16 Qualities for Super Success

By Ahamefula Onyemachi

One of the major desires of anyone who has discovered his purpose for living is to be successful in life. I mean being successful in every facet of life - in your relationships, family, job, and businesses. And success here, is not just achieving your "small" dreams for yourself. 

Before you can really be a success, your dreams to be accomplished should be bigger than you are! Your dreams should be more people oriented and just for yourself. For instance, if your dream is to get a good job, have a beautiful wife, nice kids, large home and expensive cars. And if you are able to achieve all these in good time, you may consider yourself successful. Yes! You are. But, what you achieved were just part of the "complete" success.... 

Your success should not just be for you and your immediate family but touch those around you, for it's people around you that will actually determine if you are truly successful or not! I'm not saying you can't know whether you are a success or not, but it would be better for your success to be obvious and for people outside your family to really see you as one.

You will be happier seeing your life imparting more positively on the society and people around you than just you and your family. That's exactly what success does. So, the more successful you are; the happier you become. Becoming super-successful is not really an easy task. Duh... 

There are 16 basic qualities that are needed to be imbibed by those that want to be super-successful. Some of these qualities are built-in parts of your inherent personality, and some of them get developed over time with your conscious effort.

1. Highly successful people do have and always apply common sense in their daily activities and relationships. Common sense simply means being able to exactly know what to do at any particular point in time. Once someone with common sense act, he would've acted accurately and it would be obvious that his actions were good match for the circumstances that prompted his actions. This special knowledge here is mainly gained from experience as well as from everyday life affairs. Successful people always put extra effort to learning from life itself; knowing fully well that real knowledge consist in what happens around them and knowing how to deal with them appropriately.

2. They have good understanding. They have the ability to observe and explain the meaning or the nature of somebody or something. This gives them advantage in handling difficult issues with ease as they will always have insight into what ought to be done, as well as how and when they ought to be done. Good understanding makes them to also empathize with those around them and this helps a great deal in building healthy relationships. The thought pattern will determine how well or otherwise someone's understanding will be, because someone's understanding is a function of his thought. What I mean here is that people are limited by their thought because no one can have more understanding than what he has thought about before.

3. They are specialists in their areas of interest. Despite the fact that highly successful people do have an open mind in all subjects, they always have areas they specialize in - areas they have authority in. They can not afford to be jack of all trade but master of none. Rather, they find an area of concentration to harness and explore for the addition of value to mankind. They do what they know how to do very well.

4. They are selfless. Highly successful do what they do not mainly because of selfish interests, but because they want to make the world around them better than they meet it. You may see them with 'luxuries', but their lives do not consist in those "luxuries". If you have the ability to see beyond your optical eyes, you will notice that their major interest is to impart the world around them positively.

5. They are highly disciplined. Highly successful people are not influenced by what goes on around them. On the contrary, they determine what happens around them most of the times. They don't do things because everyone else is doing those things. But they do those things that will be contributory to their success even if they are some worth difficult. They consciously live a life of self-restraint.

6. They are hard working. They are industrious and diligent and always ensure that all that is needed to be done is not left out. They do not leave out today's job for tomorrow. And they always make sure they work smart in their quest for greater accomplishments.

7. They are people of high integrity. Highly successful people do not profess to believe what they don't believe. They are trustworthy as well as straightforward in their dealings with their contacts. Their yes is always yes to anyone anywhere at anytime.

8. They are greatly committed to whatever course they believe in. Highly successful people do not take lightly any venture they undertake. They always ensure that they put in all their best to succeed in any of their endeavours as well as responsible for what they stand for. No matter what it seems the results of their action or inaction are going to produce, they always maintain their grounds.

9. They are good communicators. Highly successful people know how to successfully pass across their thoughts to those they are meant for without causing any ill will. Their words are well fitted and always carry the right message at any particular point in time.

10. They are focused. Highly successful people know what they want from life and do go for them no matter what the circumstances or state of things at the moment are presenting to them. They understand what is needful and how to separate what is and what is not important from their clustered daily activities. Despite they accomplish a lot; they don't get involved with so many projects at a time, rather they ensure that each of their projects is followed and attended to as they planned.

11. They are self-confident. Highly successful people feel great about themselves and their abilities. They are not afraid to take risk and make difficult decisions. Self-confidence is the will power to refuse to be afraid and shy in any condition one finds himself. And it can be developed over time by training.

12. They are creative. Creativity here is the ability to use your perceptions and come up with new solutions to old problems, get things done in a different way or find a totally different approach for usual phenomena. Highly successful people are always in creative thinking of how to meet the felt needs around them.

13. They have the ability to lead others. Highly successful people have that charisma of leading others and getting tasks easily done by other people. They understand every member of their team and know how to carry them along.

14. They are humble. Highly successful are not arrogant at all. They give everyone around them the respect due to them. They know how to carry anyone along without hurting peoples' feelings. Despite their humbleness, they know how to draw a line between timidity and humility.

15. They have positive mentality. They always see opportunities where others see problems as well as on the look out for needs around them and constantly thinking of how to meet those needs. They always look at the brighter side of life and help those that don't see life the way they do. They are always self-motivated.

16. They don't procrastinate. Highly successful people don't have the habit of needless delaying where prompt and decisive actions are needed. They always start when their plans demand so and don't wait for a "perfect time" to start, as "perfect time" may not always be determined easily.

Success with becoming super successful!

Please don't forget to make this a fruitful day...unless you've already made other plans!

