WHY MUSIC MAJORS MAKE SOME OF THE BEST ENTREPRENEURS

Learning how to play a musical instrument and becoming a musician is an exercise in developing good listening skills, experimenting, overcoming repeated failure, self-discipline, and successful collaboration. It is simply impossible to become a successful music professional unless one also masters certain theoretical concepts, develops good presentation and improvisational skills and, ultimately, attains that elusive quality of originality that only comes once fear of failure is overtaken by the desire to acquire a new insight, a fresh perspective, and a unique voice.
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Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready

How I Met Sir Richard Branson (from James Clear)

Two weeks ago, I walked into a conference room in Moscow, Russia and sat down ten feet from Branson. There were 100 other people around us, but it felt like we were having a conversation in my living room. He was smiling and laughing. His answers seemed unrehearsed and genuine.

At one point, he told the story of how he started Virgin Airlines, a tale that seems to capture his entire approach to business and life. Here’s the version he told us, as best I can remember it:

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The Secret To Success In 3 Words

I have three words to change your life: create, big, and defy. Have you got three minutes

Read more: http://oliveremberton.com/2014/three-words-of-advice-for-the-young-and-ambitious/#ixzz2q0vnLCiR

The most popular posts of 2012 from Seth Godin

The most popular posts of 2012 from Seth Godin

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To Yelp Or Not To Yelp? Lawsuit Puts The Chill On Bad Reviews

The next time you're about to post a scathing review of a business on a site like Yelp or Angie's List, you might want to think twice.

This week, a housing contractor named Christopher Dietz sued a former customer for $750,000 in defamation charges for what she wrote in a review on Yelp.

Jane Perez wrote that there was damage to her home and that jewelry was missing after she'd had work done from Dietz's company, Dietz Development LLC.

On Thursday, a judge took the unusual step of ordering Perez to take down parts of those reviews.

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The lawsuit itself, Goldman says, is a reminder that even though we have the freedom to voice our opinions on the Internet, we also own those words and can be held responsible for them.

"Most people don't realize that they're betting their house ... every time they put their opinions out into the public discourse," he says. "When people realize that, it becomes incredibly inhibiting."
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Startup Revolution Venn Diagram

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Looking for a Google

Can the spirit of enterprise be taught?

WORLD-BEATING companies that began in garages—think of Amazon, Apple or Google—are revered in the West. Developing countries can boast one or two examples of their own: India’s Tata and South Korea’s Samsung began life as small trading companies; Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group, an agri-business firm, started as a seed shop. But these are exceptions. Of the millions of small enterprises in poor countries, hardly any grow big and strong. The World Bank’s new World Development Report* looks at what can be done to help start-ups in poor countries become the next Google

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The question is what can be done to improve matters. Obviously, good infrastructure and a welcoming investment climate matter. Governments have tried providing cheap loans or grants to pay the wages of an extra employee. This had no effect. Nor did giving special grants to female business owners, as happened in Ghana. But free management training did help. The trouble is that most enterprises see no point in it: asked whether lack of management expertise was a problem, only 3% of Brazilian small firms said yes.

Learning from abroad, though, makes a big difference. In 1979 Desh, a Bangladeshi garments firm, sent 130 of its staff for an eight-month course at a South Korean textile plant. At the time, Bangladesh had no textile exports and no modern industry. When the trainees got back, almost all of them set up their own firms. Today Bangladesh has 3.6m textile workers, 80% of them women, generating $13 billion of exports a year. Mr Yunus should be proud.

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Women Entrepreneurs Drive Growth in Africa

KAMPALA, UGANDA — Far too often, in the view of Africa’s budding female entrepreneurs, their continent is characterized as the recipient of aid that enables residents just to struggle by, and as a place that mistreats and marginalizes its women.
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It was into this world, and against it, says Bethlehem Tilahun, that her shoe company SoleRebels was born.

“I kept hearing over and over the phrase ‘poverty alleviation,”’ said Ms. Tilahun, now a footwear mogul whose company grossed $2 million in sales this past year. “The media, preoccupied with a singular narrative about ‘Africa’ that missed the story of Africa — part of a larger spectrum of endless entities that have monopolized Africa’s image, our brand.”

With SoleRebels, she said proudly, “We’ve inverted the whole paradigm.”

Ms. Tilahun, 33, is one of a cresting wave of African entrepreneurs who are harnessing Africa’s businesses and brands as the continent enjoys its greatest economic success in generations. The International Monetary Fund now forecasts, admittedly in a recession-plagued world, that Africa will have the fastest-growing economy of any continent over the next five years.

Many of the new entrepreneurs of Africa are women.

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Financial Independence through Entrepreneurship

The Girl Effect

Steven Jobs2005 Stanford Commencement address

This is a repost that in my opinion is worth viewing again and again...
Uvealblues

To appreciate, first acknowledge

“Sawu Bona” is a South African greeting which literally means, “I see you.” Its deeper meaning is “because you are there, I exist,” that “without each other, we literally do not exist.” Imagine what your workplace would be like if this acknowledgment was genuinely sent and received on a daily basis.

Appreciation is  a key ingredient for a thriving workplace, but one that is undervalued by many organizations. This is the conclusion from countless management experts and research projects. In “How Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life,” Tom Rath and Donald Clifton said that the main reason most North Americans leave their jobs is that they don’t feel appreciated. They also noted that 65% of Americans say they receive no recognition at work.

You asked Seth Godin absolutely anything -- and he answered

Tidbits of wisdome from Seth Godin
uvealblues

If you were a James Bond villain, how would you take over the world? -- Andrew Noseworthy

I'd release a pheremone that increases the fear that people have about doing great things. It would only increase it by 3%, but that would be enough to wipe out most competition. I'm convinced someone is already doing this, by the way.

