Of all the struggles we have in our lives and our careers, one of the biggest is settling on a role that marries what we do best with what the company we work for values most out of us. 

Given the financial pressures, inequities in compensation and pride/ego we associate with our own performance and positions, nearly all of us at some point choose to try to ‘climb the ladder’.  That is, get as big a role as you can with the most prestige, money, authority and yes, compensation and then try to milk it for as long as you can. 

What do you do though when you get there and hate it? 

The statistics of the number of people who are unhappy with their jobs is staggering. Surprisingly, this carries forward into the CEO and SMB owner’s office.  Far too often, we find completely miserable people in these roles doing a frankly lousy job.  Most just keep doing what they are doing day in and day out and hope for a break.  Some share the pain by passing it down liberally to everyone they meet who touches their company.  Should we really be all that surprised that 9 out of 10 SMB’s fail with this as their leadership perspective. 

A select few have begun asking us the question … am I the right guy (or girl) for this job? 

This is obviously a very ‘situational’ and ‘sensitive’ issue where no one answer or set of criterion is a precise predictor of the right outcome.  But, we have learned in our practice that there are some pretty common characteristics of people who can handle the leadership role … and those who can’t.  Fundamentally, it relates to how they work:    

You are the right guy (or girl) if: 

1. You love the business you are in. 
2. You constantly look for ways to improve what you do for customers. 
3. You are open, collaborative and transparent in your management style. 
4. You like and are a good judge of people.  . 
5. You enjoy and work through systems to operate.   
6. You are not afraid to make decisions. 
7. You have no stress about your role. 

You are the wrong guy (or girl) if:

1. You spend your time dreaming or researching new areas. 
2. You hate change. 
3. You don’t like people to challenge you. 
4. You trust your own instincts above all else. 
5. You’d rather not be held accountable for anything. 
6. You prefer the safest path forward. 
7. You are more concerned about your lifestyle than the business. 

These are the defining moments for leaders of business.  The days of making the easy buck are gone … forever.  I had a leader in my office who remarked about one of our companies this week that “don’t tell me how well you did in 2005 when any idiot with a shingle out could make money … tell me how you did in the last twelve months when only the strong survived.” 

Summary

Today more than ever, leadership is at a premium.  One of my greatest learning’s in my career was a realization that you never really know people until you see them under pressure.  Today’s environment for business is the ultimate pressure cooker.  Being honest in your assessment about how well you fit, how well you can serve and who you really want to be when you grow up is an authenticity foundation that will actually enhance your career.  The first step though might be to get off the crazy carousel.   If it doesn’t come natural to you, leave it. 

I’ve been doing lots of consulting work lately with companies on the brink.  Businesses that had established enough value to get off the ground but never really hit it big.  They ask a simple question of us … ‘how can we make as much money in this market as some of the people you write about in your books did?’  We usually tell them some version of the following. 

At some point, in some way, you have to center yourself and your business around something that is uniquely yours.  Something only you can own.  Something you do so extraordinarily well that people enjoy paying you money to see you do it.  Something you might even become known someday as being the ‘best in the world at’.  

About 10 years ago, I participated in a branding session led by Al Ries, author of Positioning and dozens of other best-selling marketing books.  I remember the room breaking out in an argument over the defining vision for the business with two distinct camps:  

1. We know what it is we do and we need to stick to it. 
2. We agree but it’s not significant enough.  We need to strive for something bigger. 

These are the defining moments for leaders.  I remember Al letting this go on for quite some time and then when the room grew quiet saying simply … “it doesn’t matter whether it’s significant yet.  If it’s yours, you can make it so.  If it’s not, you’ll never succeed at it anyway.” 

Wow.  What simple, practical advice for us to follow.  At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it better than anyone else in your world. 

1. When Chase Danielson started ZipCar, the rental car market hadn’t seen anything new in 50 years … the idea for a subscription service for city dwellers seemed nutty.  
2. When Tom Watson started IBM, the market for computers was estimated to be four! 
3. When Sergey Brin and Larry Page started their little search business, they were told there was no more room for yet another search engine.  They would have to sell to portals. 
4. Even the great Steve Jobs encountered skepticism when Apple entered the phone market pretty late with the iPhone.  Didn’t everyone already own a Blackberry? 
5. When Starbuck’s started, Folgers had dominated the coffee market for two decades. 
6. Does it surprise you that an online environment for sharing student information invented by a college freshman could turn into the hub of the social media world? 

