1. It Starts with a Dream

One of our biggest problems is that realists surround us.  Even the ambitious realists, the ones that encourage us to go to college so that we can get a good job – aim too low.  Where are the people encouraging you to create jobs instead of looking for one?

2. MindShift

As we get older, the stakes of failure get higher. The responsibilities of family, mortgage payments and retirement are enormous. The gravity of letting everyone down with a failed entrepreneurial attempt or dream chasing exploit are intense.  Who would blame you if decided to keep your head down low on your JOB and forget about that crazy idea?

3.   Act (walk the walk)

 This is where the rubber hits the road. Dreaming big and thinking differently is important, but unfortunately until you take action it is all just wishful thinking.

4. Only Passion will allow U 2 Persist

“People say that you have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing.  It’s totally true.  The reason is because it is so hard … that any rational person would give up.  If you look at the ones that were “successful” in the eyes of society oftentimes the ones that were successful were the ones that could preserve when it got really tough. The ones that didn’t love it quit, because they are sane.”   Steve Jobs

5.   No Excuses None

Do yourself a favor the next time a situation occurs – instead of making an excuse accept responsibility and move on.  It is weird how things fall into place afterwards.

 

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Watching ESPN you would think that Michael Jordan never missed a shot.  Truth be told, not only did he miss shots – but game winners as well.  Can you imagine how disappointed he was after missing a game winning shot?  The gravity of letting everyone down. If he decided to pass instead of shoot in the next situation – who would have blamed him?

As we get older, the stakes of failure get higher. The responsiblities of family, mortgage payments and retirement are enormous. The gravity of letting everyone down with a failed entrepreneurial attempt are intense.  Who would blame you if decided to keep your head down low on your JOB and forgot about that crazy business idea?

Do you have the guts to fail?  I’m not going to cavalierly throw that question out there.  It is not a decision that can be taken lightly, but here is something to think about.

As the ramifications of the great recession continues to play out, companies are determining that a smaller workforce is sufficient.  Many jobs are not coming back and it’s creating what’s called “unintentional entrepreneurs.” Essentially laid off workers who have decided to give entrepreneurship a shot.

I’ll save that for another blog post, but that sounds like trouble.

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Denzel Washington made a powerful commencement address to the graduates at University of Pennsylvania. He asks them, “Do you have the guts to fail?”  It is worth a listen…

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Each day I read countless articles by people trying to figure out what kind of company Apple is.  Is it a hardware company like Dell & HP?  Or is it a software company like Microsoft?  Maybe it’s a retailer like JC Penny? I heard a talking head this morning throw out the name Atari.  I believe she wanted to try out a new vocabulary word “rapid obsolescence.” WTF. Most likely in another 30 years people will still be asking the same questions.

Jony Ive was chosen as one of  TIME’s 100 most influential people in the world.  Unless you follow Apple closely you may have never heard of Jony Ive, but he has been driving force behind the look and feel of many of Apple’s products. The following quote is from that article. I have placed emphasis on a line that I can’t get out of my head.

Jony Ive is himself classic Apple. Brushed steel, polished glass hardware, complicated software honed to simplicity. His genius is not just his ability to see what others cannot but also how he applies it. To watch him with his workmates in the holy of holies, Apple’s design lab, or on a night out is to observe a very rare esprit de corps. They love their boss, and he loves them. What the competitors don’t seem to understand is you cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money. Jony is Obi-Wan. His team are Jedi whose nobility depends on the pursuit of greatness over profit, believing the latter will always follow the former, stubbornly passing up near-term good opportunities to pursue great ones in the distance. Jony’s values happen to add value — emotional and financial. It takes a unique alchemy of form and function for millions of people to feel so passionately about the robot in their pocket.

Wow! What the competitors don’t seem to understand is you cannot get people this smart to work this hard just for money. 

Wall Street has been in a tizzy, because Samsung is making phones with larger screen sizes and the phones are quite popular.  Since Apple hasn’t released an equivalent device, the Street is convinced that Apple has fallen behind the innovation curve. Tim Cook, CEO, says to create a larger screen phone the company would have to make technolgical tradeoffs that would impact the phone’s overall experience.  The company is not willing to make those compromises.  In other words, he is willing to sacrifice short term profits for a longer term gain.