Entrepreneurial regards,

Patrick

The Intersection of Human & Organizational Innovation Capabilities

By Ralph Ohr

One of my main interests is looking at the intersection of organizational and human capabilities. Business is accomplished through people, thus individual mindset, behavior and capabilities determine organizational performance. When it comes to innovation, a recently published research paper, titled ‘The Bias Against Creativity’ serves as a good example. The findings indicate a paradox that people desire but reject creativity.
The authors explain this paradox by proposing that people can hold a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt, and which is activated when people experience a motivation to reduce uncertainty. They further conclude:

“If people hold an implicit bias against creativity, then we cannot assume that organizations, institutions or even scientific endeavors will desire and recognize creative ideas even when they explicitly state they want them. This is because when journals extol creative research, universities train scientists to promote creative solutions, R&D companies commend the development of new products, pharmaceutical companies praise creative medical breakthroughs, they may do so in ways that promote uncertainty by requiring gate-keepers to identify the single ‘best’ and most ‘accurate’ idea thereby creating an unacknowledged aversion to creativity.”

This suggests two main points:

1. People being involved in innovation are required to truly embrace creativity and novelty. They prove it through their ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. Further, they are not inhibited by an unconscious bias against novel ideas, while claiming to drive innovation forward. Biased people, particularly in case of decision makers and executives, may seriously harm innovation activities.
2. In order drive innovation, people need to be able to manage tensions. The paradox, that people are often curious about novel ideas and leaving the status quo, while at the same time being pulled back by their fear of uncertainty and risk, reflects tension.

Innovation occurs along a continuum from maintaining and improving the already existing (incremental innovation) to entering novel regime in terms of technology, meaning or business model (radical innovation). Both ends of the continuum require particular capabilities and human characteristics in order to get accomplished properly. As innovation activities are often embedded in a portfolio approach across this continuum, innovation management depends on integrating and balancing opposite requirements.

As Tim Kastelle points out, we need to learn and use integrative thinking to tackle these kinds of tensions. Integrative thinking is about creating new models that contain elements of individual models, but are superior to each. I think this can also be applied to personal orientations and mindsets on the human level. In the following I’d like to share some psychological concepts, describing opposite orientations and being relevant for innovation. Everyone has a natural tendency between these poles – and is therefore predestined for corresponding innovation tasks. By means of integrative thinking, we can learn to consciously move to our weaker pole. This may help us to become more flexible, particularly if we intend to develop entire innovation portfolios.

Cognitive orientation: Analytical thinking vs. Intuitive thinking
According to Roger Martin (author, professor, though leader on strategy, design & innovation), analytical thinking is great for exploitation within the existing stage, i.e. improving core business through incremental innovation. Intuitive thinking is indicated for leaving the existing stage by exploring unknown terrains. Analytical thinkers focus almost exclusively on generating reliability – the ability to produce a consistent, replicable outcome. In contrast, intuitive thinkers tend to focus on validity – the production of a desired outcome, whether or not it is consistent or replicable. This makes analytical thinkers more appropriate for incremental innovation, while intuitive thinkers tend to be more suited for radical innovation. In most cases we can’t analyze the way to growth.

Balancing analytical thinking and intuitive thinking enables to both exploit existing business and create new opportunities. That’s what Roger Martin defines as Design Thinking.

Creative orientation: Searching vs. Finding
David Galenson et al. (2003) found that modern artists can be divided into two groups:

1. Experimental innovators are driven by imprecise goals, so their procedure is tentative and incremental. The imprecision of their goals means that they rarely feel they have succeeded, so their careers are often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective. They paint the same subject many times, gradually changing its treatment by trial and error. They consider procedure as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover in the course of making.
2. In contrast, conceptual innovators have intended to communicate specific ideas or emotions. Their goals for a particular work can be stated precisely in advance. They often make detailed preparatory plans for their paint, and execute their final works systematically. Conceptual innovations appear suddenly, as a new idea produces a result quite different not only from other artists’ work, but also from the artist’s own previous work. Conceptual innovations are consequently often embodied in individual breakthrough paintings. The conceptual artist’s certainty about his goals, and confidence that he has achieved them, often leaves him free to pursue new and different goals.

These findings widely hold true for business and innovation, too. Peter Sims emphasizes the need for an experimental and emergent approach in order to manage uncertainty and risk for innovation in his great book 'Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries'.

On the other hand, small steps are often in danger to range within existing regimes. In order to aim at the next breakthrough innovation, a vision or scenarios of future conditions need to be defined. It’s essential for breakthroughs ‘to skate where the puck is going to be, rather than where it is.’ This vision is to be approached gradually through experimental steps – as small as possible and as big as necessary – in order to remain adaptable. I think, only by integrating searching and finding, the innovation continuum can be properly covered.

Temporal orientation: Monochronic vs. Polychronic
Individuals conceive of time quite differently. The most common understanding of time in the western world is ‘clock time’. Ian Mc Carthy et al. (2010) focus in their research on the differentiation between monochronic and polychronic individuals and how they are suited for particular business tasks (you can even find a link to a self-test at the bottom of the post). They describe monochronics as viewing time as a unified and linear phenomenon. Monochronics prefer to work on individual tasks with given deadlines in a serial fashion. In contrast, polychronics tend to view time as a heterogeneous and malleable phenomenon. They like to work on many things simultaneously, and are much less concerned about missing deadlines.
Mc Carthy further suggests that a monochronic orientation suits better to linear innovation frameworks, involving relatively discrete, sequential and determnistic stages. Such frameworks are primarily employed for incremental innovation activities. Whereas a polychronic orientation tends to correspond to highly interconnected environments where more nonlinear and iterative frameworks are required. Those frameworks are suited to deal with unknown outocmes and radical innovation.

A balanced temporal orientation enables people to accomplish tasks from both sides of the innovation spectrum. Moreover, most innovation processes require a higher polychronic orientation in the (messy) ideation stage, while being based on more linear and monochronic execution afterwards.