Hindsight is 20/20 but the point really is that starting out, none of these investments looked very smart or safe.  What these successful entrepreneurs learned has been repeated time and again in every market in every decade.  It’s not the size of the market that mattered, it’s the quality of the deliverable. 

When we did our research for the ‘Tuned In’ book, I found it fascinating to listen to people tell their success stories.  It amazed me that they almost all had a largely similar tale to tell.  It went something like this: 

Q.  How did you create such a breakout success? 

A.  I don’t know really.  We didn’t set out to. We just saw this problem that people were having doing ….  and we thought we could help so we started to build a company that solved that problem better than it had ever been solved before.  One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, we woke up one day and had 1000 employees.  I never, ever thought it would get this big.  

Summary

Creating success in any market environment requires a focus on that ‘one thing’ that defines you.  The really sad stories to us are from the leaders and businesses who abandoned a purpose too soon. The sweet spot may not start out being big but with your focus, you can make it large enough to support your business.  And, maybe, just maybe, find a cause that grows on its own with you at the forefront. 

Three years ago, I wrote an e-book with my colleagues at Pragmatic Marketing called The Secrets of Tuned In Leaders.  It outlined the seven positive character traits of leaders of winning businesses.  Secret number 3 was ‘Simple is Smart’.  Here’s a quick excerpt.

Most products and communications are hard to understand, hard to use and worst of all, completely out of context with the total customer experience. The best companies create solutions that are narrow and deep. They organize around a single market problem and solve it completely with a solution that to the buyer seems simple, obvious and most importantly handles all the related tasks in one easy step. Often, this means specializing in a single vertical market or industry. Customer communications programs are not one size fits all either. Instead, tailor to the context of each market or industry you serve.

Times were good back then and while this premise was embraced, I’m not sure most folks got the point.  Today though, there is no way to avoid it.  This is no longer an interesting premise or a nice to have philosophy, it is essential to business success.

Only the simple will survive!

When I look around at the types of things we offer to customers in the market today, I shake my head at how many of them completely miss the mark and wonder … ‘how did they come up with that?’  Consider some recent examples:

Are you kidding me?

• US Airways just increased their per bag fee and add a requirement for registering online for their service.  I guess the overwhelmingly positive response to their initial program gave them the courage to make it even more onerous.
• The Obama administration is pushing for the quick adoption of a trillion dollar health care reform package that has five different versions each thousands of pages long and creates a complete overhaul of the system.  And they are surprised by the public backlash and think it’s all a big Republican conspiracy?
• With the newest release of the Blackberry Tour, I now count 22 versions of the product for largely the same buyer target.  Many people have said the handwriting is on the wall for RIMM with the iPhone but are they helping their cause by thrashing with too many new versions?

Alternatively, some companies and programs know how to get it right:

Hey, I think I’ll take some of that!

• Southwest Airlines is the antithesis of all the other major airlines. Low prices, flexible services and NO nickel and dime costs like paying for bags.  Is it any wonder they’ve gone from a small regional Texas airline to the most profitable, successful of all airlines?
• Cash for Clunkers was a government program people understood.  I buy a new car, get rid of my old one and you incent me to do it with a government rebate.  Don’t know why the government was surprised that it worked … maybe because they aren’t used to simple?
• Microsoft’s Bing is advertising a simple value to doing business with them. Use their serach and you get ‘cash back’.  When you are trying to break a juggernaut like Google, the simpler the attack, the better.

Why is it so easy for some to get it while others over-think?  All of this has got me to thinking … are we complicating our lives and trying to do too much at exactly the wrong time?

Why Simple Works

Simple has always been smart.

Too many of us fail to embrace a fundamental principle … nobody cares about your business like you do.  The amount of time buyers spend on considering you once they become aware of your value maybe being of interest to them is measured in seconds, not minutes, hours, days or months. As a result, the idea of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) wins market share every time.

It also wins higher marks in customer satisfaction.

The real hidden benefit in being simple is that you actually increase the quality and value of your solution in the process.  Because the focus is so narrow, the provider ends up putting all of their energy and service dollars into making this not only easy to understand but easy to buy.  You deal with well informed employees who are there to help vs. a stressed out crew not knowing what’s going to hit them next.

