TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) was founded in 1984 as a one-off event with an annual conference began in 1990. Today the platform has expanded to offer TED events held throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of talks on a wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture, often through storytelling.

As of last year alone, TED Talks have been watched one billion times worldwide, reflecting a growing global audience.

From talks related to technology, entertainment, business, design and more we’ve curated a list of our favorite inspiring talks for entrepreneurs.

1. Gary Vaynerchuk: Do What You Love (No Excuses!)

“At the Web 2.0 Expo, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk gives a shot in the arm to dreamers and up-and-comers who face self-doubt. The Internet has made the formula for success simpler than ever, he argues. So there’s now no excuse not to do what makes you happy.” Watch Video

2. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon: Women Entrepreneurs, Example Not Exception

“Women aren’t micro–so why do they only get micro-loans? Reporter Gayle Tzemach Lemmon argues that women running all types of firms– from home businesses to major factories– are the overlooked key to economic development. (Filmed at TEDxWomen)” Watch Video

3. Simon Sinek: How Great Leaders Inspire Action

“Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers. (Filmed at TEDxPugetSound)” Watch Video

Some use the terms interchangeably, but there are a number of elements that distinguish one from the other. At the same time, there are also overlaps across incubator and accelerator services — which can undoubtedly explain the confusion.

In my experience it is easier to grasp the differences between two similar paradigms by first understanding the commonalities they share. For example, both incubators and accelerators prepare companies for growth by providing guidance and mentorship, but in slightly different ways, and more importantly, at different stages in the business life cycle.

Due to the staggering number (and variety) of accelerator and incubator services that exist, it is difficult to provide clear definitions — but here’s an analogy to get started:

How Business Incubators Help Startups

The life cycle of a business can be likened to the life of a human being. In the same way, there are roughly three major stages of life:

Childhood –> Adolescence –> Adulthood

Like a father to a child, a business incubator provides shelter where the child can feel safe and learn how to walk and talk, by offering office space, business skills training, and access to financing and professional networks. The incubator nurtures the business throughout the startup phase (childhood) and provides all of the necessary tools and advice for the business to stand on its own feet.

While learning to stand on your own is a great entrepreneurial achievement, the walk through adolescence is often filled with more unique challenges; and the need for guidance is far from over.

As any parent knows, guiding a teenager through adolescence is perhaps the most trying period in a person’s life, as the adolescent gains a sense of self and identity. One major challenge facing most companies that operate on the verge between childhood and adolescence is that sooner or later, they get stuck in the trenches of day-to-day operations.

At this transition, more often than not, startups fail to incorporate long-term strategic planning in the development of the business. The company can then lose track of its unique value proposition – its identity – during this phase.

How Business Accelerators Help Startups

It is at this critical point in the business life cycle that most incubator programs end, as the firm is technically ready to spread its wings.  Nonetheless, the journey towards sustained growth is far from over. Often it becomes necessary to receive additional advice and guidance on the path towards sustained growth.

At this juncture, the services provided by a business accelerator become extremely useful.

By means of acceleration services, often in the form of an “acceleration program,” business accelerators help companies get through adolescence and prepare them to enter adulthood, i.e. helping them develop strong arms and legs (e.g. institutional strength), sound values and a clear mindset (e.g. vision and strategy) for the future.

In other words, while incubators help companies to stand and walk, accelerators teach companies to run.

In a recent post entitled “One Reason Why Your Business is Not Generating [Massive] Revenues”, Tara Gentile correctly surmises that “it is easier to earn your second $50,000 than it is to earn the first $50,000.”

Slingshot Capabilities

Before an entrepreneur or small business executive can earn the first $50,000, he/she must develop what I call a “Slingshot” capability (operations excellence) and establish a brand identity.

Few people remember the days when Wal-Mart was still a startup. The Arkansas-based company avoided markets dominated by goliaths like K-Mart and Sears. During that period, Wal-Mart invested billions (as much as K-Mart made in profits) on its Slingshot advantage, a world-class inventory management system.

Once perfected, Wal-Mart had a solution that improved inventory turns twice as much as the industry average and reduced its shipping and distribution costs 200 basis points below any major competitor.

If you are launching a business and your plans don’t include the development of a Slingshot capability, you aren’t ready to leave your garage.