Takeaway
There is an intersection between individual and organizational innovation capabilities. Human capabilities might not be a sufficient condition for organizational performance, but at least a necessary condition. In order to make innovation activities a success, we have to make sure that novel and creative ideas become truly accepted and acted upon by the people in charge. This requires having the right people in place, being equipped with beneficial capabilities and orientations to tackle the tasks across an innovation portfolio. This suggests hiring and allocating appropriate ‘specialists’ for incremental as well as radical innovation activities, respectively. The overall portfolio, however, needs to get managed by people who are capable of integrating opposing mindsets, orientations and approaches, therefore being able to connect to different individual characters.

Note by Patrick Driessen:

To help you and your organization to get the best innovation capacity out of its human capital, you can use proven innovation management applications and Innovation-as-a-Service (IaaS) tools such as: Spigit, Imaginatik, Qmarkets, BrightIdea, Jive Software and HYPE.
These are highly recommended, as most of these tools  bring the best features of social networking, collaboration software, community software and social media to initiate, select, manage and monitor the best innovations towards success!

Are You Buying Happiness?

By Patrick Driessen

"The basic thing is that everyone wants happiness, no one wants suffering. And happiness mainly comes from our own attitude, rather than from external factors. If your own mental attitude is correct, even if you remain in a hostile atmosphere, you feel happy!" - H.H. the Dalai Lama

Are you feeling sad, depressed or lonely? Just leave your home and buy some active happiness! This is how to do it.

Psychologists have just found out that buying life experiences makes people happier than buying possessions, but who spends more of their spare cash on experiences? New findings published this week (January 30th, 2012) in the Journal of Positive Psychology reveal extraverts and people who are open to new experiences tend to spend more of their disposable income on experiences, such as concert tickets or a weekend away, rather than hitting the shopping mall for material items.

These habitual "experiential shoppers" reaped long-term benefits from their spending: They reported greater life satisfaction, according to the study led by San Francisco State University Assistant Professor of Psychology Ryan Howell.

To further investigate how purchasing decisions impact well-being, Howell and his colleagues have launched a website where members of the public can take free surveys to find out what kind of shopper they are and how their spending choices affect them. Data collected through the "Beyond the Purchase" website will be used by Howell and other social psychologists. 

For his latest study, Howell and colleagues surveyed nearly 10,000 participants, who completed online questionnaires about their shopping habits, personality traits, values and life satisfaction. "We know that being an 'experience shopper' is linked to greater well-being," said Howell, whose 2009 paper on purchasing experiences, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, challenged the adage that money can't buy happiness. "But we wanted to find out why some people gravitate toward buying experiences."

Participants' personality was measured using the "Big Five" personality traits model, a scale psychologists use to describe how extraverted, neurotic, open, conscientious and agreeable a person is. People who spent most of their disposable income on experiences scored highly on the "extravert" and "openness to new experience" scales. 

"This personality profile makes sense since life experiences are inherently more social, and they also contain an element of risk," Howell said. "If you try a new experience that you don't like, you can't return it to the store for a refund."

The authors suggest that it could be easier to change your spending habits than your personality traits. "Even for people who naturally find themselves drawn to material purchases, our results suggest that getting more of a balance between traditional purchases and those that provide you with an experience could lead to greater life satisfaction and well-being."

Next Steps & Actions to Increase Your Happiness

For more info about the above and to find out what kind of shopper you are, please visit the Beyond the Purchase website at beyondthepurchase.org.

Create a life experiences wish list: write down your goals and dreams for the next weekend, the next couple of months or the next decade. Life lists are already very popular, as evidenced by the many books and websites such as '1,000 Places to See Before You Die' and 43Things.com. The movie 'The Bucket List' - a movie in which terminal cancer patients (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) have a few last adventures - also inspired many people to create a wish list with adventures, life experiences and must sees.

Now it's time to create your own list and take action to tick off the wishes on your list to boost your happiness!

Have fun and enjoy your increased level of happiness!

Warm regards,

Patrick

Startup Lessons From a Crime Boss

By Donald DeSantis

Everything I need to know about startups, I learned from a crime boss!

The door opened and into the room walked the most dangerous person I’ve ever met. He reached towards his belt and slowly pulled out his .45 caliber handgun, raised it and paused to evaluate my expression. “No disrespect, but it’s been pressing into my hip all day.” He placed the gun on the coffee table, relaxed into the leather sofa and let his guard down for the first time in a very long while.

This person, let’s call him Kobayashi (I’m a Usual Suspects fan), is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was a well-educated entrepreneur who ran a profitable business that employed dozens of people. He lived in a swanky downtown Los Angeles penthouse. His kids went to private school. He kept his fridge well stocked with imported beer and wine for guests even though he didn’t drink. He was, by all measures, a gentleman.

But Kobayashi ran an unusual business. He was in the business of organized crime. He started this venture quite young, expanded his operations, diversified revenue streams, and created very profitable independent business units. “I have two lawyers,” he once told me. “I keep them both because they hate each other. Neither one of them can get out of line because the other one is watching him. That keeps me safe.” Kobayashi was brilliant, witty, and dangerous. He was a friend and mentor to me during an interesting period of time in my early 20s.

Everything I need to know about startups, I learned from Kobayashi. While I can’t get too deep into specifics (would you?), I can share a few the things he taught me.

Don’t sell rocks when you can sell mountains!

Kobayashi didn’t work with small packages. His business transactions involved risk at every stage – product acquisition, transport, and distribution. But the marginal risk on each decreased with the size of the transaction. Working in large volume reduced his overall risk and rewarded him with a shrink-wrapped palette of cash rather than a suitcase of cash.

As founders and early stage employees, we go to great lengths to mitigate risk. So why do we overlook the total marginal risk?

