The Businessmakers Radio Show

BusinessMakers Classic Minute - George Zimmer

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

George Zimmer, the founder of Men's Wearhouse, talks about how he came up with his famous slogan "You're going to like the way you look, I guarantee it."

School of Business 05/19/2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Russ and John present the show that features those that make our lives better: the artists and the athletes of our free enterprise economy who create benefits for all of us. It’s NOT your business-as-usual school. Includes: the BusinessMakers Quote of the Week—useful wisdom from award-winning American writer Pearl S. Buck; This Week in Business History includes thermometer wars, the Lady of Spain, Bottle Shock and other random silliness from long ago; and the Jargon Challenge Round—trendy technospeak that YOU should know.

Sabrina Parsons - Palo Alto Software

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Sabrina Parsons’ father, Tim Berry, was always dabbling in business planning and other entrepreneurial pursuits, so Sabrina grew up listening to her father evangelize about risk taking, passion and technology. Over the years, she and her husband made life decisions in the same way other couples did—but, well, somehow they were always in the right place at the right time. Several natural transitions—and gutsy decisions—resulted in Sabrina’s being named CEO of Palo Alto Software. Since taking the reins of the company in 2007, she has ridden the tech explosion, making more gutsy decisions and taking the company forward. She’s a great interview.

Women Mean Business - Beth Williams

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Women Mean Business host Leisa Holland-Nelson, president of ContentActive, interviews Beth Williams, Techtrans International Inc.

PKF Texas: The Entrepreneur’s Playbook® - Paul Parsons

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

The energy industry is volatile and ever-changing: never more true than today. Don’t be left uninformed. Greg Price interviews Paul Parsons, Energy Training Resources.

School of Business 05/12/2012

Sat, 12 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Russ and Leisa host the show that features those that make it happen: the entrepreneurs, and the real business makers. It’s our 1,000th guest interview, and we’re celebrating! Includes: the BusinessMakers Quote of the Week—more awkward truth from comedian Steven Wright; This Week in Business History includes big moments like the founding of the Mississippi River Steamboat Service, the introduction of Spam and SpaghettiOs and the U.S. files an antitrust case against Microsoft; and the Jargon Challenge Round—trendy technospeak that YOU should know.

Tim Berry - Palo Alto Software

Sat, 12 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Our ONE THOUSANDTH interview and it’s a biggie! Russ interviews Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software, co-founder of Borland International, blogger and evangelist for business planning and entrepreneurism. Berry is a major participant in many assorted entrepreneurial competitions; he is being interviewed in Austin, TX where he is serving as a judge at the University of Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition. At one time, Berry thought he was going to be a writer. He quickly determined that he didn’t want to WRITE about business, he wanted to be IN business. It’s a wild story of an incredibly successful BusinessMaker.

Women Mean Business - Ann Compton

Sat, 12 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Women Mean Business host Leisa Holland-Nelson, president of ContentActive, interviews ABC News Washington correspondent Ann Compton.

PKF Texas: The Entrepreneur’s Playbook® - Scott Soles

Sat, 12 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

The energy industry has unique issues and risks to mitigate. Greg Price interviews Scott Soles, Energy Practice.

School of Business 05/05/2012

Sat, 05 May 2012 01:30:00 PDT

Russ and John host the show about the working class, the job creators, the entrepreneurs, and the real business makers. We’re approaching our 1,000th guest interview, indeed an entire gaggle of innovators. Includes: the BusinessMakers Quote of the Week—a “DUH” moment of true realism from comedian Steven Wright; This Week in Business History includes a shocking truth about Benjamin Franklin, Mexico defeats the French and New York City opens its new Music Hall (before Carnegie put his name on it); the Jargon Challenge Round—trendy technospeak that YOU should know; and Dumb Moments in Business—technology faux pas.

Passion, People, Process: What drives your business?

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:06:08 PST

Growing your business is challenging. What used to work yesterday to solve what seems to be the same problem all of a sudden doesn’t work today. Understanding what drives your productivity is the most challenging and rewarding part of being a business owner.

