Taking your startup to the next level

The best entrepreneurs I know are scrappy, resourceful, and are hustlers.  They identify a problem and will not take impossible for an answer.  They make things happen, but rarely if ever by themselves.  They are capable of surrounding themselves with strong team members, advisory board members, board members, vendors, and good support from friends and family.  One of the best ways to recruit strong team members, advisers and “friends” of the startup is through conferences.

For the first time, Inspired Startup is giving away one free ticket to Think Tank in San Diego including $500 in cash to assist in your travels totaling a prize that costs $3,500.  Also, Inspired Startup is giving away one free ticket to Startup Day in Seattle.  Read on to find out more…
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This is a guest post by James Wong, co-founder and CEO of Avidian Technologies, the makers of Prophet, the easy CRM software for Outlook. James is a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of three successful companies, an active investor and supporter of entrepreneurship.

I personally believe that if you want to succeed in life, you have to take some chances.  I don’t know of any successful person who did not take risks in their life.  However, I do know many unsuccessful people who haven’t taken much risk and played it safe.  If you are waiting for that perfect business opportunity that is riskless and returns tremendous gains, you may be waiting for a long long time.

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Generally speaking I enjoy the whole car buying process, I find the process fascinating.  I enjoy interacting with salespeople and learning what seems to work for them and more importantly what their approach is to sales - whether it be pushy, non-pushy, hard, good cop bad cop negotiators, etc.  Normally, I find it engaging.  This time, however, it was truly a strange almost surreal experience.  I bought a car or so I thought only to have it rescinded the next day.  I actually got into an argument with the dealership.  How is that possible?  I’ll try to distill how that happened and hopefully be able to provide some gems of learning for both you and I.  Here are my key learnings and takeaways:
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I haven’t seen anything like this before, but talk about awe-inspiring.  You can literally fly.  Would you do the wing-suit base jump?  The craziest line - “now it’s getting BORING, so we play around” - who says stuff like that?!?

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If you are thinking about starting a business now, here are 10 reasons why you should reconsider.

1. The economy sucks right now and it is going to get worse before it gets better.
2. If you have a job now, it’s best to keep it as long as you can. Getting a regular paycheck rocks.
3. Frankly, running a business is a 24×7 endeavor, it’s just plain hard there is no way around it. Expect stress, less hair, and exhaustion.
4. Accountability is tough, the buck stops with you, no more passing the blame to anyone for poor performance.
5. People are fickle, they love you and they hate you. Expect to deal with difficult people, horrible customers, threatened and real lawsuits, tough employees, and ultimately brutal people problems.
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This video is one of the more cheesy videos out there in terms of production, but it is awesome and very inspirational. Love this stuff. My favorite line - “I am happy.”

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I can appreciate books like “Think and Grow Rich” and “The Secret” and the other books that highlight the power of positive thinking. However, I know people that take it just a little too far and focus a little bit too much on positive thinking that they forget that the world does not and has never revolved around them. I just don’t buy that believing and building a mental picture of a red bike will lead to a red bike appearing. Honestly, I don’t even think it’s the right mental picture to strive for. Life in this world does not revolve around me and it does not revolve around you. After coming back from Central America and getting to know an impoverished community over seven years and committing to working with the community for the past four, I’m even more convinced that success in this lifetime comes from our ability to think positively about others or growing a bigger vision about others. Again, it’s not intuitive, but it’s true. If all you and I think about is how we make a fast buck and nothing bigger than that, we will ultimately fail. However, if our dreams are about others and our success becomes a means to an end to doing that - we will be successful.
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In the past couple of weeks, I’ve met several entrepreneurs that are ready to walk away from their businesses for a variety of reasons. In other words, they are ready to quit. The themes are very similar and I’d like to share them with you for two reasons. If you haven’t started your entrepreneurial dream yet, go in with eyes wide open and make sure you are ready to make the commitment, it isn’t easy. I always recommend giving yourself at least 2 years so you can learn and fight through the tough times. If you have started your business, keep at it, everyone is struggling with similar issues - those who are able to persevere in this environment and succeed in this environment will undoubtedly be rewarded in the future. You are not alone, your issues are not unique, and my message is as always DON’T QUIT!

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It’s amazing how important networking is to your personal and business success and how few people are actually good at it. I just came back from a Global Leadership Conference put on by EO and one speaker in particular (Christina Harbridge) really stated it well to succeed in successful networking and the best part of it is - it’s not HARD. Successful politicians are for better or for worse pretty good at it. The key to successful networking is … “Watch for what you like in the person.”

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