Don’t kill your startup. Build your team. Train your team. Then let them go.

Don’t kill your startup. Build your team. Train your team. Then let them go.

Whether you’re a male or female entrepreneur, starting a company feels a lot like giving birth. You went through the planning, the pain, the emotional roller coaster of fear, excitement and anxiety and, months later, you came out of it stronger than ever.

Fast forward a year or two past the launch. Your startup is a teenager, nearly ready to step into adulthood. It has full-time employees, a 1-800 number, maybe even a blog. There’s just one problem: You’re still cutting the crusts off your startup’s sandwiches. That is, you’re still fielding phone calls from clients, working hands-on with the product, probably even writing the blog yourself. You’re babying your startup by working in the business instead of on the business.

More than likely, it’s because you’re too afraid to let go. But if you keep treating your business like a baby, it will keep acting like one — in the form of infantile profits, sophomoric growth rates, underdeveloped vendor relationships, and an overall juvenility that will cripple your ability to accomplish long-term goals.

Fortunately, there’s a solution for this: Cut the cord … as in, the umbilical cord.

But how do you let go of the fear that’s tethering you to your business?
1. Create — and hand off — a systems manual.

The first step is to facilitate the evolution of your company from a clumsy, awkward, pimply-faced teen into a capable, debonnaire young adult. Create systems for each aspect of your business so that new employees can step in and quickly take over those roles. It’s easier than you’d think.

Walk through each process, from start to finish, and write down every step. The number of steps can range from four or five up to 100 or more for each aspect of the business. This should include everything you currently do, from direct client interaction to press releases and everything in between. Just make sure you document every last piece of the puzzle.

Congratulations, you’ve just created a systems manual. Now hand it to someone else and never answer the front office phone again … ever.
2. Hand-pick and personally train your leadership team.

OK, so “handing it to someone else” might be an oversimplification. Once you have your systems documented, the next crucial step is trusting others to undertake those responsibilities. Like a 20-something learns how to do laundry, pay bills, and survive away from mom and dad’s basement, your startup needs to learn how to run itself.

That means you have to let go of the day-to-day operations.

Letting go can cause emotional discomfort and logistical friction, but the end game is well worth it if you have the dedication and focus to continually improve on your systems. To do that, it will help if you train (and possibly hire new) individuals who will be taking over the most key functions of the business, e.g. marketing, client-care, development, etc. This will be your leadership team.
3. Give your leadership team the autonomy to develop their own systems.

Once you have a team in place, they can handle all of the subsequent hiring, training, and creation/implementation of new systems. Over time, they’ll need to bring even more high-quality people into the operation as your systems continue to evolve and expand. These new team members, like the original leadership team, will create and implement systems of their own.

Essentially, it’s an intelligent design/watch-maker scenario. Build a regular wristwatch, and you’ve got a nice timepiece on your wrist. Build a wristwatch that’s smart enough to build more wristwatches, though, and you’ve got a self-sustaining business.

Your leadership team will report directly to you with regular status updates, as well as information regarding important new matters. That should help curb your anxiety over letting go of the day-to-day operations.
4. Test your team by taking a short sabbatical. (Really.)

Once your startup is, to quote the movie Swingers, “all growns up,” you’ll find yourself with a lot more time on your hands. The true test of your systems comes when you can step completely away from the business for a month and come back to a more profitable, more successful company than when you left.

(Note: As a word of hard-earned advice, you might want to start with a week or a single day and then build up to a month-long hiatus.)
5. Congratulations — you can now run your business strategically.

Now you can finally afford to look at the big picture. You can come up with ideas for long-term growth, supplemental revenue streams, new partnerships, and other big-picture ideas that you never would have had time to think through had you still been writing your company’s blog.

You’ll be amazed at what new things you can accomplish when you let go (at least partially) of what you’ve already achieved and focus on what’s next.

by Council, Nick Friedman

5 Entrepreneur Antidotes to Negativity in a Startup

5 Entrepreneur Antidotes to Negativity in a Startup

Throughout my career in small companies and large, I’ve always been appalled by the number of people who seem to complain all of the time. These people don’t seem to realize that they are hurting themselves, as well as other people’s productivity, and the company they are working for.

I’ve always thought that I might be overly sensitive, until I saw an old survey done by badbossoloy.com, which claims that a majority of employees spend 10 hours or more a month complaining or listening to others complain, and nearly one third spend 20 or more hours. No startup can afford that huge cost in emotional capital, as well as productivity!

In the survey, negativity is seen as an indictment of bad managers, but I believe it is also an indictment of whiners. Ten to twenty hours a month is a lot of time to waste, not to mention the indirect time lost of the listeners, and the morale impact.