At the start, you’re powered by Passion. Your group works all night toward a common goal to get the job done. But you can’t continue to hire people and hold everything together with passion alone. So you move to the People phase. Your people specialize; accounting, sales, marketing, operations, etc. You organize yourselves by making spreadsheets, having meetings and sending emails. But as you grow, your spreadsheets get out of hand, you receive more email than you can track, you don’t have time for any more meetings, yet people still need you. You’ve outgrown People as a driver and need to become Process driven.

I’m currently in the throes of transitioning from People to Process myself. I see it as a sliding scale. We have had great successes but our people, because they are so ingenious, will not produce the same thing twice. I value my people more than anything else in my company, and want to make sure that I have them doing rewarding, analytical, creative work. By creating systems that produce the repeatable, scalable results we need to operate on, I let software do the heavy lifting and allow my brilliant minds to focus on their strengths.

Our clients are usually mid-sized and have these struggles departmentally. As our clients outgrow their old solutions and realize they are no longer effective, our custom software and SharePoint implementations bridge that gap. Where they worked with dozens of spreadsheets and reports built individually and spread cross-departmentally, we make tools that automatically collect, organize and flag that information, allowing our clients’ employees to do what they are best at. Ultimately, smart people do not want to be data processors. They want to get the information they need quickly and use it to make analytical decisions, interface with people, and be creative – all the things they were hired to do in the first place.

Software can empower your workforce, and I believe in it so strongly because I have seen the benefits as a business owner myself.

I still love my business! Don’t I?

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:16:17 PDT

Hey, that's why they call it work right? Not every day is fun. That's why I'm successful! I do the hard stuff that no one wants to do.

Sound familiar? Not buying it anymore? Me either.

When I started my business almost a decade ago the world was simple. Sell my products and services or die. I wasn’t armed with an inspirational product or service that I thought was ready to change the world. I'll tell you from experience that the "fear of dying" will motivate a person to work pretty freakin' hard and not question its impact on Human Self-Actualization. 10 years down the line my motivations are very different. A few rungs up the Maslowian hierarchy and my rose colored glasses may be color-shifting. But why is that? Too much repetition? Am I just bored? Here is what I have found. Working every day and "filling the voids,” "being market driven.,” and "following best practices" all have one very deadly thing in common.

They are killing your soul

"Whoh! What?? I thought I was supposed to do all that stuff? I read all Jim Collins' books and I memorized the e-Myth! That's what I'm supposed to do!"

Well sort of… Best practices are great since they save a lot of time when applied to things that everyone has to do. But to paraphrase a little from Seth Godin and The Purple Cow, doing what other people do when it really matters is the best way to fade away and die. And die slowly you will…

"Sure I get that we have to "differentiate" to stay competitive but what does that have to do with enjoying my business?"

Simple. You will love every second of the day (well maybe not every second…) if you are lit up with passion! And Passion is only ignited ONE WAY.

Een manier

una de les formes

Une façon

Ein Weg

una de las formas

Joanekoa

One stinking way...

The business has passion ONLY WHEN. Your. Work. Reflects. YOUR. Soul.

This could just as easily be written as "When your LIFE reflects your soul" but stay with me here. I'm not talking about the difference between a "lifestyle" business and a "wealth creation" business. That's a great and underutilized question but this is equally important for Steve Jobs and Apple as much as it is for that amazing taco truck with the lunatic chef down on the corner.

Here's how it worked for me. In a nutshell, I started out with the typical "entrepreneurial seizure" a la e-Myth ("I can do this better than my boss. It's not that hard!"), absolutely no clue how to run business, and a keen desire to pay my bills. Several years of diligent study, endless trial and error, and I ended up with a decent business and minimal belief that I had accomplished anything truly useful to the universe. But here's the ironic part: I fixed it by using a best practice.

The simple and innocuous exercise was to determine our corporate core values. During this process something unexpected happened. We discovered that we had real passion about our values that were lying latent in our culture already (but didn't know). Not only that, these values were things we were already doing (but not enough). Not only that, I realized that if I followed these core values, I was following MY core values. Not only that, if I did them in an extreme way, I would be following my own core values in an extreme way. This thought made me strangely happy. But why? What changed?