Summary

Are you making this harder than it has to be?  If you want to find your sweet spot in any market, simple is smart.  Time and time again, the company that has taken the time to be laser focused in what they do and how they build value for their customers has won the market.  With the amount of noise and risk associated with today’s market, it’s even smarter to be simple.

But, for some reason, it wasn’t until the last couple of months that my demand matured enough to act.

Now I have it and I love it. I’ve downloaded a set of favorites, a few new ones I’ve been meaning to go purchase and I’m set for my frequent travels. Just got back from a trip and have to report that I’m a happy camper. I got the big form factor and was excited with how easy it was to embrace … it really did feel just like reading a book. Best of all though, it fit easily into my travel portfolio and lightened my load.

This thing is in the sweet. What took it so long to be embraced?

I’m reminded of the law of Release 3 with new innovations and amazed at how subtly I’ve been a part of this. Microsoft is famous for this but in truth it really does seem that most new products take some time to be relevant. All of this got me to thinking about whether or not this is typical when I ran across one of my favorite books from the past and realized that it’s universal.

The book: About Three Bricks Shy of the Load by Myron Cope. It’s a story about the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers that tracks them through their breakout season. Turns out it was two years before they went on to win the first of four Super Bowls. The point that jumped out at me was the central premise of the book. The team it turns out was young and talented but lost in the first round of the playoffs and did in fact have ‘three’ bricks to its foundation missing … commitment, balance and confidence.

It strikes me that businesses and products have the same issues.

First Brick: Are you committed to solving this problem?

New products come and go and most offer some interesting capabilities when they are first launched. Only a select few go ‘narrow and deep’ and really take on all aspects of solving a market problem. Often this means much more than a simple product innovation itself, it involves lots of service areas around it.

The iPod for example connected not only because of the elegance of the device, it connected because Apple solved both the relationship problem (with the music industry to authorize distribution) and the download problem (through iTunes ability to provide an easy to access central repository). It seems to me that the Kindle is now at the same place … connecting publishers and an easy download service to the device. Amazon is telling me they’re committed by addressing the full scope of the issue.

Second Brick: Does the solution balance simple with powerful?

The two hallmarks of hitting the sweet spot are solutions that balance ease of use with capabilities that are rich and powerful. A well designed product or service invariably has both characteristics. It appeals to the masses who find the learning curve is small and to the sophisticated who like doing something that’s never been done before better.

The Kindle strikes this balance extraordinarily well. The form factor really does give me the same feel as reading a book with simple page up and down capabilities. The menu structure provides one click access to range of services. But the ability to take notes, bookmark and transmit turns it into a platform. Good for both markets.

Third Brick: Can I be confident that there a network of support around it?

Regardless of how good (or cool) a new offering is, never underestimate the power of the status quo. Buyers tend not to make decisions that require ANY changes in behavior until it is obvious that doing so safe. Geoff Moore did a great job of characterizing this behavior in Crossing the Chasm. More than 80% of buyers just prefer to ‘wait’ until all the kinks are out.

Release 3 of the Kindle has that broad support base. I counted more than 250,000 books, newspapers and even blogs now available for download (and even continuous updates). There’s a good history now of successful support and usage. And new authors are even designing ahead of time now to optimize delivery.

Summary

I don’t suppose any of this is breakthrough thinking but for those of you out there like me who lack the quality of ‘patience’, a good reminder is always a good thing. Don’t set your expectations high when launching a new offering … the market will repel you until you’ve achieved the level of maturity needed for success.

And for those of you engineering your new offering to hit the ‘sweet spot’, take stock of the three bricks. You may not be able to get them all on day one but if you design for them appropriately and upgrade efficiently, your breakthrough may only be a couple of release levels away.

When time is essential, let’s have authentic leaders lead with trust.

In companies, in politics, in personal relationships, people are desirous for authentic leadership. Never before have we had so much information but so few with the qualities to interpret and use information in a meaningful way. If ever we’ve needed authentic leaders, it is now.

Thriving in the new era of Transparency

Authentic leaders are those who are motivated purely and can discover reality. They are sound in their knowledge and understanding about their business and lives. This soundness serves to provide a foundation for which they can operate. Leveraging this foundation, they use well founded abilities to oversee their businesses or lives based upon transparent information.

