change away from structured planning can be difficult; however, she suggests that this method can still help your business move forward.

Mike Kwatinetz, a venture capitalist who is co-founder and general partner at Azure Capital Partners in Palo Alto, embraces improvisational thinking as a way to get companies moving. This way you are reacting to what is happening around you and making appropriate changes and improvements.

Build a stronger business by letting go of the future.

Bridge Domains for Innovation

British curator and media researcher Ele Carpenter was so inspired by the striking similarities between embroidery and software programming, she decided to create Open Source Embroidery, an artistic and social-networking experience bringing a large and diverse group of people together.

Katie Haegele’s article in the Philadelphia Inquirer ,“New Media: Computer Programming Meets Embroidery” points out how members of Open Source Embroidery are more concerned with the process of creating and the collaborative efforts of the project than the final product. It is an element Carpenter views as inherent in both needlework and programming.

Skilled and amateur needleworkers and programmers have come together to participate in creating a six-sided quilt with 216 “hexadecimal” colors. The project comes at the right time; the old-fashioned hobbies of needlework are now becoming popular and more socially acceptable to a younger generation.

By looking at the opportunities that exist at the intersection of atypical fields, you build a stronger business.

An Online Prank Goes Too Far

In The New York Times article, “Don’t Marry Our Daughters After All” Brad Stone discusses MarryOurDaughter.com, a prank Web Site pretending to sell underage girls for marriage to older men for large sums of money. Science fiction editor John Ordover created the site to poke fun at the inconsistencies in state marriage laws.

Unfortunately not everyone is in on the joke. The site has receives thousands of angry emails a day and Mr. Ordover has had to explain himself to angry listeners on several radio shows.


Online pranks carry risks. Be aware of this when building a stronger business.

Free Online Service for Commuters

According to the article, "Email traffic alerts aid N.J. commuters" in The Philadelphia Inquirer, commuters traveling between New Jersey and Philadelphia will be able to check their email, cell phones or PDAs for up-to-date traffic jams and late trains.

The free online service will be provided by the Delaware River Port Authority, and a similar program is being developed for SEPTA.

The PATCO train line, run by the Delaware River Port Authority, will also provide uniformed "ambassadors" to assist commuters traveling at night and on weekends.

Providing information in formats and on devices that make life more convenient for your customer is a sure way to build a stronger business.

Online Rating System: Help or Hindrance?

In The New York Times article, "On Second Thought, Let's Just Rate all the Lawyers", criminal defense lawyer John Henry Browne, sites his reasons for filing a lawsuit against Avvo.com.

Avvo.com allows regular people to find the kind of lawyers they need in their location. After typing in a zip code and specialty, a list of lawyers come up with a rating out of 10 points.

Unfortunately for Mr. Browne, his first visit to the site ranked him at a 3.7, in the site's "caution" zone. He claims to have lost two potential clients because of Web site.

Avvo appears to generate their rankings from public records including disciplinary reports and factor in education, experience and specialization help. Lawyers are allowed to add information to their profile after providing Avvo with a valid credit card number.

They will not disclose exactly how much each record factors into their ratings, but claim lawyers could temporarily increase their scores by inputing minor prizes and awards. After typing in positive information about his career and experience, Mr. Browne watched his score rise to a 7.4.


When you're building a stronger business, focus on the metrics that matter rather than getting caught in an arbitrary rating game.

Negotiation Tactics for the Talented Entrepreneur

Question: What do you get when an academic entrepreneur incubation center brings in a quartet of the regions most accomplished entrepreneurs and lets them conduct a live, unscripted negotiation scenario for a simulated $200 million biotech deal?

Answer: Highly entertaining education. (Or highly educational entertainment -- take your pick.)

That's the outcome that the Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship in Technology pulled off earlier today at their forum called "Negotiation Tactics for the Talented Entrepreneur."

Using a custom case study as the basis for the negotiation, a team of two sellers (Tony Ibarguen and Charles Robins) represented the company "Catnome LLC" and a team of two buyers (Ian Berg and Mel Baiada) represented the US Pharma pharmaceutical company poised to acquire the start-up. Here are the roles more clearly delineated:

• Tony served as CEO of Catnome
• Charles served as Chairman of the Board and as the lead investor in Catnome of the venture firm BVP
  
• Mel served as President of the US Pharma division for Veterinary Medicine
• Ian served as President of the investment banking firm financing the deal for US Pharma
  

In the scenario presented to about 150 entrepreneurs and business leaders in attendance was that the representatives were to close the deal that day and resolve the final terms of the acquisition. Two events occured since the last meeting that have thrown in a few twists to the deal. One is a lawsuit by a "patent troll" firm. The other is bad press looming from an adverse reaction to the Catnome anti-allergen enzyme therapy for cats that reduced their lifespans by half.

