Category: My entrepreneurial adventures

How Ideal Clients can Accelerate your Business and Personal Developments

In the professional services business, we generally underestimate the importance of the Clients in our development and our success – both as a business and as professionals. Ideal Clients are those that have sufficient confidence to entrust you with challenging issues, pushing you slightly out of your confort zone.

In general, Clients are important for the success of any business endeavor. This can be observed for any project, whether internal or external clients. Incompetent clients or clients that don’t care do not entice for success and development.

Ideal Clients are not the same as Dream Clients. Dream clients may be those for which work will be easy and incredibly well compensated. Ideal clients are challenging while establishing sufficient confidence that you can be creative, stretch yourself and experiment (within certain bounds).

As Pamela Slim remarks, it is also essential to recognize the person in the Client. We need to be able to establish a strong personal relationship. This is quite necessary to allow the confidence level necessary. Also, our intervention should also seek to advance the person of the Client as a person and within its organization. Therefore, the ideal client is someone we can relate to professionally on a personal level too.

Choosing your Clients as a professional services business is not a luxury. It is absolutely essential for sustainability to have challenging yet trusting clients that will develop yourselves and your business. I have made it an essential decision factor when considering the possibility to take on, or continue an assignment.

This post is a follow-up from the post ‘Useful Lessons Learnt for the Professional Services Business‘ based on Pamela Slim’s post ‘23 Lessons from 23 years in business‘.

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How Innovation is Actually Behavior Change

In her post ‘Innovation is About Behavior Change‘, Valeria Maltoni makes, I believe, and excellent point. Innovation or invention is not about the tangible product, it is about how it changes habits and behavior.

This explains why there are so many inventions which seem quite a breakthrough but that never spread: it is because the associated behavior change did not happen. Maybe because there was a force of inertia, maybe because something else happened at the same time that pulled behavior change in the opposite direction.

It is a lesson for all inventors and innovators: don’t just focus on how marvelous your product is. Spend most of your effort working on the behavior that needs to change for its adoption. Work on the habits, on the social aspect of behavior, and anything that will make your innovation unavoidable on a day-to-day basis.

Innovation that would not consider behavior change is doomed. And as a Business Angel I will recognize that as a major criteria when judging the adequacy of the development plan of startups.

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How To Apply Prioritization Properly

Robin Sharma writes “The real key to getting great things done is to stop doing so many good things“. Easy said, not so easy done! He complements this statement with “Success has less to do with hard work and more to do with massive focus on your few best opportunities“

While I concur with these statements overall, and do struggle to prioritize like most of us do, I still have some reservations on some aspects.

The first one is that I believe it is important, while focusing on our current projet, to keep one’s mind open on other things and the general environment. They might well transform into even better and more exciting opportunities! Therefore, it is essential to reserve time for personal education and meeting new people, and identifying new opportunities, even if that’s only for limited time. It’s what I call a diversification strategy (it might even allow you to identify ways of doing your current project more effectively).

The second is that even if you focus on your best opportunity (or opportunities), lots of hard work is still required to get where you want to be, because it is probably something nobody has ever done before, at least in the specific situation you try to apply it. So don’t believe focus does not mean hard work!

Still at the end, it is true that prioritization and focus is a key to success, even if it remains important to be aware of one’s environment and how it shifts.

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How to Decide When To Persist or to Quit

Following up from the previous post ‘How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive‘, the issue of when to quit on an entrepreneurial endeavor comes up front from the fact that struggling too much may be detrimental.

In the previously mentioned excellent piece “No More “Struggle Porn”” by Nat Eliason, he explains that “Working hard is great, but struggle porn has a dangerous side effect: not quitting. When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.”

This is complemented by a great post by Tim Berry, ‘You Have to Know When to Quit‘, based on the same piece. And of course he refers to the excellent little book by Seth Godin ‘the Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)‘. I love Tim Berry’s simple explanation of the choices in an entrepreneurial or creative venture: “There’s no virtue to persistence when it means running your head into walls forever. Before you worry about persistence, that startup has to have some real value to offer, something that people want to buy, something they want or need. And it has to get the offer to enough people. It has to survive competition. It has to know when to stick to consistency, and when to pivot. So persistence is simply what’s left over when all the other reasons for failure have been ruled out.”

Therefore, be persistent and work hard but only when you see progress and some pre-conditions are met that demonstrate that your project has some chances to become something workable!