This changed: The values transformed from daily activities into SACRED IDEALS that represent WHY we do this. WHY it matters. Even more, they are the REWARD in and of themselves. Core values moved from "best practices" to the ABSOLUTE GOLD STANDARD of EXCELLENCE, REWARD and amazingly FUN!

Extreme Values = Extreme Fun!

Are you on fire? Do you still really, truly love it? (Newlywed entrepreneurs don't count but you will one day). Odds are NOT GOOD that you do based on my unscientific-but-first-hand account of hundreds entrepreneurs I know. If not, why not? Do you care? If so, ask yourself these questions right now!

Ten years from now, when I'm totally free, how am I spending my time?
How can I make that interest an ESSENTIAL asset to that business right now?
What about your future makes it inspiring? Freedom? Learning? Challenge? Risk?
How the heck could I do more of that now in a way that builds my business? (More new products? New markets? Teaching people? Learning from people?)
What rules are you breaking?
What rules can you find that need breaking?
Look again. There are rules your soul needs you to break NOW! (You will know them because they scare you.)
What have you always wanted to do in the business but were afraid to try because it makes no real sense?
What parts of your business are fine as they are and what part of your service or product just never worked right, felt right, or inspires some loathing?
Whose standards are you living up to? Your customers or yours? Which one is really higher?
What part of your business would you do every weekend for the next year and LOVE!!
What would happen if you got REALLY drunk right now and did exactly what you wanted to do with the business? What would be good and bad about it?

Finally: Given the above, what is holding you back from being YOU in the EXTREME? AND WHY IS YOUR BUSINESS ANY DIFFERENT THAN YOUR LIFE. (Think about Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison. People don't even like being around those guys. They're nuts! But more importantly, the person and the leader are the same. The business is the leader.)

And yes, if there is truly nothing that inspires you, you actually ARE screwed. But, odds are low this is you if you are reading this. There's something simmering in there somewhere. You just need to find it. Patience Grasshopper….

What do you think? What keeps you motivated or reinvigorates you? What worked for you? Let me know!

Further reading. If you don't know the links below you better get reading...

www.sethgodin.com

www.jimcollins.com

www.e-myth.com

Mark Leary is CEO of Serenity Systems, Inc.
IT services outsourcing for the best businesses
www.serenitysystems.com
mleary@serenitysystems.com

Mark is Involved with industry groups and entrepreneur type organizations all over the world and loves to share ideas. He LOVES his business now but hasn't always felt that way. His personal motto is that Every Second Can be an Adventure but more than anything he wants to be better and he wants you to be better too.

Knowing Where You Are Going

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:21:28 PDT

"Once we were standing still in time. Chasing the fantasies that filled our minds You knew how I love you but my spirit was free Laughing at the questions that you once asked of me Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Where are you going to, do you know?" --from the theme from "Mahogany" by M. Masser, G. Goffin

With Tinkerbell pointing the way and Peter Pan setting the course, the way to Neverland is clear: "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning." But at some point we all grow up, and that means taking a leap from the world of fantasy into one of reality, where knowing where you are going can be a bit more difficult. Does your business know what direction it is going with clarity, or does it seem that each day you come to work you are simply chasing whatever fantasies come into the minds of the powers that be? Alas, in so very many businesses it is more a case of the latter than the former.

Those companies that do have a clear sense of where they are headed are nearly always driven by leaders who are able to motivate their teams to move in the desired direction with a sense of urgency. In addition to strong leadership, the best way to assure that a shared commitment exists throughout an organization is by articulating, documenting, and then strategically using clear statements of corporate mission, values, and vision for the future. This blob post will provide a brief overview on how companies can go about developing these tools for their business.

