ESSENTIAL SKILLS OF A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEUR: HOW TO FOSTER THESE TRAITS

Not everyone can necessarily become a great entrepreneur, but great entrepreneurs come from all walks of life. J.C. Mills, president and head of content for Cineflix Productions, is a young, ambitious, talented, and connected senior television executive. In the past, J.C. has represented production companies, writers, directors, and showrunners.

I met Mills at Realscreen, where he shared how his career has benefited from diversity, networking, and entrepreneurial drive, and how they can benefit you, too.

1. Diversity

In the dynamic and rapidly evolving corporate landscape, possessing diverse experiences has become a pivotal factor in achieving success.

Whether you are a visionary entrepreneur seeking to establish your enterprise or a seasoned manager leading a large organization, the capacity to leverage a versatile repertoire of experiences can confer a distinct competitive advantage.

When you've worked in different roles, you have a broader understanding of how businesses work and can identify patterns and opportunities that others may miss.

Diverse experience helps you develop a range of skills. Each new job or project provides an opportunity to learn new ones.

These skills can then be applied to future roles, making you a more versatile and valuable employee or business owner.

It is essential to stay open to new opportunities and be willing to move around in business as needed. Your multiple experiences can provide a strong foundation for building your business.

2. Networking

The relationships built with the people around us come with numerous professional benefits.

Cultivating meaningful relationships with your colleagues, subordinates, patrons, and superiors is a proven way to elevate the worth you bring to your organization.

These bonds are valuable assets that can yield benefits in both the short and long term, making it imperative to invest in their strengthening and development.

When you network, you open yourself up to new opportunities. You may hear of a new business venture or job opening that you would not have known about otherwise.

By investing time in building your network, you can create new opportunities, establish trust, and gain the necessary support to accomplish your objectives. It will ultimately lead to business growth and success.

3. Entrepreneurial drive

Entrepreneurship is a buzzword in today's business world, with more and more people looking to start their ventures and make their mark.

But what sets successful entrepreneurs apart from the rest? A combination of passion, persistence, and risk-taking that fuels their success.

Passion for their work is the driving force behind successful entrepreneurs. They have confidence in their vision and will work eagerly to make it a reality.

Despite difficulties and setbacks, they never give up. They are persevering in their quest for their objectives and will turn and adjust depending on the situation.

To achieve their objectives, they are willing to take calculated risks. They are ever eager to learn from their mistakes and recognize that failure is a part of the process.

It enables entrepreneurs to remain focused and committed even during challenging times. Those willing to take risks and who are creative have a higher chance of creating innovative products and services, establishing new markets, and disrupting traditional industries.

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for success. However, by cultivating a range of skills, building a strong network, and embracing new challenges and perspectives, you can position yourself for success in any industry as an entrepreneur.

BY BHARAT KANODIA, FOUNDER, VERISTRAT@WHATSITWORTHTV

THE ONE MISTAKE YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS MAKE IS RELYING ON HOPE

As an angel investor, VC investor, adviser, attorney, and serial entrepreneur, the one mistake I see entrepreneurs make too often is relying on hope. Don't get me wrong. Hope can be a beautiful thing. When Senator Obama's book came out, The Audacity of Hope, I loved it and was inspired by it. It laid the foundations for me to join my current company, where I help inspire people by connecting them with great thought leaders and Awaken Greatness Within.

Hope is important--as a starting point. It can give you the strength to persevere in the face of adversity. It can motivate you to achieve your goals. 

However, hope is not a strategy. It is not a plan. It is not a roadmap to success. When I hear a young entrepreneur start a sentence, "Well, we hope that X is going to happen," then I can be pretty sure their business is in trouble.

So this is what I tell entrepreneurs about a strategy to help them get started.

What Is and Is Not a Strategy?

A strategy is your roadmap to success. It is a plan that outlines how you are going to achieve your goals. It's based on data and analysis. 

It is not your mission (which is what you want to accomplish). Neither is it your vision (which is the reason why you do what you do). Strategy is how you're going to accomplish your mission and vision.

How Can You Get Started on Building a Strategy?

Once you understand what a strategy is, you can break it down into steps so you can accomplish your goals.

1. Set clear goals. This step seems obvious. Yet, sometimes entrepreneurs have vague goals like they want to make a lot of money or help people. Or they have poor goals, like an idea for a cool product even without knowing whether anyone needs it. To set clear goals, find a good problem to solve.

Maybe you see that people with low incomes need affordable transportation to get to work. Once you know what problem you want to solve, you can start developing a plan to get there.