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How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive

Following up in our myth-busting spree after our previous post ‘How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe‘, let’s turn to the masochist myth of the fact that entrepreneurs must suffer to be successful. In this excellent disruptive piece “No More “Struggle Porn”“, Nat Eliason busts a myth established by prominent bestselling authors and entrepreneurs.

As Nat Eliason explains, “There are [always] two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this. The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what [bestselling authors] broadcast: struggling is good.”

As he explains, “Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing.”. It gives a reason for the situation, while in many cases it is probably down to poor luck and circumstances, and not the lack of hard work. “Struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something.”

So if you catch yourself to complain too much that you’re struggling, it might be because you’d need to try something else. Watch out! I must say this piece has given me a lot to think about….

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How Proactive Career Moves Are Better Than Defensive Ones

Following up on my previous post ‘How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45‘, I would like to share my experience and view on how a proactive career move at that stage is better than a defensive move – and thus, why it is so important to anticipate the ceiling of corporate career.

When placed in a defensive situation, i.e. having been terminated forcefully from an existing position, the executive often has some benefits in the form of termination premium which can sometimes be sizable. However, it is often not sufficient for the following reasons:

  • the executive’s personal finances are not adapted to the new career path with a high running expenditure flow, and often he does not have sufficient reserves to experiment with a new career keeping calm about the time it takes to build something new
  • if not anticipated, the time to change one’s mindset can be very long, in particular if it only happens if the executive spends too much time trying to find an equivalent corporate position and only considers a new career after a long time. This strains the cash situation

Therefore it is essential that executives take a proactive career change approach as soon as they identify that their corporate career seems to approach a potential ceiling. Proactive planning can even involve taking active action in parallel to the executive role, and even negotiate a mutually beneficial severance package with the corporate employer, leveraging on possible social benefits.

I can only recommend executives to consider proactively their second career early enough. Once awareness sets in, their dynamism will do the rest – still it takes time for awareness to set in and mindsets to change.

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How “Entreprenants” are different from ‘Entrepreneurs’

Following up on our post ‘How The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Can be Confusing‘, I stumbled upon a new concept in France developed by the Ecole de Paris management school, differentiating between “entrepreneur” and “entreprenant” (enterprising). And there is actually a manifesto, ‘le manifeste de l’entreprenant‘, and even a website Le jardin des Entreprenants – the Enterprising’s garden) showing various stories (all in French only).

The idea is a bit similar to the one developed in my original post. “Entreprenants” combine the invention of solutions and unexpected activities with a commitment to create meaning, thus reinventing the world in a powerful way.

In the manifesto, several recognition traits of those new actors are given, some of which are really differentiating with regard to the standard concept of entrepreneur:

  • “Entreprenants” are not necessarily entrepreneurs, and their initiatives can grow outside incorporated entities
  • An entrepreneur can be an “entreprenant” if he/she has a social vision of this initiative
  • the “entreprenant” is a gardener and not a builder: he grows plants accounting for environmental conditions and stress

I conclude from this that there is a growing awareness that the traditional concept of ‘entrepreneur’, at least as it is being implemented nowadays, is limiting and that alternate concepts should co-exist.

 

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How the Business Model of Business Book Writers Changes

An interesting discussion on the evolution of the business book writer model is detailed in the post ‘The quiet revolution in business book publishing‘. With the increase in self-publishing, books are increasingly conceived as a part of a personal brand rather than “solid tomes by well-respected experts based on years of research and published by big name or specialist houses“.

The description of this evolution resonates with the way I envisage my books: the poste describes how for many authors “the book is not so much a product as an enhanced business card, so giving books away is their favored modus operandi, and income from retail sales is a non-essential bonus.” As a result, “The average business book is now closer to a slim 40,000 words than a substantial 80,000”

“Business authors want to get their book through production and to market in the shortest possible time to maximise the currency of their content and freshness of their offer. So for them, the business model of traditional publishing – with its focus on broad market titles, slow, intensive production cycles, and well-known authors to generate maximum sales – does not work.”

I’m quite happy to see that my approach to business books is becoming quite mainstream. In any case, this is a massive disruption for traditional publishing houses.

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How Startup Founders’ Age Influences Success

In this interesting summary of an interview of Paul Graham, Y Combinator founder: ‘Paul Graham on why he doesn’t like seeing college-age and younger founders‘, the point is made why founders should not be too young – and not too old as well.

The point is made on the basis of the relatively wide sample of start-ups that have been accelerated by Y Combinator, and their final outcome. It is important  to mention that reference is made here specifically to ‘startups with a potentially exponential development‘ as usual in this kind of post (ref our post ‘How The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Can be Confusing’).