What does all this mean, and how do you correct it, or prevent it in your startup? Here are some recommendations from experts for proactive and recovery actions by all parties to minimize the problem in both employee and management ranks:


Executives have to be the role model. If you as the founder, or other members your executive team are chronic complainers, the disease will spread rapidly through the rest of the organization. Don’t play the blame game, give negatively charged emotional speeches, berate employees in public, or wear an angry face at the office.


Use the hiring process effectively. Too many startups give short shrift to the hiring process, because they are too busy, don’t want to pay market prices, or have no experience. It’s actually easy to spot whiners during the interview process, by listening to them run down previous employers and not accepting accountability. Don’t hire them.


Encourage regular self-assessment. Encourage your management team and employees to always check themselves before making unsolicited comments against the following criteria: “Will this comment add value to our company, our customers, the person I am talking to, or the one I am talking about? If not, don’t say it.”


Openly reward positive suggestions. Maybe it’s time to establish or re-activate the old-fashioned “suggestion box.” Make it work by regularly handing out real accolades, as well as real money, to people who add value or reduce costs in your business. A positive can-do attitude should also be recognized in job performance feedback.


Quietly deal with people who won’t change. Some whiners have been that way all their life, and don’t know how to change their stripes. With proper counseling, they need to be moved out of your business before they do more damage. How quickly and quietly you deal with these problems will be the loudest message you can send to others.

Some people will use “honesty” as the excuse for negative and insensitive comments. In fact, the most honest and productive comments are always positive recommendations on how to fix a problem, rather than the complaint that someone or something is a problem. Even if some of your co-workers are jerks, you have no moral, ethical or legal obligation to broadcast this view.

Everyone needs to understand that complaining about salary or pay, criticizing colleagues and bosses, or vendors and customers, will generally just reflect negatively on the whiner, rather than accomplish any positive results.

The truth is that optimists lead better lives, and startups with positive teams are more successful, simply because they believe that what they are doing is going to work. Negativity also is a self-fulfilling prophecy, with an outcome that can be the demise of your startup.

Marty Zwilling

10 Keys to Real Entrepreneur Mentoring Satisfaction

10 Keys to Real Entrepreneur Mentoring Satisfaction

Every entrepreneur can learn from a mentor, no matter how confident or successful they have been to date. Even one of the richest, Bill Gates, still values his friend Warren Buffett as his mentor. Yet these relationships require special efforts on both sides to be productive and satisfying. Mentoring is not as simple as one person giving the other all the right answers.

Some of the best mentoring relationships don’t involve monetary compensation, but none are free. The first cost is networking to find a mentor who is willing and able to give adequate focus to the relationship. In any case, it is good form to offer compensation, such as a small monthly stipend, plus expenses, and perhaps a 1% ownership in your startup, to show your commitment.

From my experience, here are ten basic principles for both the mentor and mentee to remember in getting the most out of any mentoring relationship:


Good mentoring requires building a relationship first. A positive business or personal relationship between two people normally requires a high degree of shared values, common interests, and mutual respect. Remember that good relationships take some time to develop, so don’t assume that your first discussion will seal the deal.


Agree on specific objectives and time frames. Mentoring that consists of random discussions is not very satisfying for either side. I recommend one or more early discussions of mutual objectives, with a written summary of goals and expectations from the mentee to the mentor, with timeframes and milestones.


Make efficient use of time for both parties. This means being respectful and diligent about scheduling and keeping appointments, and returning emails and phone calls. Don’t attempt to multitask, or allow constant interruptions, during meetings. Book follow-up sessions, with an agenda, rather than fill time with random discussions.


Identify strengths and weaknesses early. Both the mentor and mentee should put their cards on the table, to avoid surprises later. Then both should look for opportunities to leverage strengths, and shore up weaknesses. This avoids wasted time and speculation, and provides the motivation to bring in other experts or mentors as required.


Mentor feedback must be thoughtful, specific, timely, and constructive. An important aspect of a mentoring relationship is how the mentor provides feedback to the mentee. Formulate negative feedback in a constructive fashion. Using open-ended questions that start with “how” or “what” help the mentee to arrive at their own solution.


Mentees should avoid any defensive reaction to feedback. The right response to most mentor feedback is a thoughtful question for clarification. Immediately responding with “reasons and rationale” to every feedback will be read as insincerity, and will likely end the mentoring relationship quickly.


Practice two-way communication and candid feedback. Mentoring is not a series of monologues and lectures, from either side. But candid feedback means not pulling punches when they are deserved. Both sides need to practice active listening and thoughtful questions. Constructive conflict is good.


Agree to deal with unforeseen challenges openly. The most common challenges involve time and accessibility demands on either side, or the level of help expected. Both sides need to honor business boundaries, and not stray into personal relationship issues. Agree up front on how to end the relationship if other unforeseen circumstances arise.