Building a profitable small-market company is difficult and carries a high risk of failure. Building a profitable large-market company is also difficult and carries a high risk of failure. But the marginal risk in building a company decreases as the addressable market increases. While a larger company may require more total work, the relative effort is less. Make no mistake: small-market companies still come with 18 hour days, flaky vendors, upset customers, and exasperated spouses.

Thinking small increases our risk. So let’s think big!

[Notes: “Large vs. small” is a different debate than “bootstrapped vs venture-backed”, though the two are often conflated. It’s also worth noting that serving a small segment and progressively expanding outwards to serve the larger market is a totally legitimate large-market strategy.]

Cut out the middleman!

As Kobayashi’s businesses grew, he was in a position to start bypassing middlemen. Instead of dealing with distributors, he went straight to producers. Instead of hiring contractors, he purchased required equipment and moved people onto the payroll. Everywhere he saw a third party making money, he figured out a way to replace that person or bring them in-house. He reduced costs at every step. He constantly encouraged me to do the same.

Interesting things happen when we cut out the middleman. In addition to reducing cost, we often end up creating an internal byproduct that can be productized and sold to a completely new customer. (Amazon Web Services is an example of this.) Sometimes the middleman’s market is so huge, that a freaking enormous business can be built simply by providing their customers a lower cost and more efficient option. Two-sided marketplace businesses are a textbook example of this type of disruption.

Don’t shit where you eat!

“When someone’s doing something for the money, people can sense it, like a desperate lover. It’s a turnoff.” – Derek Sivers, Anything You Want

During this period of my life, I was running a couple of businesses that overlapped around the edges. One business had loyal and enthusiastic customers. This business was glamorous, but hemorrhaging money. The other business was transactional and lacked any customer loyalty or love. This business was “anti-glamorous” and a bit closer to Kobayashi’s world than I care to admit.

As time passed, I felt increasing pressure to monetize customers from the first group. I began to overlap these businesses more and more. While they included the same customer segments, there were two completely different products. This pollution of something beautiful with something cheap was my act of shitting in the proverbial kitchen. I watched as revenues increased and looked away from the damage I was causing to the customers I really cared about.

Thankfully, Kobayashi pulled me aside and straightened me out.

The lesson for us is simple. Don’t screw with your users. They are your golden-egg-laying goose. Protect them from rapacious cofounders and investors. Don’t spam them. Don’t abuse them. Don’t be a douchebag.

If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense!

“A business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.” – Jason Fried, Rework

We can build an awesome product and then give it away for free. We can bolt advertising to it. We can turn it into a lead-gen property. We can even sell some virtual goods. Kobayashi wouldn’t!

He would have built Birchbox rather than Pinterest and Airbnb rather than TripAdvisor. He would have found product market fit and a viable business model before spending money on development resources. Kobayashi stayed close to the money, close to a transaction.

Kobayashi was around for the late 90’s tech bubble. He knew many of the players and saw the writing on the wall long before they did. He talked about the first tech wave as if it was a fad that had simply passed, saying things like “when dot-com went out…”

“If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense” may sound like a gross oversimplification. But Kobayashi outlasted those late 90’s startup founders. And he’ll probably outlast most of us.

Closed mouths don’t get fed!

I’ve written before about the importance of networking and moving from wallflower to evangelist. Kobayashi was adamant about the importance of this. “Closed mouths don’t get fed,” he would say. “If you want something, you have to either ask for it or walk up and take it.”

We can’t expect good fortune to fall into our lap. It’s our responsibility to create the circumstances for it and then capture that good fortune. The meek may inherit the earth, but they’ll be getting it from Kobayashi.

Be a badass!

“There’s only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that’s being so good at what you do that they can’t ignore you.” – Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

My friend Chris DeVore makes a comparison I love: pirate ships as organizational models. Pirate ships combine an “us against the world” mentality with a hunt for treasure. This crucible of chaos and ambition somehow allows unstructured groups of mercenaries to complete complex tasks without killing one another (very often). A pirate ship is a meritocracy where he/she who is most badass, leads.

I’ve met several “badasses” over the years, though Kobayashi is the most memorable. Each one of these people had a gravitational pull for talent and resources. The world reorganized itself around them as they passed through it. They were larger than life, energizing everyone in their periphery.

The one thing these badasses shared was the source of their power: influence rather than authority. This lesson is the most important and also the most difficult to implement. There’s no pill, book, or retreat that will turn us into badasses. But if we want to captain a pirate ship, we must become the most badass version of ourselves. Kobayashi taught that we lead only with the influence we earn.

Donald DeSantis is a developer and UX designer at TechStars company Giant Thinkwell. In his free time, he travels to faraway cities and helps make Startup Weekend events successful. You can find him on Twitter at @donalddesantis.

How You Can Support Young Entrepreneurship

By Patrick Driessen

Entrepreneurship is the growth engine of most developed economies. To keep feeding the entrepreneurship engine, education, inspiration and motivation are key ingredients to breed new entrepreneurs. I always like to say that anyone can become an entrepreneur! 

Now every country needs new entrepreneurs and that is something we can all help with, because YOU can help to breed new entrepreneurs! This overview will hopefully inspire you about how you can contribute to it as well.