Paul Graham considers too young founders (i.e. still in high school) often do not consider a sufficient range of options because of their lack of experience, which leads to less success, and that it is not a good thing to encourage them to dive into a founder’s life too early.

On the other hand, he sees people that have too long an experience in a corporate structure – typically more than 20 years – not well suited either to the founder role, probably because of the work habits they will have developed.

The interesting part is that he sees determination and intelligence to be two highly required skills, with determination coming first. It takes a lot of energy to be a founder, and that is another reasons why founders in their 20’s and 30’s are preferred by Y Combinator. Again, this applies to a certain kind of start-ups and does not preclude people of other age-ranges to be a founder – and there are always exceptions to the rules!

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How Entrepreneurs Should Care About Their Contributors

Now that we have clarified what should be the objective mix of an entrepreneur, I would like to focus on one objective that I believe is too often forgotten: providing opportunities and livelihood to employees and other contributors involved.

It is amazing how this objective is so often forgotten when it is central to the creation of a healthy organization. Only by having contributors involved, committed and excited by the intent of the organization can it deliver exceptional service or products to clients.

And actually there are some situations where I find that this objective can be an essential guiding objective, in particular when the boat rocks and the economic situation of the company is not that great, or when there is a question about its future for example when shareholders don’t agree. My guiding principle is that people should not suffer from the inadequacy of shareholders or directors. They should be considered in the equation.

And while I know about being realistic when there is definitely a need to downsize because the economic equation does not work, this can be done as humanly possible.

Some fellow entrepreneurs might find that position too mellow but I truly believe that on the long term it is the only sustainable position, because the world is small and reputation is quickly earned one way or the other.

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What Objectives’ Mix Should Entrepreneurs Have?

Following up from our previous post ‘How The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Can be Confusing‘, now that we have clarified that entrepreneurship is not only for licorne-type exponential growth startups, the next issue is what is the objective of creating a company, and more specifically, what the objectives of the founders are.

Businessman is sailing on paper boat in ocean. EPS 10 file

Objectives can roughly be a mix of the following:

  • working on something the founder is passionate about,
  • provide a solution that is missing on the market, creating value for customers or more generally for stakeholders, putting one’s mark on the world through the leverage of an organization,
  • providing opportunities and livelihood to employees and other contributors involved,
  • making money.

The weight mix of these objectives can vary, but generally there is a definite mix, and my view is that all of them need to be part of the mix.

It is important to have all aspects covered because:

  • passion is the only way the hard work will be provided on the long run
  • putting one’s mark on the world is about recognition and satisfaction
  • providing opportunities to employees and contributors is essential to have their full contribution and as a responsible business owner
  • making money is part of the motivation and just compensation for the value created, and provides with opportunities for creating more businesses and activities.

As a note, those founders that create companies only with the objective of making money exist, but their companies are generally not exciting when not quickly involved in inappropriate accounting issues. Making money can be one respectable objective, through the leverage provided by an organization, but the main objectives should be different.

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How The Definition of Entrepreneurship and Start-Up Can be Confusing

I am fascinated by the fact that the concept of entrepreneur and start-up is not understood identically by all, and how this leads to damaging confusion. According to Wikipedia, “Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business“. Any kind of business is understood here. However, most of the literature on the subject of entrepreneurship and startups has definitely a stricter sense: the business must be of the exponential potential growth nature.

Hence in the world of start-ups, business-angels and other venture capitalists, only businesses that have this exponential potential will be considered, because those are the ones that can pay back the initial investment. But most businesses that entrepreneurs create on a day-to-day basis are not of this kind: they are rather possibly niche, or subject to linear growth only.

Business angels and Venture Capitalists look down at those other entrepreneurs thinking that they are not true entrepreneurs. And when I seek advice about how to build a business, most of what’s available in terms of literature is only applicable to exponential-growth start-ups: it revolves around the issue of scaling, of financing while not making any profit, etc.

On the contrary, I believe that it is perfectly respectable to create a business that intends to put its dent on the universe and be highly influential while remaining relatively small. And it is quite as hard. And it is not because the business does not grow exponentially that it is a failure. Of course this business can’t then be financed by the same markets and they should not give the hope of unrealistic returns to attract the relatively easy money available for exponential startups. But still it make make its mark and provide a sustainable influence in its surroundings.

Why should non-exponential businesses and their entrepreneurs be neglected and despised? At the end they make the most of the economic activity.

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