Brand Identity vs.  Slingshot Capabilities

Brand identity is the recognized, differentiated outward expression of your business’ products or services.

My research suggests that it takes less capital intensive service-oriented businesses (i.e., barber shops) 3 years to develop a brand identity; whereas it takes a capital intensive product-oriented business up to five years.

If it takes 3-to-5 years to build a brand and approximately the same amount of time to perfect your Slingshot capability, what should an entrepreneur do in the interim?

Fortunately, I do have a framework that provides a little more guidance than my declaration to “launch your business from your garage.”

First, Clean Out Your Garage

In a classic 2×2 matrix format, I present two questions to business owners: (1) “Does the task differentiate your business (x-axis)”; and (2) “Is the task critical to the daily delivery of your product or service (y-axis)”.

So, we asked twenty-one entrepreneurs to share the number one lesson they learned their first year in business. Don’t miss these inspirational tips with the potential to transform your business in its first year of operation.

1. Understand your brand.

“[You] can’t brand [your business] as the Taj Mahal of your industry if you aren’t interested in doing what it takes to become respected and earn customers’ trust.  You can have an incredible [public relations] campaign, but if service falls flat, the impact can be huge. [There is tremendous] value in having a likable, trustworthy, and growing brand.”

- Vanessa Wade, Owner of Connect the Dots PR: @PROCKSTAR

2. Have personal funding.

“One thing I’ve seen from other young startups is the feeling that they need to give away a lot of equity in the beginning. I worry that this dilutes the business too much early on. Having other funding, whether that comes from personal savings or from friends and family, allows businesses to get things started on much fairer terms.”

- Andrew Grauer, CEO and Co-Founder of Course Hero: @atgrauer

3. Face marketplace realities.

“It doesn’t matter how much experience you have or how good [your team is], you can work with the best strategies, best ideas and you can be very talented, but you always have to face the reality of the marketplace. The faster you start to talk to your customers, consider their needs and related conditions in which you try to do business, the earlier you can gain a success.”

- Ondrej Homola, CEO of Corinth

4. Don’t make emotional business decisions.

“Don’t make business decisions when you’re in an emotional state, even if it’s a positive emotion. It doesn’t matter if you’re happy, sad, angry, or excited; if you’re riding the highs and lows of emotion, you’re not thinking clearly. Wait until you’ve calmed down. If it still seems like a good idea then, go for it.”

- Anthony Lolli, CEO of Rapid Realty: @Anthony_Lolli

5. Embrace failure.

“Failing isn’t bad unless you allow it to be permanent. The difference between a true entrepreneur and a wannabe is the realization that failing comes in all shapes and sizes, that it’s part of the game, and that you have to take your punches and keep on moving.”

- Steve Duffy, President of List Here: @listhere

6. Press can be powerful.

“We started off doing some simple press releases, which got us our first write-up in a publication called InternetWeek magazine. Before the ink was even dry on the InternetWeek article, we were invited to appear as guests on CNBC’s Power Lunch segment. Since then, the media firestorm has never stopped, and without even trying, we’ve appeared on, or have been featured in CNN, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, Fox Business, and many more media outlets.”

- Ian Aronovich, CEO of GovernmentAuctions.org: @govtauctions

7. Invest time in social media and SEO.

“Ever since we started our business, we’ve had an aggressive social media strategy, producing over 12,000 Facebook fans to date along with a ton of engagement on both Facebook and Twitter. And [sic] without doing any SEO or any dedicated effort to make our pages rank well on the search engines, we started appearing in lots of searches for a lot of keywords related to our industry. Of course, it helps to have something people like enough to share across various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.”

- Michael Pesochinsky, Vice President and Co-Founder of GovernmentBargains.com: @govbargains

But what is it that drives would-be entrepreneurs to strike out on their own? What were some of the world’s most successful founders, small business owners, and CEO’s thinking when they decided to unleash their genius into the world?

Here are twenty simple reasons why being your own boss (entrepreneurship, in general) is awesome.

As an entrepreneur you can:

1. Develop financial independence.

You are completely in charge of your earning potential. “Financial independence means different things to different people. To some, it means having the cash to buy what they want. To others, it means saving for retirement or a home. And for some folks, it simply means opening the bills without dread. Whatever your definition, it means you command your money and not the other way around. That’s a victory worth celebrating.”