How YOU can stimulate young entrepreneurship

• Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
• Explain and teach young children that entrepreneurship is not only about making money; it's also about things like creating meaning, social relevance, team building, leadership, innovation, finance, people care, improving the environment, etc. All focused on creating a better world for all of us!
• Explain that young entrepreneurs today are living in a world of constant change, and they must be aware of this fact. As the world is always in a state of change, these young entrepreneurs positively show new thinking and innovative ideas. These qualities are particularly seen in the most recent young entrepreneurs with fresh ideas and are open to try something totally different from the former entrepreneurs of the last century. Unlike generations before them, these young and modern entrepreneurs have a totally changed world view.
• Share your lessons learned and insights about entrepreneurship with as many young children as possible. Especially those who do not have entrepreneurial parents! You might become their leading example, you might spark them, you might become their coach & mentor, you might become their first client, you might become their first investor, etc. 
• Provide young children with tips and tricks about how they can turn something into a profitable new business. Examples are:
• Grow and sell organic vegetables and fruits; package it and sell it door-to-door (supported and guided by an adult);
• Sell chilled lemonade and cookies in summertime, sell hot chocolate and soup in wintertime;
• Design and create useful and trendy crafts-work out of paper, clay, wood, textile, etc. (e.g. bracelets, T-shirts, pots, carry bags, school gear) and sell these at a cardboard stand in the front garden and at fairs;
• Create a new computer or mobile game...;
• Start a new online shop;
• Build websites for the new businesses of fellow young entrepreneurs;
• ......... (create your own examples).
• Tell them about successful young entrepreneurs and how senior entrepreneurs started when they were young. A few examples:
• British serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Brandson: started his first business at 16 years;
• 17 year old Australian serial-entrepreneur Lachy Groom sold his first business at the age of 15 and since than founded two new businesses he's still working on;
• Dutch Internet entrepreneur Ben Woldering started his first successful e-business at the age of 16, thanks to a school assignment about entrepreneurship;
• An overview of websites in the world run by young entrepreneurs as young as 17: 20 Young Internet Entrepreneurs Under 21.

• Refer young potential entrepreneurs and wannapreneurs to specialised websites such as:

• Your Hidden Potential
• Secret Millionaires Club
• Retire at 21 
• Young Entrepreneur  
• Under 30 CEO
• Wealth For Teens
• JuniorBiz
• Young Entrepreneurs Trust
• Kauffman Foundation
• Entrepreneur Inspiration

How YOU can inspire young entrepreneurs

Master-blogger and best selling author Seth Godin wrote an insightful story about young entrepreneurship in which the lessons learned from two lemonade stands were described. It's a great story to share with wannapreneurs as it will inspire them and will open their mindset when they'll think of a compelling business model to start with.

The first stand is run by two kids. They use Countrytime lemonade, paper cups and a bridge table. It's a decent lemonade stand, one in the long tradition of standard lemonade stands. It costs a dollar to buy a cup, which is a pretty good price, considering you get both the lemonade and the satisfaction of knowing you supported two kids.

The other stand is different. The lemonade is free, but there's a big tip jar. When you pull up, the owner of the stand beams as only a proud eleven year old girl can beam. She takes her time and reaches into a pail filled with ice and lemons. She pulls out a lemon. Slices it. Then she squeezes it with a clever little hand juicer.

The whole time that's she's squeezing, she's also talking to you, sharing her insights (and yes, her joy) about the power of lemonade to change your day. It's a beautiful day and she's in no real hurry. Lemonade doesn't hurry, she says. It gets made the right way or not at all. Then she urges you to take a bit less sugar, because it tastes better that way.

While you're talking, a dozen people who might have become customers drive on by because it appears to take too long. You don't mind, though, because you're engaged, almost entranced. A few people pull over and wait in line behind you.

Finally, once she's done, you put $5 in the jar, because your free lemonade was worth at least twice that. Well, maybe the lemonade itself was worth $3, but you'd happily pay again for the transaction. It touched you. In fact, it changed you.
Which entrepreneur do you think has a brighter future?

How YOU can stimulate entrepreneurship at primary schools

A great way in which you all can help to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation is by sponsoring and supporting the BizWorld Foundation (non-profit) of which I'm a passionate Ambassador and Trainer.

With the BizWorld Foundation’s programs, primary school teachers help their students to develop the critical thinking, leadership, innovation and teamwork skills that allow them to become financially responsible, entrepreneurial and productive members of our society.

The BizWorld programs show children in grades 3-8 how they will benefit from entrepreneurship, instilling confidence to reach their goals, and helping them become part of the next generation of innovators. The programs and curricula apply to kids from all socioeconomic and academic backgrounds, providing children with valuable real-world experiences.

Help to create new entrepreneurs and companies within the next generations, by sponsoring and supporting a primary school near your business or home location! Maybe you want to become more than a sponsor and become a BizWorld trainer like myself. You'll love it!

BizWorld is currently active in:

• USA 
• The Netherlands
• Singapore
• India
• South Korea

Is BizWorld not yet active in your country? Maybe YOU can kick it off!?

How YOU can help to make young entrepreneurship work

While the world has countless enthusiastic young people with ideas, potential business skills and technical skills, there are many challenges facing these youthful entrepreneurs. These range from the natural - potential investors such as angel investors, venture capitalists (VC's) and banks disputing their expertise - to artificial, such as the age restrictions placed on credit card services that might otherwise be used to pay for start-up resources, age restrictions for the incorporation and registration of a new company, etc.

Now YOU can help them by acting as a mentor, coach and supporter!

As a young entrepreneur I have personally experienced many hurdles and tough challenges, which could have been prevented or taken away if..... I would have had an adult coach and/or mentor! Of course I used tricks to look older and more senior such as wearing glasses with fake/normal lenses, wearing a suit and a tie; all at the age of 15 years. I bet at my Dutch high school a lot of other kids were making fun at me, because I was the only one wearing a business jacket and tie...