Obviously it’s easy for Tim Cook or Jony Ive take that position with many millions in the bank.  However, as an aspiring or struggling entrepreneur where do you stand? Are you willing to take a short term hit?  Is it all about the money?  These are questions that we must contemplate as entrepreneurs.

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Since my life was consumed with stocks, I checked out some CNBC talking heads.  I’ll never forget Ron Insana was trying to figure out who Howard Lindzon, CEO StockTwits, was.  Howard was wailing on them for who knows what reason.  It was fun seeing David get under Goliath’s skin.

I immediately started following Howard and was introduced to Stock Twits (the 24/7 stock talk stream).  From that point on, I was hooked on 140 characters.  Note: Howard and CNBC have since made peace, but it was fun while it lasted.

Although I had set up a LinkedIn account before I left the corporate scene in 2006, it sat dormant.  Even with the excitement surrounding the IPO in 2011, I never fired it up. After the urging of a couple of friends, I decided to take another look at it in January of this year.

I updated my profile and re-connected with some old friends. Some of my old lunch buddies were Vice Presidents while others were still old lunch buddies.  It was amazing to see how their careers had progressed or regressed.  LinkedIn’s power as a job search platform was undeniable.

That’s basically what I expected, but there was so much more. As a former sales guy, I immediately saw its benefits as a sales tool.  A big part of our strategy meetings were understanding a company’s organizational structure.  Who reports to who, what products were they responsible for and who were the real decision makers.  LinkedIn has it is all laid out for you by the people who know it best – the customers.  It also includes all kinds of relationship data like interests and favorite restaurants.  This thing is a gold mine.

That said, the reason I’m still kicking LinkedIn tires today are the groups.  There are 1000s of groups on almost any professional topic that you can imagine. There are nearly 3000 entrepreneurial groups alone.  The groups are as broad or as specific as you would like.  For instance, On Startups – The Community for Entrepreneurs has nearly 350,000 members.  Whereas, there are many small niche groups with less than 100 members.

This is the  kind of interaction that locked me in to Twitter.  Shaq’s antics are interesting, but it was stock talk on StockTwits – the ability to exchange with like-minded people about a specific subject that kept me coming back.  Throw in a business model that has some aspects of the new school – monetizing eyeballs add in old school dollars in exchange for a service, and I’m sold.  I’m on the LinkedIn bandwagon.

Now let’s shift gears and talk about the stock (LNKD).  Last week when I wrote, CREE Ends My Muhammad Ali Moment, I noted how it broke out on earnings and never violated its B/O day’s low in each of the last two quarters.

Take a look at LNKD’s chart. It has spent the entire quarter above its B/O day’s low. LinkedIn reports on 5/2.  Can it perform a repeat?

The similarities between CREE and LNKD are earning’s day break outs of at least 8% on 4-5X its 50 day average volume.  As an exercise left to the reader, another stock displayed similar characteristics on Friday.  It’s on my radar…

Disclosure:  At the time of this writing, I currently have no position in CREE or LNKD (4/21/13).  I may be a buyer at any time.

The post I’m Giving LinkedIn and $LNKD a Second Look appeared first on Entrepreneurial State of Mind.

I have written several post recently on fears that American workers have concerning entrepreneurship -  Fear of Going Broke and How Entrepreneurs Overcome Fear. An Edward Jones survey found that:

• 61% fear losing savings
• 58% fear lack of support and safety net
• 50% fear losing healthcare and retirement benefits
• 49% fear lack of work/life balance
• 34% fear doing it alone and feeling isolated

Those are all real concerns, but there is an elephant in the room that may be be scarier than all of those. Once again, I will draw on a Steve Jobs story.

Steve Jobs gives employees a little speech when they’re promoted to Vice President at Apple, according to Adam Lashinsky in a new article in Fortune that’s not online yet.  Lashinsky calls it the “Difference Between the Janitor and the Vice President.”

Jobs tells the VP that if the garbage in his office is not being emptied regularly for some reason, he would ask the janitor what the problem is. The janitor could reasonably respond by saying, “Well, the lock on the door was changed, and I couldn’t get a key.”