Let's first define the scope of each of these items:

The mission statement describes the fundamental objectives of the business.
The mission statement is often augmented with an associated set of values and guiding principles. These values provide behavioral objectives that describe how the organization intends to act as it engages in its core business, and they create a cultural contract between the organization and its constituents.
The vision statement motivates, challenges and compels an organization and its staff towards a preferred and achievable future.
The mission, values and vision statements for my company, MyCityRocks, are included with this article as an example.

Developing and using clear communications that address each of these areas is what is critical--it is not terribly important what labels are used for the statements, or if the content is explicitly broken out into three separate statements or combined into fewer communications.

How can an organization develop a good mission statement and set of values that can really help guide its growth? In the 1950's a professor at St. Louis University named Walter Gast identified six laws that a business should satisfy in order to be successful, and in their book "The Mission Primer" Richard and David O'Halloran have taken those laws and incorporated them into a methodology for developing good mission statements.

Key to Professor Gast's laws is that in order for an organization to perform profitably in our society in the long run, it must have a mission to do more than just make money--it must fulfill a variety of other obligations that _enable_ it to make money. Specifically, successful organizations must do these six things:

Produce a want-satisfying commodity or service, and continually improve its ability to meet needs.
Increase the wealth or quality of life of society through the economic use of labor and capital.
Provide opportunities for the productive employment of people.
Provide opportunities for the satisfaction of normal occupational desires.
Provide just wages for labor.
Provide a just return on capital.

When many organizations draft their mission statement they focus entirely on laws 1 and 6. But Gast claimed (and there is evidence to support) that organizations that articulate a mission and values embracing all six laws will tend to be more successful than those that don't. In their book, the O'Halloran's develop a process for using Gast's laws to construct a set of objectives for an organization, and then using the objectives to construct a mission statement and a set of values.

With so many possible options that a business can choose from in adopting its values, how does an organization decide which ones are the most important to focus upon? In their book "Organizational Vision, Values and Mission," Cynthia Scott, Dennis Jaffe, and Glenn Tobe describe a "game" that can be played using "Value Cards" that allows an organization to consider and prioritize a wide spectrum of values that might be incorporated. Values are also divided into six "clusters" that assist in their categorization:

Social Responsibility values represent ideals that we experience as being good in themselves. These values relate to things like fairness, honesty, tolerance, courageousness, integrity, forgiveness, peacefulness, and environmentalism.
Mastery values focus on achievement in the external world. These values relate to advancement, intellectual status, recognition, authority, power, competition, achievement, and competence.
Self Development values represent the search for personal challenge, creativity and self-development. These values relate to challenge, self-acceptance, finding inner harmony, knowledge seeking, adventure, creativity, personal growth, and spiritual growth.
Relationship values represent the development of personal relationships, helping and working with other people, feeling part of a group or team and sharing experience. These values relate to belonging, diplomacy, teamwork, helping, communication, friendship, consensus, respect and consideration.
Continuity values focus on maintaining stability and enduring qualities. These values relate to tradition, security, stability, neatness, self-control, perseverance, and rationality.
Lifestyle values relate to the ways that people work and live, personal appearance and the way that a person approaches the world. These values relate to health, pleasure, play, prosperity, family, appearance, intimacy, aesthetics, and community.

Once a mission statement is articulated, designing a vision statement allows an organization to focus on what it plans to create and where it wants to go in the future. The vision statement provides a motivating force for the organization, even in hard times, and it gives people a better understanding of how their individual roles contribute to where the organization is moving as a whole. A vision statement might incorporate objectives over a specific multi-year time frame (5, 10, or 20 years out, for example), which would not be appropriate in either a mission statement or a quarterly plan.

A vision should motivate and challenge the team to meet objectives that are realistic but yet difficult to achieve. A vision statement might provide insight into how the organization plans to differentiate itself and measure its progress along the way, and how it will recognize that it has accomplished its objectives when it achieves them. Because each day that passes is a step into the future, the vision statement will need to be revisited and updated more frequently than the mission statement and values.

In creating these corporate statements for your organization, it can help immensely to look at examples, both good and bad, from other organizations. The references below this article provide links to hundreds of corporate statements in diverse industries, along with discussion on how various organizations actually use the statements when they are created.