For me my entrepreneurial life became much easier when - at the age of 16 - a friend of my father showed his belief and trust in me and my entrepreneurial ideas. I had very supportive and entrepreneurial parents, however this person was an authority within the law and corporate business community and he invested some of his precious time in me! Wow! The fact that he took me serious and acted as a mentor boosted my self-esteem, gave me lots of energy and helped me overcome many challenges. As my mentor he also prevented me from making some big mistakes, which could have negatively impacted my future. 

The insights and lessons learned he gave me also helped me to further develop my passion to help others succeed, to become a coach and mentor for fellow entrepreneurs and to inspire others about entrepreneurship and leadership. 

Now 24 years later I am very happy, proud and inspired to see that the mentor I was referring to is still mentoring young people as well as helping many other people and organisations to succeed. He's also a true inspirator for entrepreneurship and so can YOU be!

 

With entrepreneurial regards,


Patrick Driessen

Just Give Yourself to Others!

By Patrick Driessen

"Life's too short not to show your love or appreciation to someone or something!" - Patrick Driessen

As I have noted in my long list of Life Lessons; giving your support to others will often help you succeed as it will increase your levels of happiness and success, plus it has a positive impact on your health.

These are some of my applicable 'giving yourself to others' Life Lessons:

• #30.  Make at least three people smile each day.
• #63.  Share your thoughts, ideas, knowledge and experience with others, so they can benefit from it as well.
• #77.  Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yards.
• #81.  Feed a stranger's expired parking meter.
• #84.  It is amazingly rewarding and satisfying to help someone in their time of need. It helps them, and it also helps you! 
• #85.  The most powerful single thing you can do to influence others is to smile at them.
• #101. When you help others, they will help you in return. It comes in handy. 
• #106. Do at least twenty hours of community work per year. 
• #108. Never give up on anybody. 
• #129. Give more, expect less from a personal perspective. 
• #132. What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us. What we have done for others lasts forever!
• #141. You can get everything in life you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.

So...forget chocolate, sex, fresh flowers and money... caring for others can bring just as much pleasure and benefit your health!

Finally some decent scientific research has proven that:

• Support-giving triggers reward-related regions of the brain!
• Helping others can boost happiness and reduce stress!

Caring for friends and family benefits the giver, not just the receiver, scientists say. Confirming the proverb "It is better to give than to receive." researchers at the University of California (UCLA) say that lending support to others is a pleasurable experience which can boost happiness and lower stress.

During trials they discovered that when patients were able to help loved ones they experienced positive emotions commonly associated with chocolate, sex and money.

Lead researcher, UCLA Assistant Professor Naomi Eisenberger said: 'When people talk about the ways in which social support is good for our health, they typically assume that the benefits of social support come from the support we receive from others. But it now seems likely that some of the health benefits of social support actually come from the support we provide to others.'

During the study 20 young heterosexual couples in healthy relationships were observed. Each of the men were subjected to painful electric shocks while their girlfriends underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans which measured changes in blood flow related to neural activity in the brain.

At times, the women could provide support by holding the arm of their boyfriends, but on other occasions they were forced to watch as their partners received shocks. Findings revealed that when women were able to help their boyfriends reward-related regions of the brain were activated, including the ventral striatum and septal area. Under conditions in which no support was provided, these regions showed decreased activity.

Eisenberger said: 'One of these regions, the ventral striatum, is typically active in response to simple rewards like chocolate, sex and money. The fact that support-giving also activates this region suggests that support-giving may be processed by the brain as a very basic type of rewarding experience.'

The research findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, also suggest that offering support to others can help reduce stress. Scientists noted an interesting pattern of neural activity in the septal area, which in addition to being a pleasure center, plays a role in stress-reduction by inhibiting regions of the brain that process threats. Eisenberger said: 'This finding suggests that support-giving may have stress-reducing effects for the person who provides the support.' She also noted that support-giving could be a basic human instinct, aiding the 'survival of our species.'

Enjoy giving yourself, your knowledge, your experience, your love, your energy and your support to others!

Warm regards & success,

Patrick Driessen

11 Leadership Styles To Avoid

By Mike Michalowicz

 Leadership is one of those things that every successful entrepreneur must have in order to succeed, but identifying what good leadership entails may not always be clear-cut for everyone. So just what kind of leadership style should you have? You can weed them out by taking a look at these 11 leadership styles that you must avoid if you want to succeed.

1.  Providing Too Much Info.
You look like a know-it-all. People are less likely to share their ideas, because you will just roll over them with your own “better” ideas. The Fix: Next time you have a better idea, don't just share it. Instead, invite your colleagues to build on the idea and come up with an even better solution.

2.  Using "But" or "However".
These words simply mean that you don't approve. “I like your idea, but...” “I will consider what you are saying, however....” Your intention may be to try to soften the blow. But in reality you are not. Instead of jabbing a knife into their gut, you are stabbing it into their back. The Fix: Stop using those words, and don't look for another work-around to pass down your criticisms. Just stop using the words.

3.  Sharing Your “Smart” Stories.
If you add to discussions by sharing the smart stuff you have done, you are pointing to an inferiority complex. You feel you need to puff out your chest in order to get noticed. No one likes a bragger. The Fix: Recognize that the most successful leaders have an “air” around them. They don't need to brag and show off. They simply bring confidence to the table.

4.  Communicating When Angry.
Sharing your thoughts when you are angry can be dangerous. Emotions will cause outbursts and may do irreparable harm. The Fix: Remove yourself physically from a situation that makes you angry. Then give yourself a 24-hour break. (You need to get one sleep cycle in.) You will be in a better position to talk when your emotions are not dominating.

5.  Withholding Helpful Knowledge.
Keeping secrets that adversely affect other people's performance is another sign of an inferiority complex. And when people find out you held them back, you will lose their trust. The Fix: Ask yourself what else you can share to help others. Then share it.