Authentic leaders are those who can dialogue. They engage and ask people to participate. They know they don’t know everything but they trust their ability to understand reality and learn. They trust their motive. They use dialogue to build trust and relationships. They use dialogue to discover reality about their business and those things which impact it. They use dialogue to create high quality meaningful experiences. The relationships they build produce commonality about how to weather good times and bad. They keenly understand the difference between hype and accurate meaning (they are hesitant to buy into their own hype). They understand they are in the same boat with their employees and families.

Making Better Decisions

Authentic leaders are those who can make high quality decisions. They have honed skills to listen, gather information, and interpret while validating using multiple sources of feedback. They have contextual awareness and understand the importance of the timing of decisions. Discernment is core and habitual. They can balance the tension between multiple forces and motives.

Authentic leaders are, well, authentic. No pretense here. Their motive is consistent and explicit. They hold themselves to a level of accountability they expect from others. They expect those they serve to hold them accountable. They will cut of themselves instead of protecting their own lives (they are sound in business and their personal lives – notice I’m not saying conservative). They know what they should know and they seek to understand that which they don’t know. They are confident they will listen. They are confident they will learn. They will serve.

Winning in a Down Economy

In today’s economic condition, basic economic principals reign – working capital and cash flow are king. The authentic leader will work diligently with his resources to understand the clear financial and business position of the business. They will work hard understand true risk.

Hoarding capital and being maniacal about cash flow and margins are essential. Unfortunately, too many companies do not have a business engine that can produce the required working capital and cash flow. Hence their great need to depend on debt. The authentic leader will understand if their business is on the side of the fence that can hoard capital and maximize profit or if they are on the other side of the fence where they must create less than desirable solutions to survive in this environment.

If the leader finds himself on the side with less desirable options, hopefully the leader will work to create authentic solutions (including the possibility of changing his or hers own lifestyle to cut burden on the company). Hopefully they will work to harness the power of people as a team to hunker down to save the company and employees’ jobs. If they find they cannot save the company, hopefully the leader will communicate reality well with all people involved so that these people will not be blindsided and unprepared.

I remember when Lehman Brother’s CEO, Richard Fuld was called in front of Congress and asked if he saw the failure of Lehman coming. His response is that of a gambler, someone with an addiction and in denial. He says that he had hope to the very end. And he will always wonder until his grave why Lehman wasn’t bailed out. We can’t afford leaders like this. We need authenticity.

Don’t hide from measurements

In addition to understanding the fundamentals of the business, leaders need to understand essential leading indicator levers which provide insight to some significant wave. Just like a tsunami, water is first drawn out to sea, we must understand these levers so we can take action quickly. These levers may be measuring AR turnover to see if key customers are not paying any longer or if they are just paying late. The leader must understand the only way to discover the deep meaning of this aspect of a business is through great relationships with people – employees, vendors, customers along with great information.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend who works for a large commercial developer. The conversation surrounded a new investment the firm created focused on short term returns. The company is having difficulty selling this investment because people can often discern inauthentic products. This product was communicated with hype. Customers are looking for authenticity. Under the covers of this company, the product was created to develop liquidity because lending has dried up. They don’t have needed working capital or cash flow to manage their current projects. Most importantly, leadership has not communicated this to staff. Instead they created pressure to sell a meaningless product which will hurt long term relationships and the core business. Additionally, they have stopped paying bonuses without any information to staff from leadership. In lieu of information, people speculate and people create their own story.

Authentic leaders provide authentic stories which stand the test of time. By the way, one of the core owners of this firm was overheard sharing that he is ok losing his home in the Hamptons, or his ski home but the one thing he cannot let go of is the private jet. The motive is pretty clear.

After understanding reality and core levers to oversee the business, the authentic leader will have a foundation in place to create multi faceted plans. These plans will differ based upon the reality of a business. For a healthy known company flush with capital with healthy margined cash flow, they can have multiple plans from protectionist to opportunistic. For the company with less desirable options, fewer authentic solutions exist. These options may be related to speaking with the employee base, core vendors and finance partners to create mechanisms to salvage the company.

Hope is not a Strategy

Hope is never a foundation for an authentic leader. I find it hard to comprehend how the NBA can cut 9% (or about 80 people) of its corporate workforce citing the current economic pressures. Granted, it is possible the NBA was bloated with people but 9% is hard to fathom. I’m estimating here, but 80 people at $50k per year is $4,000,000 per year. The mid level exception for one basketball player is $4.5 million. I sure wish we’d see more authentic leadership choosing to cut their own lifestyles instead of cutting employees only source of lifestyle (note: I’m not a believer of big government redistribution of wealth and I want people to have the right to choose but I’d sure like to see more people choosing social responsibility versus self serving entitlement).