2. Do your research. Yes. You need to do your homework. Lots of it. Study your industry. Study your competitors. For example, if you're setting up a retail location, look at the foot traffic on that street, mall, or shopping center. Do people shop there? And what do other businesses like yours earn? The more you know, the better equipped you will be to create a successful strategy.

3. Create a plan. Your plan should have specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound goals. You may have heard of the acronym: SMART. For example, your first step in your journey might be: Create a Business Plan for Funding. Then you can break down that project into measurable and achievable steps into a timeline. Maybe you can work on a part each week. And you will have it done in a month.

4. Take action. This is the step where young entrepreneurs often go astray. Instead of doing something, I see them sit around and hope for the best. They make a business pitch and hope they will get funded by the first VC they interview with. I don't see them take action like networking with everyone they know so they can generate excitement or find more people who are interested. 

5. Be persistent. Sometimes you won't see the results for quite a while. Don't give up when things get tough. In fact, for many young entrepreneurs, even though you are pursuing your plan and following your SMART goals, it will feel like your business is making little progress. 

At the start, you might be attracting few customers and have little income. Just remember, you need to keep repeating the steps in your plan until you see progress or until you get enough feedback that shows you need to change your plan.

Remember, hope is not a strategy. It is a feeling. Feelings, wishes, and dreams are never going to be enough. If you want to be successful, you need to have more than just hope. You need to have a plan. You need to have a strategy. You need to take action.

BY KEN STERLING, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, BIGSPEAK@STERLINGKEN

HOW TO KNOW WHEN YOU SHOULD USE EMAIL OR PHONE FOR WORK

As an entrepreneur, you know how important it is to efficiently and effectively use productivity tools in your work. 

And there's a good chance you regularly use two underrated productivity tools in your daily work, the ever-present email and the humble telephone.  

You may think these tools are created equally.

But that's not necessarily the case. Each tool has its own merits and demerits. 

The only question is: Are you using the right tool at the right moment in your work? 

Here are eight tips to help you determine when to use email and when to use the telephone to productively communicate with others. 

When to Use Email  

• Use email to document information

Email can be thought of as a digital equivalent of a paper trail. This tool is extremely helpful if you need to document or record information.

This can be handy in your professional work and business especially when it comes to finances, clients and customers, and project records.

If you need to summarize the findings of a report, capture an expense, or present a proposal to someone, email is a smart way to go. 

• Use email to confirm information

Another way to use email is to use it as a written confirmation for communications.

This is somewhat similar to documenting information, but in this situation, you're specifically writing a message to someone in order receive a timely response.

You can use email to confirm travel arrangements, meeting attendance, or a final decision. 

• Use email to share information

Email is a convenient sharing medium. Portable as well as convenient, email acts as a temporary digital inbox or holding container for text, links, PDFs, images, and the like. You can process, read, review, or study information that is sent via email. 

• Use email to manage schedules

Email can be especially useful if you are working with those located in a different time zone.

Because of the time difference, a recipient can review your message and get back to you on their own schedule.

Again, the idea here is to not necessarily have an immediate response, but to provide a situation where communication can naturally unfold between two parties in a well-managed fashion.  

When to Use the Phone 

• Use the phone to acquire information

You can hop on the phone at almost any place and time to secure information.

You can make updates to accounts, change passwords, and gather account or status updates.

What's more, if you need assistance with your query, there's a fairly good chance you can receive real-time support for it. 

• Use the phone to build rapport with another person

Nothing replaces building a relationship with someone in real time.

You can hear the other person's voice, intonation, expression, cadence, and rhythm. That's a much different way of communicating with others than email.

Thankfully, we can quickly understand and express what is being said on a person-to-person phone call.

• Use the phone to change your workflow

A phone call requires you to stay active throughout the whole session.

You must listen to what someone is saying and then respond to them in kind. There's a whole different flow to experiencing your work.

What's more, you can take calls in different places, you can walk and talk or stay still, all while staying focused and present in the moment. 

• Use the phone for sensitive conversations

Sometimes it's better to have a phone conversation than to email.

You may want to float ideas, thoughts, or decisions or brainstorm with others, but you don't necessarily want to leave a trail in the form of an email or text.

A good old-fashioned phone call is a quick and convenient way to communicate and get things done.  

WHY ALL BUSINESS IS GLOBAL BUSINESS TODAY

I wouldn't have thought that a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy would put me in the manufacturing business, but life is full of surprises. Several years ago, after writing a book called The Daily Stoic, I started an email list that delivered one philosophical meditation each day. From there, I expanded the business into prints and then into an e-commerce company that sells all sorts of physical products--statues, coins, printed books--all over the world.