6.  Failure to Give Individual Recognition.
This is simply another version of “all for me, none for you.” You are keeping all the credit, and others don't feel that you value them. The Fix: When a project is completed successfully, publicly recognize the individual contributions everyone made.

7.  Claiming Credit Your Don’t Deserve.
This may be even worse than not giving credit to others. In this case, you are actually stealing it from them. Not only are you a jerk, you are a thief, too. The Fix: It is far better to give someone else credit for something you have done than the reverse.
Leadership style number 

8.  Making Excuses.
The buck stops with leaders. If a leader makes an excuse, they lose credibility and integrity. When Bill Clinton was president and had the Monica situation, what were your thoughts about his excuses and denials? (And I quote “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”) Kind of lost his credibility and integrity, right? Don't do the same thing. The Fix: Next time you are thinking of an excuse, instead make it a declaration of what you will permanently fix.

9.  Refusing to Apologize.
Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone hates someone who can't admit to their own. The Fix: Apologize quickly, apologize fully, and mention an action that you are going to take to fix – or at least improve – the situation.

10.  Not Listening.
This is a problem of many leaders (and something I admittedly struggle with). It is a bad problem. It says only one thing, loud and clear, to the person speaking: that you don't care. The Fix: Remove yourself from physical distractions (e.g., e-mail, crackberry, etc.), lock eyes with the person, and repeat back the stuff they tell you.

11.  Punishing the Messenger.
Bad news can be reported from any source, and bad leaders attack the source. These leaders lose trust, and bad news gets pushed under the rug. The Fix: Recognize that bad news is critical to your success, because you need it in order to improve and fix problems. The next time bad news is reported to you, be extremely grateful that that person was willing to tell you.

Dancing your way through all the leadership styles that you should avoid may take some practice, but you will become a more effective leader, once you are able to do it and focus more attention on what it takes to be a great leader.

John Quincy Adams said it best, when he reminded us: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” If you fall short of that – and many entrepreneurs make the mistake of doing so – then your business will suffer!

Note about the author: 

Mike Michalowicz is the president of a behavioral web optimization firm: Obsidian Launch, he's small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal, he's a frequent television guest and keynote speaker on entrepreneurship, and is the author of the book 'The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur'.

Inspiration and Life Lessons from Steve Jobs

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected!" - Steve Jobs 

By Patrick Driessen
Unfortunately - at the age of 56 - Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has lost his battle with cancer. To me and to many other people he was one of the greatest visionary maverick technology entrepreneurs of our time. A true inspirator!

Thanks to his passionate entrepreneurship, leadership and his innovative focus on excellence, both Pixar Animation Studios and Apple became very successful global companies. They both contributed to enormous innovation in entertainment, design, technology, communications and usability; rapidly adopted, used and enjoyed by millions of consumers and businesses around the globe.

As a tribute I would like to share my selection of his most inspirational quotes - full of life lessons - with you below.

"We all have a short period of time on this earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re gong to be here nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.... Stay hungry. Stay foolish!" (Stanford University commencement address, June 2005)

"Innovation has no limits. The only limitation lies in one’s imagination. Innovation is the key to change and growth. One needs to begin thinking out of the box and create ideas to expand whichever work one is involved in. However, in the drive for improvement one must not overlook the fact that there are no shortcuts to excellence. One’s personality should be a yardstick of quality. A person can get right ahead of others by using one’s talents, abilities, skills and above all keeping excellence as priority. Each person should give his or her work the best shot and pay attention to the minutest details that really do make the difference!"

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary!"

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future!”

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works!"

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower!"

"One of my role models is Bob Dylan. As I grew up, I learned the lyrics to all his songs and watched him never stand still. If you look at the artists, if they get really good, it always occurs to them at some point that they can do this one thing for the rest of their lives, and they can be really successful to the outside world but not really be successful to themselves. That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure, they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure. This Apple thing is that way for me. I don’t want to fail, of course. But even though I didn’t know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn’t really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I’ve tried my best." (CNNMoney/Fortune Magazine, November 9th 1998)

A young Steve Jobs

3 Practical Steps to Motivate Team Members

"You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future!" - Steve Jobs

For decades, Zig Ziglar has motivated and inspired millions of people to be better at whatever they do for a living. Zig's ideas about creating a sense of urgency are exemplified in his "Day Before Vacation" story. This technique can have a tremendous effect on your productivity, and the ability to motivate and inspire your team members.

Think about your last day at work before you went on your most recent vacation. Didn't you get as much done in that day as you would normally get done in two, three, or even four days? Have you ever considered how this could be used to motivate employees? Look at what Zig Ziglar says you probably do on the day before your vacation:

Two nights before your vacation, you likely sat down with a piece of paper and listed all of the things that had to get finished the following day - your gottas ("I gotta do this and I gotta..."). Then, you committed to completing them all before you left the office the next day. These principles are essential to motivate your team members.

On the morning of the day before your vacation, you arrived at the office on time, maybe even early. But you didn't head for the coffee machine. No, you headed straight for the first gotta on your list (the sign of a motivated employee). You probably also did things out of order. You took your least favourite, most distasteful task on your list and got it out of the way quickly, instead of having it hanging overhead all day long (the way you normally would...). With that tough one out of the way, you were feeling pretty good, and so you tore into the next task on your list, and then the next one after that. When someone came to chat about last night's game, you politely but firmly informed that person that you were just too busy - and then you got back to business.

As you completed each of your gottas, you felt your energy rising, so that by halfway through the day you were buzzing with a sense of accomplishment that drove your enthusiasm level ever higher. Your obviously energized and enthusiastic demeanor began to motivate employees and colleagues around you. They started to ramp up their efforts and became similarly enthusiastic. The atmosphere in the office got a little extra spark, and this lifted you even further. At the end of the day, you had all of your gottas completed. Now let's have a look at the principles behind this focus, and how you apply it to your team members' performance and implement it in your employee development program.