Additional Reading:

Organizational Vision, Values and Mission: Building the Organization of Tomorrow by Cynthia Scott, Dennis Jaffe, and Glenn Tobe (1993) ISBN 1-56052-210-0

The Mission Primer: Four Steps to an Effective Mission Statement by Richard and David O'Hallaron (2000) ISBN 0-9676635-0-4

Corporate Statements: The Official Missions, Goals, Principles and Philosophies of Over 900 Companies by Paul G. Haschak (1998) ISBN 0-7864-0342-X

The Mission Statement Book: 301 Corporate Mission Statements From America's Top Companies by Jeffrey Abraham (1999) ISBN 1-58008-132-0

About Cliff Kurtzman: MyCityRocks was founded by Executive Director Dr. Cliff Kurtzman. Cliff came to Houston in 1988 with a Ph.D. in Astronautical Engineering from MIT, and worked building spacecraft for a few years with a commercial space engineering startup called Space Industries. With a bit of help from NASA, in 1994 Cliff started one of the first online marketing companies in the world, and the very first one in Houston. Then in late 2003, Cliff used the MySpace social network to launch a testbed called "Houston Rocks", experimenting to see how social network tools could be used to create new types of communities. Based on the success of that testbed, in March of 2005, Cliff launched MyCityRocks to expand the concept out globally and develop it into a commercial venture. Cliff has been named by the Texas Ecommerce Association as one of 10 Texans playing a pivotal role in enabling the state's e-commerce economy, and as Entrepreneur of the Year by the Houston Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. For additional information on Cliff and his company please visit www.mycityrocks.com.

Smart Strategies to Keep Your Business Growing

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 00:30:00 PST

Smart Strategies to Keep Your Business Growing

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 00:30:00 PST

Entire Panel Presentation on Smart Strategies to Keep Your Business Growing

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 01:30:00 PDT

The Overtime Show Business Scavenger Hunt!

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:00:00 PDT

The Interactive Strategies Conference 2010 has given the OT gals free range to give away a FREE pass to the IS Conference in whatever way we see fit. With that said, today we are launching a business scavenger hunt! Each week, you will get two questions. Keep track of the questions, and your answers. At the end of the hunt, send us your answers, and from those who submit, we'll choose a winner! Simple, easy, and FUN. And you know us, we're all about fun.

Each week we will add the latest questions but a little later after the BusinessMakers Overtime Show airs. To get a jump start listen to the show which airs every Wednesday at The BusinessMakers Overtime.

Here we go!

1. What advice did the CEO of T3 (The Think Tank) give to aspiring women entrepreneurs?

2. What does the CEO of Ground Force Building Systems see as the vision for the company in 5-10 years?

2010 Rice Business Plan Competition Elevator Pitches

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:30:00 PDT

Adroit Motion, LLC - The University of Missouri

Ambiq Micro - The University Of Michigan

Ancora Energy - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

aquaREAL - Thammasat University

BelliSwap - The University of Chicago

Bennu - Baruch College

Biofont - The University of Waterloo

Biogas & Electric, LLC - The University of California, Los Angeles

BiologicsMD, LLC - The University of Arkansas

Blue Revolution Sea Farms - The University of Miami & Rice University

C3 Nano - Stanford University

CADIA Technologies - The University of Pennsylvania

Canopus India - IIT Kharagpur

Deli Worm, Inc. - Sun Yat-sen University

Digital Proctor - The University of Texas at Austin

D-Orbit - Santa Clara University

Drive Safe Glucose Monitoring Systems, Inc. - Kennesaw State University

Gaea Naturals - Lancaster University

GentleMed - Johns Hopkins University

GlucaGo, LLC - Indiana University & Purdue University

Gluten Replacement Technologies - Cambridge University and Imperial College London

infantAIR - Rice University

InnerVision - The University of Arkansas

KnowCharge, Inc. - The University of New Brunswick

Lark Technologies, Inc. - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Microfluidic Innovations, LLC - Purdue University

