Roger James Hamilton's Blog, page 23
December 3, 2015
Top 10 Startup Mistakes
Four things make up 79% of all business failures:
#1 – Building something nobody wants (36%)
#2 – Hiring poorly (18%)
#3 – Lack of focus (13%)
#4 – Failing to market & sell (12%)
How to best avoid these failures:
#1 – Always start with the customer, not the product. Get your beta group / user group of customers and work with them to deliver what they love. People will pay you to do what they love, not to just do what you love.
#2 – Outsource to experts who manage themselves, not workers who n...
3 steps to great partnerships
Wow! It’s December already! It’s always around this time of year I ask some big questions for the year ahead:
What do you want to achieve in 2016? Who do you want to work with? What partners would help you double your results in 2016?In this week’s Entrepreneur TV video I share the 3 steps for you to set up great partnerships for the year ahead.
In the video I also include a very special preview of some big news on our 2016 events that we ar...
December 1, 2015
What’s the secret sauce of your business?
First step for start-ups: What’s the sec
First step for start-ups: What’s the secret sauce of your business?
It’s not your idea. It’s not your product. It’s your magic sauce where the more you stir it, the more it grows.
Jeff Bezos came across Amazon’s secret sauce 15 years ago over a coffee with Jim Sinegal, the founder of one of Amazon’s biggest competitors, CostCo. Jim shared with Jeff the ‘virtuous circle’ that made CostCo the leading discount retailer:
“You can fill Safeco Field with the...
November 29, 2015
Is your daily routine mindful or mindless?
Is your daily routine mindful or mindless?
Do you serve a customer to make money? Or do you serve a customer to serve a customer? Do you wash dishes to get them clean? Or do you wash the dishes to wash the dishes?
Here’s a story from Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, about ‘washing the dishes to wash the dishes’ and the difference between mindful and mindless:
“In the United States, I have a close friend named Jim Forest… Last winter, Jim came to visit. I usually wash the dishes after we’ve fi...
November 27, 2015
How do I find my life purpose?
One of the greatest unanswered questions is “How do I find my life purpose?”
I think the question goes unanswered because it’s an infinite loop. Like “Why can’t I find the right answer?”. It’s a question that in it contains another question. So no matter how many times you ask it, it can never be fully answered. It’s the wrong question.
In my experience, entrepreneurs and leaders find their ‘why’ when they change the question from “How do I find my life purpose” to 3 simpler questions:
1. “Wh...
November 26, 2015
3 big steps for 2016
First of all, a Happy Thanksgiving if you are celebrating in the US. If not, happy holidays!
Here’s this week’s Entrepreneur TV episode with 3 big steps you can take to prepare for the coming year!
Last week I announced a contest to celebrate Entrepreneur TV reaching 1,000,000 views on Youtube. We had over 700 entries from 40 countries, and a winner!
Watch the video to hear who the winner is…
As we head towards the end of 2015, use this video t...
November 25, 2015
How do you make a mark with a new company in a competitive market?
How do you make a mark with a new company i
How do you make a mark with a new company in a competitive market? How did Facebook reach its first $100 million mark in revenue?
The answer may surprise you – and change the way you think about your own business strategy.
In 2006, Mark Zuckerberg and his team were more focused on coding Facebook than growing revenue. Mark hired Dan Rose from Jeff Bezo’samazon.comas “VP of Business Development” to help grow revenue.
Dan had learned from Jeff Bezos th...
Entrepreneurship isn’t about proving yourself. It’s about improving yourself.
To do right, do the right thing: “Managem
To do right, do the right thing: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ~ Peter Drucker.
That means step-by-step improvement, as the ‘right thing’ is only clear at each step based on the results of the step before. This is the language of entrepreneurs: ‘learning by doing’:
How do you turn ‘constant improvement’ into a company culture?
Toyota turned this into aprocess and culture called “The Toyota Way”, which then i...
November 23, 2015
The Paradox of Entrepreneurship
The paradox of entrepreneurship: “As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it”
It used to really annoy me when I started with my first boot-strapped start-up and people with money said “It’s not about the money”. I would think “It’s easy for you to say that, because you’ve already got the money.”
It was only later in life I understood what they really meant. It’s like a footballer saying“It’s not about the ball.” The footballer who is always chasing the ball isn’t welcome on the team – an...
Peter Thiel’s 7 Billion Dollar Questions
How many of Peter Thiel’s 7 questions does your business answer “yes” to?
Peter was co-founder of Paypal and Palantir (which is now worth $20 billion), he was first to invest in Facebook and his VC company, Founders Fund, has used these 7 questions to invest early on in companies like AirBnB and Stripe.It’s also the same 7 questions that his fellow entrepreneurs who made their first fortunes with him from PayPal’s $1.5 billion sale used when starting their next companies.
As Peter says about t...
