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Preparing for What’s Next: Leveraging Your Company’s Life Cycle By Marcia Zidle

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Business
Preparing for What’s Next: Leveraging Your Company’s Life Cycle By Marcia Zidle

Here’s one of those simple, but profound questions, entrepreneurs need to regularly ask: What am I focusing on now vs. what should I be focusing on NOW? After a successful launch, entrepreneurs have a choice. They can sit back and continue doing what they have done so far or they can recognize the need to prepare for what comes next. Too often entrepreneurs make the wrong choice to stay the course using the logic “why mess with success.”

Why You Should Mess With Success!

My guest on this episode of The Business Edge is Dr Mary Lippttt, author of Brilliant or Blunder: 6 Ways Leaders Navigate Uncertainty, Opportunity and Complexity. As an internationally recognized leader in strategic thinking and executing change, Mary tells why there’s good reason for entrepreneurs to refocus their priorities based on changing realities. And one of those realities is that 50% of new businesses fail. Therefore, successful entrepreneurs must change what they do and how they do to have sustainable growth.

Listen to this podcast and learn: Why knowing your company’s life cycle helps you focus on what’s important; the six result-driven mindsets and how they impact an entrepreneurs decision making; how to avoid leadership blind spots and distractions to make smarter strategic decisions; how to use specific mindsets to build an aligned and committed team that’s ready for change; when to use your gut and when not when dealing with uncertainty, opportunity or complexity.

The key takeaway: To prevent getting stuck with a single viewpoint, your leadership should encourage diversity of thought and openness to new perspectives. Therefore build a team that can tap into the six different mindsets especially in uncertain and complex situations. Don’t fall back on the tried and true.  Mess with Success!

Over/Under: A Story of One Entrepreneur’s Journey with Two Tech Startups by Marcia Zidle

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Business
Over/Under: A Story of One Entrepreneur’s Journey with Two Tech Startups by Marcia Zidle

What is Over / Under? It’s a metaphor for two companies, one that was over-funded and the other under-funded. The results aren’t what you would think. Why would a start-up, with a 100 page business plan and with 4.2 Million raised from top tier ventures firms, fail spectacularly, despite having a product, a top tier list of customers and a reasonable revenue base?

My guest on this episode of The Business Edge is Charlie Alsmiller, CEO of Appterra, his second tech star-up. , Charlie took a different approach. He had no business plan, no customers, no products and no capital. Rather, he set out to listen to the market and the market told him how to build his business. Today, 11 years later, his company is one of the top Business-to-Business integration firms, supporting some of the largest companies in their mission critical processes.
Listen to this podcast and learn:: The importance of having a plan A, B, C, D as a funding strategy; what contributes to the life or death as a start-up…and it’s not money; why the ability to say “yes” or “no” is most satisfying being an entrepreneur; how parenting is like running a business – different stages require different expectations and involvement; and the reason he says: The only thing I know about a business plan when I write it, is that it’s probably wrong.”

The key takeaway: You’ll be more effective the less you do.  Build repeatable processes and train the proper people in your business. When you do that, your role changes dramatically. You become the carrier of the cultural flag….and get to push the business in new directions. Work ON your business not IN your business guides everything I do. It can be really easy to just want to jump in and do everything – but at the end of the day, that doesn’t create value nor grow your business.

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