An irritation for Jobs, for an understandable excuse for why the janitor couldn’t do his job. As a janitor, he’s allowed to have excuses.  ”When you’re the janitor, reasons matter,” Jobs tells newly minted VPs, according to Lashinsky.

“Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering,” says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is “crossed when you become a VP.”  In other words, you have no excuse for failure. You are now responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn’t matter what you say.  (Business Insider)

I recently took a big hit on one my investments and was sharing this with my Mother.  She said, who can we blame? There was a time when I would have blamed Wall Street, the weather, anyone and everyone except the man in the mirror.  This time I calmly said to my Mother – that CEO needs to be fired! LOL.

Actually, I said there are no fingers to point – this is on me.

The post There is a Bigger Elephant in the Room for Entrepreneurs appeared first on Entrepreneurial State of Mind.

I’m fairly certain that Edward Jones didn’t conduct the survey for the hell of it.  It has the financial resources to act on some of the conclusions and I assume that it has.  The fact that 37% of Americans would feel more confident in starting a business if they had the support of a big company is something that Edward Jones and other large company’s could address.  Also, I can see how Edward Jones could leverage the fact 70% of Americans are seeking more entrepreneurial environments at work. This fits in nicely with their  financial advisor model.

On a broader scale, only 12% would opt to go alone without big brother’s support and only 15% believe that they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.  That seems about right.  If not on the high side.  Americans’ fears of entrepreneurship were well captured in this survey:

• 61% fear losing savings
• 58% fear lack of support and safety net
• 50% fear losing healthcare and retirement benefits
• 49% fear lack of work/life balance
• 34% fear doing it alone and feeling isolated

Desire and fear are two emotions that we must deal with each and every day.  Most times fear trumps desire.  The fact that 70% desire entrepreneurial experiences at work supports that point.  In other words employees want the freedom and autonomy, but will settle for benefits and a predictable paycheck.

The first step towards becoming an entrepreneur is dealing with the fear and desire issue.  IMO, it’s kinda like addressing a personal finance issue.  There are two ways to approach a money problem –  either cut expenses or increase income. Cutting expenses especially after the easy stuff is addressed is no fun.  So, personally I would rather work on income side.  In the case of fear and desire, my preference is to approach it from the desire side.

Now I am making the assumption that becoming an entrepreneur is not a childish wish, but is a fully grown desire.  If that is the case, weird stuff starts to happen.  When you receive a bonus check or a raise – you bank the money instead of spending it.  The reserve fund to address the insecurities  of entrepreneurship becomes a priority.  Excuses disappear as the midnight oil burns.

If you think I’m smoking the good stuff – this is a well documented fact. Napoleon Hill in the classic “Think and Grow Rich” talks about this phenomena.  He calls it a burning desire - an inner drive that is so overwhelming that it will not be denied.  I have written about it many times (Forest Whitaker Reminded Me of a Key to Success – a Burning Desire).

The bottom line is that each of those fears, discussed in the survey, will be front and center in every entrepreneur’s first startup.  It comes with the territory.  It is part of the game.  Maybe after a few successful ventures those fears will be eased, but if someone wants entrepreneurship without risk it ain’t gonna happen!  That’s why you keep hearing people say make your business and your passion one in the same. Desire will overcome fear.

Social Media guru, entrepreneur and author Gary Vaynerchuk nails it in this video.  It’s about 15 minutes long.  I tried to find a shorter one, but this one really drives home my point.  It’s worth watching.

Let’s discuss. Can desire override fear?

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“I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.”

Ali was turning the lights off and I was turning them on, but you know what I mean.  I felt like I was faster than the speed of light.  After a few days, it stopped being humorous and more of a pain in the butt.  Here is the scoop according to Energy Star:

CFLs produce light differently than incandescent bulbs. In an incandescent, electric current runs through a wire filament and heats the filament until it starts to glow. In a CFL, an electric current is driven through a tube containing argon and a small amount of mercury vapor. This generates invisible ultraviolet light that excites a fluorescent coating (called phosphor) on the inside of the tube, which then emits visible light.

CFLs need a little more energy when they are first turned on, but once the electricity starts moving, use about 75 percent less energy than incandescent bulbs. A CFL’s ballast helps “kick start” the CFL and then regulates the current once the electricity starts flowing.