The Daily Stoic Store is a small business in the sense that there are only six or seven of us in the office every day--and yet it's not really small at all, ranking in the top 1 percent of all Shopify stores. The result has been a surprising thrust into a world I had experienced before only from the outside. Labor practices, manufacturing practices, environmental practices--these were no longer abstract issues that other companies grappled with. They were things that I had to face, firsthand.

We all have opinions about big sweeping issues. We tell ourselves that if we were in charge, we would do things differently. If we were a multi­national conglomerate, we wouldn't use chemicals that harm the environment. If we were the decision makers, we'd have a diverse workforce, we'd be family-friendly employers, we'd speak out on political issues. We would pay a living wage. We wouldn't do business with an overseas company that uses child labor.

But then the order for company T-shirts comes across your desk and you suddenly have to choose between the $9 option from China and the $19 one manufactured in the U.S. The right thing is still obvious. It's just harder.

Ethics Versus Expenses

I'll give you an example: At Daily Stoic, we sell challenge coins inspired by philosophical concepts (one says Memento Mori, another Amor Fati). After receiving many bids, I learned that it would be significantly cheaper to manufacture those coins in China than in the United States. Although I might have previously nodded my head in agreement with people who criticized outsourcing, now the tradeoffs directly affected my own bottom line.

Suddenly, it was ethics versus expenses: It was out of my wallet that the higher cost per unit would come. I would be the one who would have to go to customers and ask them to pay a higher price. It was me they might balk at.

Eventually, I made the difficult decision to go with a U.S.-based company called Wendell's (in business since 1882). Then, a few months later, I stumbled across something else I could not ignore. The coins were going straight from the manufacturer to the third-party shipping contractor and then to the customer. And it wasn't until an order got shipped to me that I realized each coin came shrink-wrapped in its own plastic covering.

How much of this plastic was being produced for my company? How much ended up in the trash--or, worse, in the ocean?

Wendell's explained the protective benefits of the plastic--and I'm sure 95 percent of the world's excessive packaging exists for that reason. The company also explained the plastic bags weren't really costing me anything; this was just the way it had been doing things for a very long time. But, in this case, the environmental footprint was on my conscience, and only I could make it go away.

I say could because I wasn't obligated to reduce the plastic my products were adding to the world. It's not illegal to seek cheaper labor overseas. Most of my customers probably wouldn't have noticed a change. But how could I have justified sorting my recycling at home if I was sending little plastic sheaths into thousands of homes every year? I asked Wendell's to stop using the plastic. And if making that decision caused damage to a product during shipping, we'd deal with it. Nobody threw me a parade, but I, for one, felt better.

When John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods, espouses conscious capitalism--the idea that the purpose of business is creating value not simply for shareholders but also for employees, consumers, suppliers, and the planet--it's easy to assume he's talking to other powerful captains of industry. But, no, he's talking to all of us.

As the great novelist and political theorist Leo Tolstoy once suggested, we all feel qualified to reform humanity's issues--but we are less inclined to reform ourselves. The Stoic school of philosophy, the thinkers whose ideas are the foundation of my business, would say that talking about what you believe in is much less important than embodying that belief, filtering your basic daily actions and choices through your philosophy. We can despair at the enormity of the world's problems, or we can get to work where we work.

The truth is that in our interconnected world, we entrepreneurs have more power than we think we do, and more than we might have had in earlier eras. With a click of a button, we have unprecedented reach. We can plug into international supply chains. We can access the kinds of resources that compel great powers to go to war.

An Inconvenient Truth

Just over a year ago, I watched horrified as Vladimir Putin's tanks rolled into Ukraine. And, as the geopolitical experts and military leaders explained Putin's strategy, it wasn't a bunch of unpronounceable words and distant places to me. I found myself understanding exactly what was happening, ­because I had recently purchased the rights to publish a leather-bound edition of one of my books and had begun working with a small company in Texas to do it--a company that had also been manufacturing Bibles in Belarus for decades.

Belarus sits above Ukraine, and the Dnipro River winds its way through the country and down through its southern neighbor, past Kyiv, entering the Black Sea not far from Crimea. Alexander Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, is one of Russia's closest allies, and in the early days of the war, Lukashenko seemed likely to get involved at any moment; both he and Putin hope to gain control of a valuable shipping route, which in turn would make their countries more attractive to businesses like mine and much bigger ones. For a year and a half, I had been using raw materials that came in through this area and then trucking finished books to a port to be shipped out. This meant the invasion mattered to me as an American not just from a logistics standpoint--how our goods might manage to get through a war zone from printer to customers--but also from an ethical standpoint.