Celebrate successes, and deal openly with failures. This will help the learning process and build the mentee’s confidence. With patience and time, the partners should develop a good rapport and become more comfortable with openly and freely conversing with each other.


Evaluate mentoring requirements on a regular basis. The mentee, as primary beneficiary, should be proactive in making sure the review process occurs on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly. This allows for frank discussion of unanticipated changes, and the potential for discontinuing the process and declaring success.

The end of a mentoring relationship should be seen as an opportunity to review what did and didn’t work, and more importantly, to reflect on the results, so that every lesson that can be learned from the relationship is recognized.

Both the mentor and mentee should celebrate the successes, review the learning from failures, and conclude the relationship with positive feelings. To bring it full circle, mentees should now consider passing on their new knowledge and skills by entering a new mentoring relationship – as a mentor. That’s the ultimate satisfaction.

Marty Zwilling

How to Be an Entrepreneur at Your Day Job

How to Be an Entrepreneur at Your Day Job

As an entrepreneur, two things are probably true at some point in your career trajectory.

First, thinking like an entrepreneur is nearly impossible to turn off. If you're driven to be a self-starter and creator, odds are that you're constantly thinking and planning. Secondly, there will come a time -- barring any unforeseen angel investors or trust funds -- that you'll need to take a job before fully branching out on your own.

Although startup costs vary, launching your own vision does come as some price, which means many budding entrepreneurs find themselves working a day job -- planning for their dreams while feeling chained to a desk.

Rather than letting this temporary set-up squelch your ambition, use these three tips to fully leverage every step on your way to professional independence.

1.Treat yourself like a brand. Every brush with a company makes an impression, whether positive or negative. Now consider yourself with that in mind. How would your colleagues describe you? Are you contributing to your workplace? In what ways are you positively impacting your audience, or in this case, your coworkers? How can you go the extra mile for your clients, or in this case, your bosses?

Taking yourself seriously at the office will only add to your professionalism, build upon strong working relationships and create a heightened awareness in building your own enterprise. Besides, the connections you make at your day job, could be important relationships later on for your business later on.

2. Foster Curiosity. It’s also important to always remain a student, no matter how far up the ranks you may climb. That could mean anything from learning about new technology, to taking suggestions on more efficient ways to work or communicate, to mastering social media. By constantly learning and remaining open to new work methods and behaviors, you’re not only growing your personal skill set, but also widening your company’s capabilities.

3. Get Gutsier. Your days left at your current day job are numbered, as they should be. You’re almost ready to start your company or launch your product, there are exciting prospects on the horizon. Rather than quietly bow out of the office at the end of your tenure, why not make the most of your last weeks by truly leaving your mark? Perhaps you have a new formula you’ve been interested in testing, or an event concept you’ve been too shy to pitch. Maybe you’ve been meaning to ask a respected colleague to lunch to discuss business but have never gotten around to it. Now is the time. You’ll want to look back knowing that you’ve made the most out of every opportunity sent your way.

BY CRISTI YOUNG|

The Naked Entrepreneur: Does Your Startup Have the Ability to Succeed?

The Naked Entrepreneur: Does Your Startup Have the Ability to Succeed?
by Guest Contributor

David Cohen of TechStars

David Cohen didn’t found TechStars with the intention of being a social entrepreneur, but it’s hard to deny the social change his company has initiated by growing and mentoring countless startups in the United States. TechStars, one of the premier startup accelerators worldwide, leverages connections with VC firms and angel investors to provide members with seed funding and mentorship from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. Ryerson professor and DMZ mentor Sean Wise interviewed Cohen for The Naked Entrepreneur on his advice for budding entrepreneurs.

Learn from the best
Cohen’s first few startup attempts taught him the value of having an experienced mentor. During the dot-com era of the mid to late 90’s, he founded his first company called Pinpoint, a mobile communication system used for ambulance dispatch systems. Within a couple years, the company valuation was upwards of $50 million. They started speaking with investors and soon got acquired. Five to six years later, the CEO of the acquiring company admitted they had “left half the money on the table,” and could have gotten twice the value of the offer they accepted. This may have been prevented if he had a mentor.

“What is a mentor worth?” Cohen asks. “A five minute phone call could be worth millions of dollars.”

When you are given advice, take it
Cohen also talks about the importance of “closing the loop,” which means actually taking the advice your mentors hand down. Learning is essential, especially among founders. The Startup Genome Report, a 67 page analysis on data collected from 650+ web startups, says “startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise seven times more money and have 3.5 times better user growth.”

Work with the right people
“You want to surround yourself with contradicting ideas, people who think differently,” says Cohen. “[What differentiates successful startups] is founders who hired people better than them, enabled them to do their job, chose the right investor, and the right people.”