2. Set your own schedule.

For the most part, as an entrepreneur you have greater command of your schedule. However, you will likely have many more demands on it as well. “Contrary to popular belief, you don’t come into the world with nothing but your naked self. You’re actually already in possession of one of your most important gifts: time.” What will you do with yours?

3. Bring your ideas to life.

5. Release the fear of being fired; you won’t likely fire yourself.

The fear of being fired can make anyone’s workplace uncomfortable. However, as an entrepreneur it is highly unlikely that you will fire yourself. There is a “random quality that exists in layoffs and terminations; working overtime and generating significant revenue for your organization will not necessarily guarantee that you escape the axe.” But layoffs can be a good thing. There are plenty of entrepreneurs who have celebrated being let go — in fact, getting fired led them to entrepreneurial success.

6. Finally be challenged — in a good way.

Entrepreneurship is challenging and rewarding. As a startup and successful small business you will overcome operational and common issues including competition, funding, planning, and the list goes on. But challenges breed solutions and equip you with the potential to innovate and disrupt industries.

7. Build something that will last a lifetime; create a legacy.

What will be your life’s legacy? According to SUCCESS magazine your legacy is, “something you create during your life solely to benefit future generations…” Business philosopher and author Jim Rohn suggests that, “Those who came before leave us the world we live in. Those who will come after will have only what we leave them. We are stewards of this world, and we have a calling in our lives to leave it better than how we found it, even if it seems like such a small part.”

8. Work from home, your own commercial office space or anywhere in the world.

Working from home has become increasingly common — even more so for startups, home-based business owners, freelancers and solopreneurs. While “4.2 million workers did their jobs from home at least one day a week in the last decade, according to Census Bureau reports, entrepreneurs enjoy this luxury on a regular basis. Whether we choose to work from a home office, a leased office or the beaches of the world — we work hard to conduct business anywhere and everywhere on our own terms.

9. Gain personal fulfillment by pursuing your passion.

Entrepreneurs aren’t stuck in a career that they aren’t passionate about. Sadly, that is not the case for many employees who report into a thankless job, day-in and day-out. Small business owners are driven by the pursuit of their passions in life. Economist Larry Smith, in a TED Talk, asserts why some will fail to have a great career. Don’t let that be you. What’s your excuse for not following your passion?

10. Impact the lives of many through social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurs identify a social problem and start a venture to solve it. The era of the social entrepreneur is here. The “role played by entrepreneurs in advancing positive social changes” is growing according to David Bornstein in a NY Times post. “I don’t mean businesspeople solving social ills, but people spreading new approaches — through nonprofits and businesses, or within government — to address problems more successfully than in the past.”

]]> http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2013/01/18/20-reasons-why-being-your-own-boss-entrepreneurship-is-awesome-2/feed/ 0 http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2012/12/24/top-20-startup-small-business-and-entrepreneurship-books-of-2012/ http://yfsentrepreneur.com/2012/12/24/top-20-startup-small-business-and-entrepreneurship-books-of-2012/#comments Mon, 24 Dec 2012 13:00:26 +0000 Erica Nicole http://yfsentrepreneur.com/?p=15333 What are successful entrepreneurs reading lately?

We are excited to reveal this years most talked-about and must-read business books for startups, small businesses and entrepreneurs. From strategic and tactical knowledge to classics and insights from today’s most renowned business thought-leaders we’ve curated a list of 20 books for your reading and business pleasure.

Here is our carefully curated line-up of 20 business books (in alphabetical order) that every small business owner can benefit from:

1. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Expanded and Updated), by Timothy Ferriss

Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.

2. Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling, by Michael Port

Learn why self-promotion is a critical factor to success, giving you a unique perspective that makes this guide much more than an ordinary “how to” manual for getting more clients and raising a business profile. Book Yourself Solid enables you to adopt the right promotional perspective and provides the strategies, techniques, and skills necessary to get more clients and increase profits.

3. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers, by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Co-created by 470 “Business Model Canvas” practitioners from 45 countries, the book features strategic ideas and tools, and makes them easy to implement in your organization. It explains the most common Business Model patterns, based on concepts from leading business thinkers, and helps you reinterpret them for your own context. Learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a game-changing business model–or analyze and renovate an old one.

