Timeless business strategy

Concentrate on creativity. It is critical for any entrepreneur to maximise creativity and to build an atmosphere that encourages people to have ideas. That means open structures, so that accepted thinking can be challenged.
Be passionate about ideas. Entrepreneurs want to create a livelihood from an idea that has obsessed them; not necessarily a business, but a livelihood. When accumulating money drives out the ideas and the anger behind them, you are no
Make the most of the female element. Companies as we know them were created by men for men, often influenced by the military model, on complicated and hierarchical lines and are both dominated by authoritarian principles and resistant to change. By setting up their own businesses, women can challenge these models and will be welcomed by customers for doing so.
Believe in yourself and your intuition. There is a fine line between entrepreneurship and insanity. Crazy people see and feel things that others do not. But you have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too.
Have self-knowledge. You do not need to know how to do everything, but you must be honest enough with yourself to know what you cannot provide yourself.

Anita Roddick (founder of Body Shop)

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0peration Exceed – challenge

Contemplate how you can exceed customers expectations at all interaction points with the organisation – contemplate, then act. Remember action precedes excellence.

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Attributes of the new entrepreneur -Part 3

4. Authentic
In Feb 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory Committee declared that self awareness was the most important attribute that a Leader/ Entrepreneur should develop. As you journey towards self awareness, many changes in your thinking occur.

(i) you become aware of your own talents and potential.
(ii) You become more aware of the talent of others and indeed the need to tap into this talent pool.
Both of the above move you towards a more sustainable model – the need to embrace the potential of your staff and create leaders at all levels. Only a secure confident leader can create a high trust culture.
(iii) You become aware of the need for real.
Being real in the current marketplace is a prerequisite for success as both internal and external customers know the difference between real and artificial attempts to meet their needs. Recent Gallup research showed that the most important person in an organisation to an employee is their direct line manager. If this relationship is real, employees feel real connection with the organisation. If the customer relationship is real, you can begin to convert customers into friends – customers leave friends rarely do.

5. Action

Regardless of market conditions, the new entrepreneurs continue to cross the bridge from inaction to action focusing on their dreams, attracting and creating a mastermind alliance to help them on the way.

They learn from failure, readapting, not buying into the insanity loop where you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

They appreciate the importance of perseverance and hard work.

Kevin Kelly is an Internationally Acclaimed Motivational Speaker and Best Selling Author.

As published in the Irish Entrepreneur.

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Attributes of the new entrepreneur part 2

2. Adopter/Adapter

The New entrepreneur is a risk taker by nature. Their tolerance/embracing of risk is seen in many ways.

Intuitive: They follow their gut, the ultimate compass, appreciating that knowledge will always give them enough reasons not to act.

Early adopters of new technology: Websites are old news. Web technology is now approaching its third life, tweeting its way to the top! The new entrepreneurs realise that the marketing model has moved from mass to viral. Community is king in their world!

Change, change, change! They change when they are ahead: they act, rather than react.

Insatiable appetite for knowledge: They pay more than lip service to empowering their people, realising that the old management model is out of date.

3.Creative

Creative – what?
Recently, Columbia University profiled the major breakthrough companies in the US in the past few years. 88% of the companies were the result of “exceptional execution” of an ordinary idea and just 12% were due to innovations/inventions. Honouring this, creative people are those that focus on “exceptionalising” their product/service or indeed delivering minor improvements on an ongoing basis. Thus creativity is everybody’s business, not just the domain of the R and D.
As technologies are converging and developing, a competitive advantage is more challenging. The focus is on tapping into the idea pool of the staff. In the new entrepreneur’s organisation, staff contribute at minimum an idea a month. There is a structure in place to request and harvest the ideas – internal blogs etc. In time the ideas/improvements deliver a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Kevin Kelly is an Internationally Acclaimed Motivational Speaker and Best Selling Author.
As published in The Irish Entrepreneur

Find out why so many have recruited him as a keynote speaker in Europe, Asia and the US.

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Attributes of the New Entrepreneur Part 1

Attributes as highlighted in Irish Entrepreneur Magazine January 2009

1. Clarity

A decade ago, research showed that most people were being hit with over 3,000 marketing messages a week. Today, according to Yanklevich research, that figure has increased to 5,000 a day. Add to this that most people make an impression of your people or company within microseconds and the opportunity to impress is very limited.

Bottom line: it is an extreme challenge to get your message across and make a positive impression.

Thus the need for crystal clear clarity. Not only must you know the following, your internal and external customer must also know:

What business are you in……specifically?

What is unique about your service/product?

What is your vision for the organisation?

What are your and the company’s values?

What is your organisations role in the community?

Kevin Kelly is an Internationally Acclaimed Motivational Speaker and Best Selling Author.

Find out why so many have recruited him as a keynote speaker in Europe, Asia and the US.

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