Lastly, the authentic business leader will drive their company to provide higher quality experiences with their employees, their vendors and their customers. Often, quality doesn’t actually cost any more to produce. Have you ever eaten at a Chick-fil-a? Have you ever noticed what every employee says when you say ‘thank you’ or complete your order? They simply say ‘my pleasure’. They say this regardless if the store is next door to the owner or 3000 miles away. Do you believe it cost them anymore to require this of their people? I doubt it. However, I’ve seen the faces of people who enjoy being served and hearing the words – my pleasure – after they’ve been serving others all day. The overall experience increased but the cost of providing the increased quality was insignificant. Authentic leaders will drive increases in quality experience knowing this will increase the opportunity for the company to weather any storm.

Summary

In short, this is what I’m doing. Hoarding capital, maximizing margined cash flow. I’m making sure our people understand our core operational values. We’re providing focus to increase quality across the entire business. I spend quite a bit of time dialoguing one on one and in groups being diligent to provide consistent authentic messages. I’ve focused on lowering the number of vendors (within balance and risk tolerances) we use to build higher quality vendor relationships we can leverage in any negative case. I’m focused on building great relationships with our people, our customers and vendors in preparation for any hard conversation we may need to have. I have regular conversations with executive staff to better articulate and understand essential leading indicator levers – particularly those which indicate negative outcomes.

Lastly, I’ve communicated with staff that in the case of extreme negative conditions, I’m the first person to have my pay lowered or eliminated. No one else will be asked to take lower pay or be cut until my pay is lowered or eliminated.

Welcome to the next generation of business!

Most small businesses can relate. For so long, business leaders and entrepreneurs have relied on their ability to work through problems, to see and create solutions with results where many have failed. This ability is essential to any successful venture and is often the root for why someone would take a leap into leading, running, building, managing, risking, starting a small business.

Has it been too easy?

Unfortunately, for the past 25 years, the solutions for business problems have not needed to be highly precise or accurate. Often, just making a decision created a modicum of success.

The reason solutions could be successful without precision is due to economic wealth being so great that solutions rarely created a negative economic outcome. The economy was so good that it was hard to make such bad decisions that a company would fail. Success seemed fairly ‘easy’ compared to today.

This perceived success has created one of the greatest issues facing business leaders. Whether a leader is leading a small or large company, the issues of the past 18 months have caused each to question their ability to make great decisions, to create great solutions where success does significantly influence the viability of the company – business life or death decisions and solutions.

Can the experts help?

So, the business leader looks to ‘experts’. They look to bankers, economists, the media (unfortunately), accountants, business consultants, operational experts (six-sigma types), lawyers, government, organizational designers, private equity, venture capital, business brokers, etc. Each of these has an interesting perspective, and possibly a facet of a solution. But interestingly, each of these have lost their way as well. None of them have a full understanding of the systemic nature of a business.

They are scrambling to understand ‘what’s next’.

The singularity of their solutions do not work in and of themselves. Since no one idea or person has ‘the formula’ or ‘the answer’, people start to feel lonely, unhealthy and they feel like the outline at the beginning of this post. They start or continue bad behaviors or habits like not reviewing financials, isolating themselves (hunkering down), become passive, become too aggressive; they will do anything they can do to prevent dealing with the real issues.

People are looking for hope. What people need is a new path and a new goal. The goals of the past no longer work. The way decisions were made no longer provide solutions that truly help.

We need to reset our perspective. We need a new direction.

Build a better foundation

Before I describe the First Step and the Real Goal, let’s outline a few of essential required attributes. These attributes are: humbleness, listening and authenticity.

Due to the success of the past, many business leaders have a sizable ego. They believe they are in control, they believe they know, they believe they should be able to figure this out. Stop trying. You can’t. The sooner you realize that, the better. Be humble and open yourself up to ask for help. Be open to the second attribute – listening. Go ask questions and truly listen. Don’t steer, don’t interpret to justify you. Don’t go looking for evidence to support your verdict.

Your motive in asking is to get great information, information not skewed by you (hopefully data driven where possible). If you have too much difficulty doing this or if the people in your business system cannot trust the change in you to open up authentically, then solicit help to show this attribute.