Special Offer – Get Your First 3 Months at Audible for $7.49/month!

4.Content is Currency: Developing Powerful Content for Web and Mobile, by Jon Wuebben

In the digital age, content is spread across web and mobile, taking the form of podcasts, webinars, widgets, and blog posts. Learn the fine art of content development by utilizing the latest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) techniques, and the tools and strategies you need to get your online content noticed.

5. Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, by Guy Kawasaki

Enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques. Kawasaki argues that in business and personal interactions, your goal is not merely to get what you want but to bring about a voluntary, enduring, and delightful change in other people.

Now is the perfect time to reflect on the changes you want or need to make in your business. Whether your business is gasping for air or ready to improve its peak performance, employing practical achievement principles can catalyze your small business success.

To help you get started, YFS Magazine has curated a collection of best practices – in collaboration with leading entrepreneurs across multiple industries – to reveal our favorite proven success strategies.

In today’s dynamic global business environment, with increased access to knowledge (by way of the Internet), collaborative resources, lower barriers to startup entry, and crowdsourced capital every entrepreneur can effectively plan for small business success.

Here’s a sneak peek at five (of our 50) proven small business success tips to help you get started:

1. Manage your cash flow. According to Bill Clark, President and Founder of MicroVenture Marketplace, “Your bottom line is extremely important, and overspending could make the difference in whether or not you are able to grow and be profitable. Review your budget quarterly, at a minimum, and look for ways to cut your costs and operate more efficiently without cannibalizing the customer experience…”

2. Shut up and listen to your customers. “A Fortune 100-sized company, one of our larger clients, recently came to us for a solution that we thought already existed. When we discovered that it did not exist, we asked, “Why not just create it ourselves?” If a larger company is looking for a specific solution, imagine how many other companies might be as well,” said Kenny Nguyen, CEO and Founder of Big Fish Presentations.

[Download our Free Business Ebook]

It’s been said, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail (Harvey MacKay).”

Sponsored Post: This post is brought to you by Visa Business. Visit http://facebook.com/visasmallbiz to take a look at their reinvented Facebook Page: Well Sourced by Visa Business. The Page serves as a space where small business owners can access educational resources, read success stories from other business owners, engage with peers, and find tips to help businesses run more efficiently. Every month, Visa will introduce a new theme that will focus on a topic important to a small business owner’s success. For additional tips and advice, and information about Visa’s small business solutions, follow @VisaSmallBiz and visit http://visa.com/business.

Instead, I want to help you plan for success next year by sharing coveted success tips and fresh business insight to help you build a smart, sustainable and profitable company.

So I’ve curated a coast to coast line-up of industry leaders and we’re excited to reveal the top 15 ways – including 6 bonus tips – you can plan for success in 2013.

Erica Nicole, CEO and Founder of YFS Magazine (Tweet this!)

1. Get results with 30-day tactical plans.

Do you have new business ideas? Great! Let’s make your goals tangible realities. Prioritize and convert your strategies to tactics at an operational level. Create 30-day tactical plans designed to achieve the greatest immediate value. Evaluate each effort and ensure that your tasks fuel the overall value of your “big idea.” This simple planning step can turn lofty goals into achievable, impactful and accountable results.

2. Simplify and get back to basics.

As your small business grows it’s easy to be encumbered by complexities that were meant to improve operations, but actually made things harder. Regain business clarity by eliminating excess and focusing on your core – the heart and soul of your company; why you exist. It’s easy to get lost in perpetual habits that don’t truly add value. Instead, recommit your company to simplicity. Cultivate your business ‘green thumb.’ Prune what’s unfruitful to leave room for strong ideas and programs to flourish.

3. Tune up and prevent future problems.

Tune up your business for optimal performance. Take a look back at this year and commit to a thoughtful approach of assessing what you did well and what went wrong. Clearly identify lessons learned. Don’t be afraid to honestly evaluate shortcomings and wins. Consider it “regular maintenance.” The justification is simple: business “tune ups” can prevent major problems from occurring down the road.

Bill Clark, President and Founder of MicroVenture Marketplace, Inc. (Tweet this!)