Mobile Electronic Diagnostics - The University of California, Berkeley

NanoDiax - Pepperdine University

NanoFex - Tulane University

OrthoIntrinsics - The London School of Economics & Rice University

OsComp Systems - Harvard University & The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PCCA Technologies, Inc. - Carnegie Mellon University

Phoenix Enhanced Oil Recovery - The University of Oklahoma & Oklahoma City University

Power2Switch, LLC - The University of Chicago

Rebellion Photonics - Rice University

Reveal Design Automation - The University of Michigan

Sanergy - Babson University & The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

SnapIT - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Solavicta - The University of Texas at Austin

Thin Air International - Colorado State University

TRUE - Dartmouth College

UroVention - Northwestern University

Whole Tree - Baylor University

An Unnecessary Distraction?

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:30:00 PDT

Let’s face it: our world is in turmoil. Political issues, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation… even the people who want to save the earth—such a noble cause—are fighting and can’t agree on what’s wrong with our planet, much less how best to save it. And here I sit at the Rice University Business Plan Competition watching a bunch of college kids, some who traveled from other countries, compete with one another at enormous cost of time and resources. Is this really the best way for us to spend our time and money? Couldn’t we be more productive focusing on bigger things, things that could alleviate pain in suffering in third world countries, maybe? In an era when people are unemployed and the nation’s future looks dubious, we’re focused on this?! Yeah, we are. Let me offer some justification.

With a $1 million purse, the Rice BPC is the richest and largest competition of its kind. Of the 420 business plans submitted, 42 were chosen to compete onsite; seven of these teams traveled from outside the U.S. One hundred volunteers and 250 judges donated their time over three days. In addition to submitting a business plan, teams competed by presenting “Elevator Pitches,” a 60-second “pitch” to a potential investor. The majority of these pitches are top-notch, professional and polished and are hardly what one would expect from college kids, even if they ARE the best and the brightest. Since 2001, 228 teams have competed in this competition and 37 percent are successfully operating businesses today. But the BEST attention-getter, in my humble opinion, is the variety and importance of the innovations these students present. Many of the teams hold patents, many are competing for seed money to conduct clinical trials or to gain FDA approval of their product, and some are total game-changers in their industries.

Consider a few of the innovations presented this year:

A contact lens that monitors blood glucose; current glucose tests involve needle pricks to draw blood.
A handheld probe that can accurately and painlessly diagnose cervical cancer in real time; today’s pap smear takes much longer and produces frequent false positives.
A camera that allows users to decipher an object’s chemical composition; users can immediately tell the difference between anthrax and powder, toxic fumes and water vapor, or a benign cyst and cancer.
An osteoporosis medication that binds directly to bone, tripling new bone growth, with a single, annual injection.
And advances in battery and solar power, waste management, infection detection and more.

If we agree on NOTHING else, we should agree on the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation. We should agree that startups and game-changing ideas such as these, operating in our Free Market system, provide the best chance to solve our current and future ills. And we should agree that venues such as Rice University must continue to provide support to our next generation innovators. They are our future.

If you have not yet listened to the Rice BPC's Elevator Pitches posted on the BusinessMakers website, you should.

Is Your Ego Overshadowing the Growth of Your Business?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:35:28 PDT

There are certain undeniable qualities that the most successful CEO’s share, and believe it or not, “big ego” isn’t one of them. I suppose it can be argued that there are plenty of great leaders whose over-inflated self-images don’t get in the way of their abilities to lead; however, 9 times out of 10, we see that hubris can be a crippling blow to an otherwise strong organization.

To come up with some of these indefinable qualities of successful CEO’s, I considered the behaviors of entrepreneurs we’ve had on The BusinessMakers Show. I drew inspiration from the stories they’ve shared with us.

Here’s what I’ve concluded:

Top professionals never think they know everything.

Steve Wozniak, one of the founders of Apple Computers, was a confident designer and computer engineer, but he knew his weaknesses. Though he comes off as being a know-it-all when it comes to engineering in his interview (and let’s face it, he probably does know it all), he gives partner Steve Jobs complete and total credit for the successful marketing of the product, and the building of Apple, the company.