I spoke with a handful of experts, including two members of Congress. Their answer was quite clear: It may not have been illegal to do business with Belarus, but it was effectively the same as doing business with Russia. Is that what I wanted to do? Is that what I should be doing?

This was not the answer I wanted to hear. Further, a solution to the problem was not exactly obvious. I liked the people I was working with in Belarus. The bids I got from manufacturers in the U.K. were as much as 200 percent higher. It struck me, however, that the very book I was printing included a relevant line from Marcus Aurelius, the great Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor: "Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn't matter."

I decided I didn't want any part of contributing to the economy of a country that does the bidding of China or Russia. I couldn't change the world, but I could change this. I could get as far away as possible from something I found abhorrent.

Sure, it was more expensive. It would take long­er. Almost no one would have known if I had simply continued with what I'd been doing. But that doesn't matter. I would have known.

How to Change the World

In the end, it wasn't a cost-benefit analysis that swayed me. The math wasn't in my favor. I think you have to start with what you believe is right, and then try to make the math work from there.

I'm not McDonald's or Apple or General Motors doing business overseas. And I'm not saying that I always make the right decisions, or that I have examined every inch of the supply chain and personally vetted every person or company involved. I haven't. But, like many other entrepreneurs, what I'm doing is my best.

Each of us has the power to contribute to a problem or to be part of the solution. The decision to reform oneself is not an isolated one. It may matter only a tiny bit in the big scheme of things, but it does matter. All the decisions we make as business owners matter. We have agency, we have a say.

The question we all face, then, is obvious: How will we use it?

BY RYAN HOLIDAY, AUTHOR AND FOUNDER, BRASS CHECK@RYANHOLIDAY

'BLACKBERRY': HOW THE WORLD'S FIRST SMARTPHONE REVOLUTIONIZED COMMUNICATION, THEN DIED

Few products in history have soared and crashed as spectacularly as the BlackBerry.

The rise and fall of the world's first smartphone is the subject of a new dark comedy, BlackBerry. Adapted by director Matt Johnson and co-writer Matthew Miller from the 2015 bestselling book Losing the Signal, BlackBerry tells the story of a company built by Star Wars-obsessed nerds who briefly revolutionized communication--until the iPhone showed up. The movie premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March and hits theaters on May 12.

Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian mobile communications company that at its height claimed 45 percent of the U.S. cell phone market, was co-founded by best friends Mike Lazaridis (played by Jay Baruchel in the movie) and Doug Fregin (Johnson). BlackBerry begins in 1996 with the two pitching their "cell phone and email machine" to businessman and Harvard MBA Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton). The tech-savvy but guileless entrepreneurs present a design of their patented device, which can tap into a free wireless internet signal across North America. "It's like the Force," Fregin says to Balsillie, unaware that the latter hadn't seen Star Wars.

The pitch fails, but Balsillie ends up coming aboard as Lazaridis's co-CEO, bringing much-needed sales and marketing expertise to the team. They successfully launch the BlackBerry as the world's first smartphone, a wildly popular device, but Balsillie's growth-at-all-costs mentality corrupts Lazaridis's number one principle: to build the best product possible, no matter what. 

That's just one of the business lessons the movie does a good job of distilling. In an interview,  Johnson shared other relevant takeaways for entrepreneurs from the film.

1. Not everything deemed 'impossible' is actually impossible.

A pivotal moment in the film comes when RIM engineers proclaim that no more BlackBerry devices should be sold, as adding more phones to the network would crash it. Needing to boost the company's revenue to prevent a hostile takeover from PalmPilot, however, Balsillie hires top engineers from the world's leading tech companies to solve the problem.

"If you think you've hit a brick wall and authority figures are telling you, 'We can't do it,' often what they're saying is that doing the thing you want to do is going to be a lot of work that they don't want to do," Johnson says. "Recognizing that that's the message you're being told, and not 'this is actually impossible,' is an important skill for young people to master."

2. Successful businesses do more than just solve a problem.

Adding email functionality to cell phones was undoubtedly a technological breakthrough, but creating the smartphone product category didn't defend RIM against competition from other innovative companies. One of the reasons Apple was able to make the BlackBerry essentially obsolete--almost overnight--was the fact that the company had a cultural vision for what a smartphone could be, according to Johnson.

"You really need to be selling your clients a vision of a life, and not just something to solve an immediate problem," he says. "These guys had 20/20 vision, but they only saw six feet in front of their own faces." 