4. Make your business fundable.

More often than not you must raise capital from outside investors to take your operation to the next level. Before you ask people to invest, make sure your business is fundable and sustainable. Investors are always looking for something that lines up with their risk and return profiles in the near and long term. Make sure your business is geared appropriately with respect to both.

5. Manage your cash flow.

Your bottom line is extremely important and overspending could make the difference in whether you are able to grow and be profitable or not. Review your budget quarterly, at a minimum, and look for ways to cut your costs and operate more efficiently without cannibalizing the customer experience.

For example, before launching a product, run a small-scale market test to determine the potential revenue and margin contribution. If the numbers make sense, move to the full-scale launch and track customer feedback. A significant number of small businesses fail because they don’t listen to their customers and adapt their business models. The result is a crippling cash crunch.

6. Find great advisors and mentors.

Every entrepreneur wears multiple hats and has limited time to think of everything. A solid network of advisors and mentors, which provides perspectives and advice, is of the utmost importance. Reach out to your network. Find out who has experience in areas where you are weak. You will be surprised to find out how many people are willing to help you out and may also want to invest in your business.

Many industries have fundamentally changed. For example, home entertainment distribution virtually imploded with on-demand, Redbox, and iTunes.

“The automotive industry no longer exists as an industry solely based on manufacturing,” said Pop-Up City editor Koen Knitel. “Of course, without factories there will be no cars, but this part of industry has left [us and] … The old manufacturing industry has made place for the automobile experience economy.”

“This consumer experience can be found in more and more types of industry, with experience stores popping up in inner cities to lure new customers,” said Knitel.

The far-reaching implications of economic changes are felt on the other side of the globe as well. To survive economic changes in industry, “A private shoemaking company in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, [adopts] new technologies to help its manufacturers maintain their competitive edge.”

Technology has increased their market leadership as “laser machines [help the company] improve its productivity… Before, it took a skilled worker an hour to make hollow patterns on a shoe’s leather upper wrap. But with the laser machine, everything is done in two seconds. ‘Few shoemakers worldwide have the technology. It boosts our efficiency exponentially,’” a company spokesman said.

A changing economic tide brings about one very important thing: opportunity.

Every organization needs to find its place in the rapidly evolving world order, and every business within its industry must maintain its standing in that order. Here’s how I believe forward-thinking executives can lead the way:

1. Commit to quality over quantity, both in company size and product development.

With hugely profitable websites being run by 1-2 people, thousands of employees don’t make you powerful. They make you expensive, necessitating an ambitious output schedule. Keep only those truly dedicated experts and ask them to be accountable and resourceful; put out only quality products which the group can confidently, passionately promote.

2. Become less organized.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but less organization when it comes to staffing is essential. Organizational charts and major divisions were designed for the railway system. Each individual should bring expertise to a team, and teams should be flexible enough to allow everyone involved in a project to discuss it from conception to development. Nothing new should be executed in assembly-line fashion.

Today, that has changed.

In order to stay competitive you must do something even more tasking – make it simple.

Simplicity, an industry buzz word adopted by tech leaders and main stream business, aims to strengthen your position in market. But, I’ve found that nothing worthwhile comes easy — not even simplicity.

The Art and Difficulty of Simplicity

By definition, simplicity is:

1. freedom from complexity, intricacy, or division into parts.
2. absence of pretentiousness or ornament
3. directness of expressions

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. It’s about making something easier to understand,” according to Steven Bradley of Vanseo Design.

“Simplicity is getting at the core of something and understanding what that thing truly is and then making every part consistent with the core. We know simple when we see it, when we touch it, when we use it. And one thing we quickly learn is simplicity is difficult to achieve.”

Small businesses know best, how simplicity can be particularly challenging. Not due to a lack of innovation or sheer will power, but more often than not, simplicity is tough to tackle when you aren’t really sure “what your core is.”

Because the truth is, most companies become something very different from where they began. An identity crisis that all share. For example,

1. Berkshire Hathaway, the multinational conglomerate holding company stewarded by Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, was originally established back in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company, a textile manufacturer.
2. In 1969, The Gap was founded in San Francisco as a record store that also happened to sell jeans.
3. “In 2004, Flickr started as a chat room with real-time photo sharing for the web-based multiplayer game, Game Neverending. Soon thereafter, they shelved Game Neverending, expanded the uploading and filing of photos, and buried the chat room.”