Eureka! Inventions roll on…

According to Time.com…

Invention is a hedge against anonymity; make something that matters and you can live forever.

… Inventions have always had many parents. “Doubt is the father of invention,” said Galileo. Necessity is its mother, said Plato. Or, in the luxurious modern age, sloth, which gave us the electric toothbrush, the universal remote and the drive-through liquor store. These days, the operative motivation may be frugality, which leads to the discovery that balled-up newspaper deodorizes shoes, baby oil cleans chrome and sticking a marshmallow or an orange peel in a bag of brown sugar keeps it from hardening into a sweet dark rock. Or sustainability, which propels university students and volunteers to develop an incubator out of recycled car parts, engineers to embed battery rechargers in roadbeds and designers to fashion a fake fur coat out of plastic garment fasteners… keep reading

10 Tips to be a Leader of your Mother of a Business…

As reported in MyBusiness.com.au…

In my experience of working with over 140 businesses around the world over many years, I have been amazed at how often we are called in because the business owner has problems with staff, customers, suppliers or the market.

Invariably, our first meeting with an owner is dominated by them telling us all their problems and how everyone is against them. This ‘victim mentality’ typically expresses itself through blame, denial and excuses. After hearing what they have to say, we will usually confront them with a simple, bold statement: “Your problems have little to do with anyone else; they are ultimately a reflection of your own behaviour.”

The essence of this statement is an important insight — a business is a reflection of its owner. As the owner gets better, so does the business… keep reading

which is exacrly why mentoring programs like the entrepreneurial motherLode program are so important…

Tips for Success from “Room to Read”…

As reported in Bloomberg Businessweek; Erin Ganju, co-founder of Room to Read, says the entrepreneurial nonprofit’s secret is “know what you do, and do it well”

At the start of Room to Read, the organization recognized that promoting and facilitating global education required a scalable and sustainable business model. Fast-forward a decade, and Room to Read is now a $30 million, award-winning nonprofit organization working in nine countries that has scaled faster and more successfully than many celebrated for-profit companies.

While I couldn’t have predicted such meteoric growth when we started, the secret sauce can best be summed up in one phrase: know what you do, and do it well… keep reading

What Business Can Learn from Pirates…

a great little article from The Economist

…smaller, nimble competitors make stealth attacks on larger rivals is a well-known phenomenon. Nonetheless, the way that larger companies can defend themselves against attack is a matter of much debate. Professor James says that the key is to quicken decision making. In his analogy, by the time the captain of an oil tanker has spotted the pirates’ inflatables it is too late; big ships take a long time to turn around. Similarly, once a large business has gone through the traditional process of observing an attack, orientating itself, deciding what to do about it and then acting (what Colonel John Boyd, an American military strategist, called an OODA loop) it is too late, the competition is upon it…
read on

From Tim Ferriss To Seth Godin: How To Build Relationships with Influencers…

A gem from David Siteman Garland…

Whether you’ve been in business two days or two years, you’ve probably realized that building relationships with the “experts” (even though I’m not a fan of the word “expert”) and leaders in your industry and beyond – otherwise known as influencers – is critical to your ability to build a strong brand and become known in your field.

But, up until recently, it’s been difficult to build relationships or even get in contact with celebrities/influencers. After all, the “old school” influencers of yesterday were guarded and protected. In order to successfully reach them, you had to get through layers and layers of gatekeepers including PR people, agents, handlers, angry protective dogs, and who-knows-what else.

Based on that, what are the odds that you could actually have a one-on-one conversation with someone you admire/look up to, such as your favorite author or blogger? Very little to non-existent, unless you had a huge sum of cash – or perhaps a nationally syndicated TV show with 1,000,000+ viewers. Or maybe you could have written them a letter via snail mail to be answered eight months later. If you were lucky.

read on…

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