Mastering the Drunk Driver of Your Mind

Being authentic doesn’t mean that you refuse to grow, or that you remain a victim of your biases, shortcomings, and inclinations. It means taking the correct actions to improve; becoming a better, more effective, truly authentic version of your…self! And this is the first lesson Jackson Hill learns while in conversation with his new mentor, the honorable…

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4 Simple Strategies for Pulling Out of an Entrepreneurial Funk

There’s nothing quite as fulfilling as launching your startup and seeing it through its first few months or years of infancy. You get so addicted to its success that you spend all your waking hours thinking about a new customer acquisition strategy or an impending meeting with a big investor. You even find yourself thinking…

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Does Your Small Business Fit One of My Stereotypes?

I was thinking about all the different types of small businesses where I’ve been through my life and began to wonder if I could categorize them – even stereotype them. It has a lot to do with ownership, the kind of business, the management style, the community, and probably several more factors I haven’t even…

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8 Steps to Build Winning Self-Confidence in Business

In my years of mentoring entrepreneurs, a problem I have seen too often is low self-esteem, and over-compensating through arrogance and ego. These entrepreneurs find it hard to respect customers or team members, and their ventures usually fail. As a team member, low self-esteem leads to low confidence, poor productivity, and no job satisfaction. Fortunately,…

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How Negativity Can Overpower Your Good Intentions

Be honest with me now: Do people see you as approachable and easy to talk to? As you considered that question, I bet some of you started to think about friends or family members who fit that description; somehow they just make talking to them easy. These are the people you go to when you…

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It’s Time for a New Way of Thinking About Business

Large corporations and conglomerates, the engines of growth and vitality in the twentieth century, have lost their edge and their image. They have proven themselves unable to innovate, and they have lost more jobs than they create. My friends who “grew up” with lifetime careers in General Motors, Exxon Mobil, or even IBM, are now…

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7 Myths You Probably Believe About Successful Entrepreneurs

I spend a large percentage of my time connecting entrepreneurs with companies trying to solve wicked problems. So I get a kick out of some of the most common misperceptions I hear about people who start their own companies. Here are some common myths along with the truths about entrepreneurs and what actually makes them…

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Scarcity versus Abundance

When I started in the agency business 25+ years ago, there was this odd paranoia that ran through agencies big and small. There was a belief that agency personnel couldn’t be friends with people who worked at other agencies because secrets might leak out. And if you dared to be friends or even associate through…

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How Startup Accelerator DesignX Turns Architecture Students into Entrepreneurs

Outdated teaching practices at architecture schools are finally giving way to a modern, tech-savvy approach to architectural education. MIT’s new DesignX accelerator helps architecture students become archipreneurs while still at school by providing a platform for developing business models and pitching and funding projects. One of the main reasons why architects lack business skills is the fact…

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Understanding Uncertainty is Vital to an Entrepreneur

Pop quiz: what relationship factor is the single most common trait in the successful entrepreneur? My answer: understanding uncertainty. Living with uncertainty Why? First let me say that I’m not sure. Second, that I might change my mind tomorrow. (Irony intended.) Third, that I know there are seemingly endless lists of traits of the entrepreneur, and…

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