This entire process typically takes 30 seconds to 3 minutes to complete, which is why CFLs take longer than other lights to become fully lit.

CFLs seem like a step backwards, but switching to more efficient lighting is the least we can do to help the planet. Fortunately, LEDs are an alternative that look and act like what we are accustomed and with CREE’s recent announcement LEDs are finally price competitive. The Verge has a great cost analysis of the new CREE light bulbs and here CREE provides a glimpse under the hood.

Thanks be - CREE has restored order and Ali is still the only person faster than light.

There’s more to the CREE story than just light bulbs.  Here is a summary, by a hedge fund manager, in a recent IBD edition.

They make LEDs and related devices, which are becoming widely known. …they’ve grown, become vertically integrated. At first they made backlighting for cell phones, then TVs. Now they make chips and retail light bulbs. All the while, they’ve put money into R&D. They’ve bought fixtures companies. Their technologies have become the best in the industry in terms of cost of manufacturing and brightness per watt in their devices.  They’ve done this with a combination of innovation and cash flow, and no debt.  Even with all of this growth, they’re still in the early stages of a revolution in lighting.

Let’s get down to brass tacks and exam the action.

The chart has been a thing of beauty over the last 6 months.  Notice the gap up in October.  This was after a great earning’s report.  It is hard to see in this chart, but the low of the that day was the lowest point over the next three months.  You could have bought on the B/O day, set a stop at the low and chilled out without coming under any pressure for the entire quarter.  Now take a look at January.  The exact same thing happened after January’s earnings.  The low for the quarter was the low of the B/O day.  CREE announces earnings on 4/23.  Just the mere fact that I’m writing about this virtually guarantees that there won’t be a three-peat. LOL.

Regardless of what happens over the next few weeks – we are in the early days of the incandescent to LED transition. CREE is a great way to play it.

While you are here – check out some of my latest posts.  My writing is in a transition process itself.  I’m writing more about a subject that is near and dear to my heart – that’s success and entrepreneurship.  More specifically, about developing an entrepreneurial mindset.  As traders, many of us already think like entrepreneurs so this may be old hat to you.

• Fear of Going Broke Keeps Would Be Entrepreneurs Employees
• Steve Jobs – Explains the Rules of Success
• Will Smith – Your Words and Thoughts Have Physical Power
• Self Disruption Defined

Disclaimer:  Long CREE. Will most likely sell majority of position before earnings. As much as I think it is a winner, I don’t trust Wall Street around earnings.  Will look to buy back as soon as possible after earnings.

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No one was a better salesperson at Apple than Steve Jobs.  However, if you called him one he would probably rip you to pieces. Over time he made the transition, from the guy who almost threw up from nervousness before his first television appearance

to the guy that delivered a sales presentation better than any professional salesperson could have dreamed. IMO, mastering your message is as important as anything else on aspiring entrepreneurs to do list.  You may want to consider joining your local ToastMasters group to kickstart the process.

The post Steve Jobs – Master the Message appeared first on Entrepreneurial State of Mind.

•  Don’t Push; Parents Push Back
• Above All, Be Honest
• I Think They Were Relieved
• This Is About Their Well-Being and Care
• These Benefits Can Be Critical to Your Success
• Please Don’t Just Focus on the Financial Aspects

Read the Full Article Here.

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According to a 2012 survey conducted for the European Commission by TNS Custom Research, 51 percent of Americans would rather be self-employed and 44 percent think it would be possible for them to go into business for themselves within the next five years — a figure that has increased 8 percentage points since 2009. But despite the relatively large number of Americans who want to be in business for themselves and believe it feasible in the near future, relatively few would-be entrepreneurs actually take the initiative.

When asked to identify what would-be entrepreneurs most feared about starting a business, the top responses were a fear of going bankrupt (38 percent) and a fear of irregular income (37 percent), which amount to a significantly larger sum than those who feared personal failure and losing job security.

My question is how do you define a “would be” entrepreneur? If you are not an entrepreneur are you a “would be” entrepreneur? Fear of going broke never crossed my mind when I started my business.

Read Full Article Here.

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