1st - Create a Vision
When your employee's vision gets knocked offline by events around him, he is like a $10 billion guided missile without a target! He can fly around in circles looking pretty impressive, but eventually he's going to run out of fuel and crash and burn.... Motivate your employees in an organized way that will make them more productive. Help them envision their target clearly in theirs head and then paint it in front of them every day so that you are maximizing productivity.

2nd - Formulate a Set of Goals
Having a great vision is useless unless your employee formulates clear, achievable goals to ensure that his vision becomes reality. He must plot a course to take him from where he is now to a target with checkpoints along the way that let him know when he has gone off course. Successful employee motivation is rooted in meaningful goal setting.

3rd - Make a Commitment
This is the most common stumbling block; even if its victims are used to creating compelling visions and formulating achievable goals, they fail to commit. If he has ever made a New Year's resolution he failed to complete, he knows what happens to plans that aren't backed by commitment. If there's no commitment, then his vision simply isn't compelling enough. Otherwise, the commitment naturally would follow. He knows that his vision is right when it has the same sense of urgency. 

A real commitment will immediately motivate the employee to get him off the ground and in search of his target. Before he spends one more day out of focus, motivate the employee to stop and look carefully at his goals!

"If you can dream it, then you can achieve it! You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want." - Zig Ziglar

"If you don't see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner!" - Zig Ziglar 

"I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can't truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles." - Zig Ziglar

Innovation Quotes

To help you boost your creative mindset, Dutch innovation facilitator Gijs van Wulfen shares 25 of his favorite motivational quotes to jump start innovation.

1. “Innovation is anything, but business as usual.” (Anonymous).
2. “In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman”. (David Ogilvy).
3. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there will be no hope for it.” (A. Einstein).
4. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” (A. Warhol).
5. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” (George Bernard Shaw).
6. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay).
7. “There are no old roads to new directions.” (Advertisement of the Boston Consulting Group).
8. “Nothing is stronger than habit.” (Ovid).
9. “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” (A. Einstein).
10. “Organizations, by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environments for innovation.” (T. Levitt).
11. “It’s tough when markets change and your people within the company don’t.” (Harvard Business Review).
12. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” (Goethe).
13. “What we’ve done to encourage innovation is make it ordinary.” (C. Wynett, Procter & Gamble).
14. “To gain customer insights, we must understand that we are prisoners of what we know and what we believe”. (Mohanbir Sawhney).
15. “He who ask a question is a fool for 5 minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool for ever.” (China)
16. “A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.” (A. von Szent-Gyorgyi).
17. “Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises”. (Demosthenes).
18. “You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”  (Anonymous).
19. “People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” (Peter Drucker).
20. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” (R. Emerson).
21. “The impossible is often the untried.” (J. Goodwin).
22. “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” (Tao Te Ching).
23. “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.” (D. Adams).
24. “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow” (Rupert Murdoch).
25. “The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” (Vincent Van Gogh).

I hope these quotes will inspire you as well.
Do you have other innovation quotes you would like to share? Please add them in the comment section below. Thanks!

What Determines A Company’s Performance? The Shape Of The CEO’s Face!

August 27th, 2011 - Believe it or not, one thing that predicts how well a CEO’s company performs is: the width of his face!  

CEOs with wider faces, like Steve Ballmer (CEO @ Microsoft) or Herb Kelleher (former CEO of Southwest Airlines), have better-performing companies than CEOs like Dick Fuld, the long-faced final CEO of Lehman Brothers. That’s the conclusion of a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Elaine M. Wong at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her colleagues study how top management teams work. But they have to do it in indirect ways. “CEOs and top executives don’t typically have time to talk with researchers or take batteries of tests,” she says. “Our research has primarily been at a distance.” They’ve analyzed the content of letters to shareholders and looked at things like how a CEO’s educational or personal background affects how well his or her company does. Wong and her colleagues, Margaret E. Ormiston of London Business School and Michael P. Haselhuhn of UWM, wanted to look at another aspect of CEOs: their faces!

Looking at faces isn’t as crazy as it might sound. Several studies have shown that the ratio of face width to face height is correlated with aggression. Hockey players with wider faces spend more time in the penalty box for fighting. Men with higher facial width are seen as less trustworthy and they feel more powerful.

“Most of these are seen as negative things, but power can have some positive effects,” Wong says. People who feel powerful tend to look at the big picture rather than focusing on small details and are also better at staying on task. She and her colleagues thought that feeling of power might also be correlated with a company’s financial performance.

Wong and her colleagues based their analyses on photos of 55 male CEOs of publicly-traded Fortune 500 organizations. They only used men because this relationship between face shape and behavior has only been found to apply to men; it’s thought to have something to do with testosterone levels. They also gathered information on the companies’ financial performance and analyzed shareholder letters to get a sense of the kind of thinking that goes on at those companies.

CEOs with a wider face, relative to the face’s height, had much better firm financial performance than CEOs who had narrower faces. “In our sample, the CEOs with the higher facial ratios actually achieved significantly greater firm financial performance than CEOs with the lower facial ratios,” Wong says.

Don’t run out and invest in wide-faced CEOs’ companies, though. Wong and her colleagues also found that the way the top management team thinks, as reflected in their writings, can get in the way of this effect. Teams that take a simplistic view of the world, in which everything is black and white, are thought to be more deferential to authority; in these companies, the CEO’s face shape is more important. It’s less important in companies where the top managers see the world more in shades of gray!

Tip for emerging CEO's: ask your nutritionist for a special diet to gain weight - thus width - in your face!