Robert R. Ackerman, Jr., founder and managing director of VC firm Allegis Capital, believes building the right startup culture is fundamental to success.

“If you’re building that culture in the early days, it’s essential that every new employee that comes in can fit into it,” says Ackerman. “That means the CEO is interviewing every new hire up until a certain threshold.”

Know when to quit
Success stories like Cohen’s are great motivations for aspiring entrepreneurs, but not all ideas are destined for success, which Cohen has experienced first-hand. Knowing when to quit is half the battle, and Cohen says mentors at TechStars never tell an entrepreneur that it is time to quit. According to the Harvard Business School, 30 to 40 per cent of startups end up liquidating their assets, and investors lose most or all of their money. The instability of entrepreneurship can be daunting, and the rewards that are impossible to monetize play a big part in the decision to quit.

“You have to ask yourself, ‘Am I waking up everyday excited about what I’m doing?’” Cohen says. “There will always be bad days, days you don’t want to get out of bed, but if that is happening on a consistent basis, it’s time [to take a hard look at the company].”

Love what you do
After selling his first company, Cohen was on track for an early retirement. While relaxing on a beach at age 30 may seem like a dream to some, Cohen wasn’t done quite yet.

“Staying on a beach is cool, but [entrepreneurship] is what I love to do. It’s stimulating. It’s creative,” he says.

“Entrepreneurship isn’t a conscious decision. It’s just what you do.”

Your spouse is your first investor, treat him or her like one

Your spouse is your first investor, treat him or her like one



 

The idea of marriage is that you share success and failure, not just matching rings.


I recently met with an entrepreneur in Western Canada who’s turned his family’s life upside-down in his quest to build the startup of his dreams. The family moved cities, they are living without many of the physical comforts that middle-aged Canadians expect to enjoy, and he is always, always working.

My hunch at the time was that his business would succeed, but I wasn’t sure his wife would still be with him when it does.

The entrepreneurial life is not for the faint-hearted. The doers and dreamers who start businesses rarely regret the long hours and the capital spent (or salaries forgone) in chasing their business plans. But spouse and family are not always offered a say in these decisions and this can lead to trouble.

I once met a woman who said she had asked her husband, an entrepreneur, to pick up their children from school one day. He got lost on the way there. Another entrepreneur’s wife complained to me of the boom-and-bust lifestyle; sometimes they’re in the money, and sometimes they’re clipping coupons and evading the landlord. Living with a successful entrepreneur is stressful enough, but what if the company is struggling, or if it’s an ambitious startup with a 50-50 chance of success?

Entrepreneurs had better have a good idea of the risks they are asking their spouses to accept and consciously carve out time for their partners, never taking their support for granted.

This relationship is explored in detail in a recent guest blogpost at Startup Revolution, a blog run by Colorado entrepreneur and investor Brad Feld. The article by Scott and Kathy Yates titled “Your Spouse Is Your First Investor” recommends treating him or her like an investor.

“While your spouse won’t be signing a term sheet, there’s little doubt that your spouse will be invested in your success,” the Yates write. “Before you can go out and get investors, or even customers, we think it’s important that you convince the person closest to you that you have a good idea, a good market, that the opportunity is ripe, and that you are the one to go after it.”



A spouse is directly invested in your startup. He or she may be supporting you financially, or just putting up with the mess, or spending way more time alone than they’d signed up for, they write. In fact, they are likely more heavily invested than your formal investors. Angels and venture capitalists stand to lose only a bit of money if your business fails, whereas your spouse may have suffered in silence (or perhaps not so silently) for years.

As the authors note, “There’s a reason we use the same verb for money and time — spend… Entrepreneurs are asking a huge spend of one or the other and most often both.”

Pitching a deal like this is “brutally hard,” the Yates say. Many entrepreneurs skip this sale, putting their heads down and never really negotiating for their spouse’s support. “They cheat. They essentially steal that money and/or time because they think they won’t be able to make the sale. Suddenly a spouse looks up and two years and/or all the savings are gone and they don’t really even know what happened.”

Take the time, the Yates advise: “You need to convince that first investor to go all in with you.” The post notes that Scott has done this with Kathy in three different startups, taking care each time to share his vision for the business, explain the potential risks and rewards, and demonstrate the market analysis he had done that suggested each gamble would be worth it.

Only with sincere effort and full disclosure can entrepreneurs assure themselves of the “all-in” support they will need. But this investment will pay dividends.

“The idea of marriage is that you share success and failure,” the Yates write. “If an entrepreneur doesn’t work hard to convince a spouse of the merit of an idea, they are both robbed of the joy of celebrating success together. If the business suffers a setback, the entrepreneur can’t take solace with the one person who is supposed to always be there.”

Rick Spence