3. Losing your company culture can lead to losing your company.

Early in the film, when Fregin and Lazaridis tell their employees that their pitch failed, they soften the blow with the "good news" that they're hosting an impromptu movie night and screening Raiders of the Lost Ark, which immediately lifts everyone's spirits. But by the time RIM is a large public company, nearly all traces of its culture of camaraderie--where employees were happy to work long hours together--are gone. According to Johnson, the loss of that culture contributed to how the company lost sight of its mission.

"Don't take for granted the intangibles of your business that do not actually have line items, like fraternity," Johnson says. "You won't know it until it's gone, and then it really might cost you, as it did these guys."

THE NEW EQUATION FOR SUCCESS: A.I + EQ

A.I., and new large language models like ChatGPT, has captured the imagination, excitement, and fear of leaders, companies, and industries worldwide.  

While A.I. may possess unparalleled computational capabilities, it lacks fundamental human qualities.

As we enter this new world dominated by A.I., another type of intelligence -- emotional intelligence -- has never been more crucial. In this article, I make the case that the most effective leaders in the years and decades to come will need not one, but two types of intelligence to thrive: artificial and emotional.

Emotional intelligence, often referred to as EQ, encompasses a set of skills, mindsets, and abilities that enable individuals to recognize, understand, and manage their emotions and those of others. It involves empathy, self-awareness, self-regulation, picking up on social cues, and an awareness of the environment around us. Put another way -- crucial human skills for understanding oneself and others. 

Machines excel in processing data and making decisions based on predictive logic -- so much so that they will likely eventually become more effective than their human counterparts at many of these analytical tasks. However, they fall short of grasping the intricacies of human emotions and social dynamics.  

A.I. will become a complement to our human experience -- not a replacement for it. So that means that human skills will become increasingly crucial in both the design and interaction with A.I. systems.

Emotional Intelligence in Designing A.I.

Emotional intelligence allows developers and engineers to design A.I. systems that can better understand and respond to human emotions and desires. By elevating emotional intelligence in our design of A.I. technologies, we can create more personalized and empathetic interactions that cater to individual users, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction, personalization, and loyalty.  

One of the most critical aspects of incorporating emotional intelligence in A.I. is addressing the biases and ethical concerns associated with this technology. Bias can creep into A.I. systems when they are trained on data that reflects societal biases or when algorithms lack emotional nuance. Emotional intelligence equips designers and developers with the capacity to identify and rectify biases in A.I. systems up front in pursuit of greater fairness and equity. Additionally, emotional intelligence allows us to create A.I. systems that better adhere to ethical guidelines -- for instance respecting privacy, consent, and the emotional well-being of users. An A.I. system is only as good as the data it's trained on, and it takes emotional intelligence to properly mitigate against potential downsides in the design and training of these tools.  

Emotional Intelligence in Interacting With A.I.

As a faculty member teaching leadership and impact at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, I'm overall really optimistic about A.I. But one of my concerns is that students will use tools like ChatGPT without employing critical thinking in its deployment. In fact, I saw one example shared by a professor at another university that showed a final paper a student turned in that accidentally had multiple references that it was written by ChatGPT. The student didn't even read closely enough to see that it was obvious to anyone that it was a ChatGPT paper.

While we can get hung up on examples like this one, I'm more interested in the magical intersection point where A.I. tools make us more effective at our jobs -- whether as founders, COOs, or CMOs. Like any good collaboration, we need to focus on leveraging the unique strengths of both partners while mitigating the downsides.

Emotional intelligence is a tool to help us capture the upside of A.I. tools while reducing downside risk. A.I. can crunch the data, present visualizations, and share a set of recommendations for a new corporate strategy. But it's still up to the leader to take the recommendation and implement it. That means understanding that the pitch for a new strategy to one's board might be different from the pitch to frontline employees (something psychologist Stephen Zaccaro calls cognitive flexibility). It also means being able to adapt what ChatGPT predicts for one's own environment -- from identifying champions to persuading fence sitters and overcoming detractors (per Zaccaro, this is emotional flexibility). Emotional intelligence is at the core of these approaches that turn A.I. output into a real-world impact. 

A.I. might be able to tell you what to do, but emotional intelligence helps us figure out how to do it.

While everyone is focused right now on learning key A.I. skills -- from designing to prompting -- the leaders who will be most effective in this brave new world are those who also commit time and energy to improving their emotional intelligence.

A.I. + EQ is the new equation for success. 

 

BY ALEX BUDAK, AUTHOR, "BECOMING A CHANGEMAKER”@ALEXBUDAK