Lastly, embrace authenticity. Be consistent, listen to what people mean not what they say. Ask ‘Why’. Ask’ How’. Say ‘that’s interesting – share more’. Give people freedom to share authentically with you by being authentic with them. Truly hear them, repeat what you hear them saying and don’t, by all means, judge or assign value or show emotion to what you hear.

Just be real. And make sure you tell them ‘why’ you’re asking.

The start is getting real

Let’s get to some more meat. The First Step is – discover and embrace reality. Sounds simple but it seems to be the most difficult step for any business owner/leader to take. It requires the attributes above. It requires them to realize they can’t do it. It requires them to hear stuff (bad and good) about their leadership, outcomes about their decisions, and a potential reality that the company is failing.

This is much like a check-up. Imagine if you walked around all your life without going to a physician. At some point, something is going to happen where you will encounter catastrophic outcomes you can’t control unless you discover reality (go to the doctor) and embrace reality (label your real condition). Doing this activity will either:

• provide you with great support that your business and leadership is great, or,
• identify where your business and leadership has shortcomings.

The shortcomings may look like lack of sales, lack of funding, lack of good people, lack of customers who understand, lack of bankers who understand, a lack of funders who will not provide money because they don’t understand, lack of completed products or projects, lack of something. Many of these you may be aware of but often, the business leader’s view is significantly skewed and he or she is not aware.

Go and discover reality. Once discovered, embrace it before creating solutions.

The real goal is to be healthy

Keep your eye on an authentic goal – The Real Goal is to be healthy. Too often the goal of the business leader or owner is to be in control, provide and keep the current lifestyle, keep the same status as when times were good. Get past this quickly.

This is about business 101. Provide needed goods and services at a good price with a good experience. Make sure you are viable (positive monthly cash flow) and have a good balance sheet for your company. Don’t rely on the bank or investors for working capital until you are very healthy. Validate the relevance of the goods and services you supply, validate this with your vendors, your customers, your employees. Be humble, listen and be authentic. Define healthy for your business and focus.

Your ability to discover reality, embrace reality and set a goal to be healthy will give you the most important foundation for you now – it will give you a framework for a plan to get healthy. And it will be a plan steeped in reality, a plan you helped create with the people around you, a meaningful plan owned by you and your organization. It will be a well founded plan with options.

It will be a plan that will give you hope!

–Ken

Exciting advances are springing up all around us. Alternative technologies in solar, wind and nuclear enable new sources for energy. Green algae provides a reusable source. Innovations for clean air and water abound. Electronically powered automobiles are being moved into bigger production lines. And companies by the hundreds are starting up to serve niches in all of these markets. Investment capital is flowing and big bets are being made. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered a big problem in talking to people in the space.

Irrational exuberance is back!

Over the past six months, as we’ve looked at dozens of green businesses, they all have some unique aspects to them but also share one common trait … a maniacal zeal for the innovation and a dismissive nature for the business. Here’s what we hear.

Green is a movement … profits will come.

Big mistake. Too many of these bets are being made however on things that have very little relevance to the buyers they hope to secure. I’m afraid to say it, but I’ve seen this act before. For those of us who lived through the .com era in technology, the lessons were hard to learn. Turned out it really wasn’t about ‘disruptive innovation’ or ‘creating new business models’, it ultimately came down to turning eyeballs into profits. Those that could survived, those that couldn’t had interesting stories about how the world had wronged them in their youth.

Fundamentals to Green Value

Every new innovation has an adoption curve that company leaders really need to acknowledge and plan around. At the end of the day, a buyers criterion are simple … is you’re innovation an easier, faster, cheaper solution to the problem I have than the one I’m using today and will adopting it come with little to no switching cost. Yes means you get to pass go. No means some time in the penalty box.

When we look at businesses in exciting new areas, we look at five things:

• Does the owner/leadership team share an authentic purpose?
• Is there a long-term relevant solution upgrade that increases value?
• Will the business model be simple and flexible enough for buyers to embrace?
• Can the innovation be produced, marketed, sold and services at healthy margins?
• Is this a business venture or a science project?

History is a simple teacher on this front. Entrepreneurs who are building value for the customers and creating a business around it find their sweet spot faster than those who believe a great market will carry their innovation.

Don’t allow your business to fall into the irrational exuberance zone. It’s a slippery slope from there to survival to ‘out of business’.