Legal celebrity to the Greater Philadelphia entrepreneur community Steve Goodman of Morgan, Lewis, and Bockius set the stage, moderated, and provided insights and perspective to the event.

It was remarkable to see how all four entrepreneurs competed and collaborated, switched from offense to defense, parried and dodged verbal salvos. Although the content was staged, the interactions provided real insights into how issues are raised, objections neutralized, and agreements tightened at a negotiating table. Each entrepreneur was playing to win for his side, and as Charles pointed out, for the longer term as well because they would be working together in the new company and doing deals with each other later on.

Next week I'll share a list of the key negotiation take-aways from the session. For now, I want to point out how this experiment succeeded for Drexel's Baiada Center and how that might help you build a stronger business, as well.

Mark Loschiavo, director of the Baiada Center, took a risk in employing this format. It hadn't been done before. It wasn't the safe, predictible tried-and-true path of having panelists sit at a table on a stage and share their wisdom and experience about a particular topic. That format works. It meets expectations. It delivers some value.

What Loschiavo did with this Negotiation Tactics seminar was risky -- he really didn't know whether the entrepreneurs would actually complete a deal in the time allocated. Towards the end, the entrepreneurs introduced some creative twists to the negotiation that must have had the organizers scratching their heads wondering where they lost control of the seminar. And it's just that element of uncertainty that kept everyone of us in our chairs until the last minute of the negotiation -- we wanted to see how it turned out. There was unusual drama to the event and it was given time and space to develop that made this event so provocative and so much more valuable than a straigthforward panel discussion.

As an entrepreneur reading this article, you certainly can imagine that a scenario like this takes much more preparation to conduct than a panel discussion. It involved many more people behind the scenes and on stage to make it succeed -- from the management faculty who developed the framework of the simulated negotiation to the moderator to hold the ambitious group together and draw out the lessons learned.

Experiments are worth it. Even if the deal hadn't been made during the seminar, participants would still be talking about the fascinating conversations that took place and the tactics learned.

When you conduct experiments with your business, you learn to how to differentiate, brand, and communicate your competencies far better to your target audience.

Rise to the Challenge of Leading Your Business

One of the most difficult things about being an entrepreneur is there is no one telling you what to do. You must be your own manager and push yourself to accomplish your goals. That requires a great deal of motivation. But it also requires you to gain the support and enthusiasm of your clients too.

• Make a list of people you need to call. But before calling them, figure out what will motivate them – how will their companies reap the benefit of taking action?
• Highlight any good publicity your company receives. The more familiar you are to a prospect, the less resistance you'll encounter to a call.
  
• Don’t give up on potential clients even when they turn you down. If you are persistent, you stand a better chance of getting through or being top-of-mind when a need arises that is suited to your core competencies.
• Keep your goals firmly in mind, review them often, and update them as necessary.
• Don’t be deterred by detractors.

If you are persistent and offer a convincing argument for the value of your company, you will win the clients you seek and build a stronger business.

Fellowship Builds a Stronger Business

You can be at the top of your profession and have a loving family, but sometimes it just isn’t enough, as the article “A Society of Men Sharing Faith, Concerns and Wisecracks” from The New York Times reveals.

Some people are turning to faith based groups to give them the solace missing from other parts of their lives.

The New Canaan Society is one such group. It was started by Jim Lane, a former general partner with Goldman Sachs in 1995.

“We are a group of men who love each other and love Jesus,” said Lane. “The more successful you are, the more isolated and lonely you tend to be. Being Fairfield County, our men tend to be driven. Many high-powered executives get to the top, only to feel dissatisfaction.”

According to Lane, members of the group support each other and share stories on how to be better fathers, husbands and men. It’s deliberately kept to an all-male crowd because Lane believes men are far more likely to be open with others if women are not around.

The group has mushroomed from eight at its start to upwards of 250 at its Hibernian Hall meeting place in Stamford, CT.

People need all manner of support to build satisfaction in their lives. Having a group that can reaffirm your faith can help you build a stronger business.