Steve McKee, one of the founders and President of advertising and marketing agency McKee Wallwork Cleveland had a lot of success with his fledgling firm right from the get-go. Then, things started to go sideways, and business stalled. To define and reverse this pause in growth, McKee embarked on a five year research project, speaking to countless executives about the stalls they’ve experience. He gleaned from them what has and hasn’t worked to jump-start growth. McKee took this knowledge back to his own business. He reexamined the company’s foundation, and made tough choices where necessary. He reinvigorated his team, and eventually turned that hard work into a book I highly recommend, called When Growth Stalls.

Successful entrepreneurs understand the concept of “karma” and aren’t threatened by other people’s success..

Peter Shankman, Founder and CEO of Help A Report Out (helpareporter.com) was able to found an entire business on his belief in karma. Shankman told us that throughout his years on the client side of PR, he built strong relationships with journalists, always sending valuable information and sources to them when they needed it, even if it didn’t directly benefit him. Shankman understood early on that you get what you give. Even knowing that he or his client wasn’t the right fit to be a source for a story, he proactively passed on tips to more knowledgeable people. Those people remembered him for his help in landing coverage. Today, his newsletter, Help A Reporter Out is much more than a newsletter. It is changing the way journalists and PR professionals communicate and interact, all because Shankman understood that his altruism would eventually come back to him, times three.

The best CEOs listen, and they listen to everyone

Serial entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell is responsible for Pong, Atari, and even Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell is also the originator of casual Fridays, throwing beer bashes for employees at the end of the week to show his appreciation. On a more serious note, Bushnell told us how he established a meritocracy. He encouraged employees to experiment and work hard. Those that excelled moved up quickly. By not stifling his creative team, he was able to get the best out of his developers and quickly pinpoint who showed real promise.

Another serial entrepreneur we’ve had on The Businessmakers is Bazaarvoice CEO Brett Hurt. Hurt is the founder of another little company you might have heard of (Coremetrics, anyone?). He sold that company, and went on to found the most successful customer review technology company in the world. Many of the biggest – and smallest - brands in the world use Bazaarvoice for their reviews, and it’s not simply because they provide a good technology solution. Hurt understands that building a community in the workplace and providing employees a forum for having their voices heard is a major part of being the CEO. Their culture is outstanding. Hurt told us that the Bazaarvoice employees even rate their managers and executives… how many companies can say that?

They are man (or woman) enough to hire the right people.

Most people think of George Foreman as the superstar who knocked out Joe Frazier in the Sunshine Showdown, but today, Foreman is a successful entrepreneur with a grilling empire that spans the globe. Foreman noted in his interview with host Russ Capper that during his losing battle with Mohammad Ali, Ali had a man named Angelo Dundee in his corner. Ali was getting a little cocky, thinking Foreman was tired. As Foreman put it, he was “playing around with [him].” Just as Foreman was about to land a blow, Dundee yelled out “Muhammad, don’t play with that sucker.” Ali listened, and stopped playing around, and the fight was over. The message Foreman took from that fight was to hire people who would tell it to him straight, people to whom he’d always listen, saying “If ever I had a chance to fight for the title again, I wish I had Angelo Dundee in my corner.” Twenty years later, Foreman did hire Dundee, in spite of the fact that he’d coached his former competition to victory against him.

They give credit where credit is due

Tom Fatjo, Jr. is the man behind America’s largest waste management provider WCA Waste Corp. When asked about how the company really came together, Fatjo made it a point to call out his partner Lew Walters. Walters was a financial mastermind, and knew the ins and outs of successful strategy. Fatjo emphatically states that, even though he himself always seems to get the credit for the company’s success, had it not been for Walters, it never would have happened.

To be a good business leader, you need to possess a certain level of confidence that incites people to follow you. It is the best entrepreneurs who know not to confuse confidence with ego. The need to always be right or compete with those you work with won’t win you the respect of your faithful team. Once you let go of your ego, the chance that you’ll reach your full potential will grow exponentially.