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What have you learned today? -- Antonio Ortiz

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

This article from Reid Hastie, Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Busines, hit on one of my fundamental organizing principles: I don't have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time (as Professor Hastie alludes to in this article). For some reason, I know at a visceral level that one moment you exist, and the next you don't. The "ride" is over before you know it...and you can't predict it. I know that I will probably (and thankfully) never run out of money, but for sure I am going to run out of time....and there is so much to do in this world.

In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don’t apply easily to time.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.

Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.

And, once meetings are over, we don’t effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this “diffusion of responsibility” and one consequence is that no one thinks it’s his or her job to fix it the next time.

Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles

by Tim O'Reilly
I spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be. I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone. I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself.
First off, though, I want to make clear that "work on stuff that matters" does not mean focusing on non-profit work, "causes, or any other form of "do-goodism." Non-profit projects often do matter a great deal, and people with tech skills can make important contributions, but it's essential to get beyond that narrow box. I'm a strong believer in the social value of business done right. We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.
There are a number of half-unconscious litmus tests I use in my own life. I'm going to try to tease them out here, and hope that you can help me think this through in the comments.

Irrationally Committed

If I were to tally up the things to which I am "irrationally committed," I wonder if the list would be longer than those things to which I am rationally committed...Perhaps this is another phrase for passion...

The latest from Seth Godin...

My friend Lynn coined this phrase, and it really resonated with me.
Parents or other adults who are irrationally committed to a kid's well being make a huge (perhaps the biggest) difference in that young person's life.

Entrepreneurs who are irrationally committed to their business are far more likely to get through the Dip.

Salespeople and service providers and marketers who are irrationally committed to customer service can completely transform an ordinary experience and make it remarkable.

Is being irrational irrational? Of course it is. That's why it often works.

If you're looking for the sensible, predictable, long-term strategy, this probably isn't it. Except when it is.

The Power of Kindness

“It is much safer to be feared than loved,” writes Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince, a classic 16th-century treatise advocating manipulation and occasional cruelty as the best means to power. Nearly 500 years later, Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, the best-selling bedside reading of foreign policy analysts and hip-hop stars alike, would have made Machiavelli’s chest swell with pride.
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These seductive notions are wrong. A new science of power has revealed that power is wielded most effectively when it’s used by people who are attuned to and engaged with the needs and interests of others. When it comes to power, social intelligence—reconciling conflicts, negotiating, smoothing over group tensions—prevails over social Darwinism.

Why social intelligence? Because of our ultrasociability. We accomplish most tasks related to survival and reproduction socially, from caring for our children to producing food and shelter. We give power to those who can best serve the interests of the group. Leaders who treat their subordinates with respect, share power, and generate a sense of camaraderie and trust are considered more just and fair.

Social intelligence is essential not only to rising to power, but also to keeping it. My colleague Cameron Anderson and I studied the structure of social hierarchies within college dormitories over the course of a year, examining who is at the top and who remains there. We’ve consistently found that it is the socially engaged individuals who keep their power over time.
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They also mistakenly believe that power is acquired strategically in deceptive gamesmanship and by pitting others against one another. Here Machiavelli failed to appreciate an important fact in the evolution of human hierarchies: that with increasing social intelligence, a person’s power is only as strong as the status given to that person by others.

Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

irst, some background. As most of you know, Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company expects to generate sales of more than $1 billion this year, up from just $70 million five years ago. Part of the reason for Zappos’s meteoric success is that it got the economics and operations right. It offers customers a huge selection—four million pairs of shoes (and other items, such as handbags and apparel) in a warehouse in Kentucky next to a UPS hub. (If Imelda Marcos visited that warehouse she'd likely have a coronary on the spot.) It also offers free delivery and free returns—if you don’t like the shoes, you box them up and send them back to Zappos for no charge.

So the value proposition is a winner. But it’s the emotional connection that seals the deal. This company is fanatical about great service—not just satisfying customers, but amazing them. The company promises free, four-day delivery. That’s pretty good. But most of the time it delivers next-day service, a surprise that leaves a lasting impression on customers: “You said four days, but I got them the next morning.”
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This is a company that’s bursting with personality, to the point where a huge number of its 1,600 employees are power users of Twitter so that their friends, colleagues, and customers know what they’re up to at any moment in time. But here’s what’s really interesting. It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)

Which comes first (why stories matter)

From the always excellent Seth Godin blog:


Most of the time we do the work. The work is our initiative and our reactions and our responses and our output. The work is the decisions we make and the people we hire.

The work is what people talk about, because it's what we experience. In other words, the work tells a story.

But what if you haven't figured out a story yet?

Then the work is random. Then the story is confused or bland or indifferent and it doesn't spread.

On the other hand, if you decide what the story is, you can do work that matches the story. Your decisions will match the story. The story will become true because you're living it.

Inside Apple Stores, a Certain Aura Enchants the Faithful

“They’ve become the Nordstrom of technology,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research, referring to the department store that is known for its service.

“The idea is that while people love to come to retail stores, and they do it all the time, what they really appreciate the most is that undivided personal attention,” Mr. Johnson said. The result is far fewer qualms among consumers about paying premium prices: $30 for an iPhone case, $200 for an iPod Nano or $1,200 for a computer.

“Whenever we ask consumers to cite a great retail experience, the Apple store is the first store they mention,” said Jane Buckingham, president of the Intelligence Group, a market research firm in Los Angeles. “Basically, everything about it works. The people who work there are cool and knowledgeable. They have the answers you want, and can sell you what you need. Customers appreciate that.