Business

Steve Hyman served as my Business Coach for three years while I was the CEO of Waveborn Sunglasses. Steve and I met monthly for 2.5 hours to discuss business and relationships. He taught me many tremendous lessons and shared so many pages from his book.

Steve passed away in 2017.

We talked about the importance of meeting a wide variety of people and learning about what they do, so you can "steal a page from their book and put it into your book." Steve’s book was full of stories from his 40+ years running sales teams and building companies.

I wish to share some pages of wisdom from Steve’s book. Hopefully his knowledge and experiences can guide you along your entrepreneurial journey, and you can pick a few ideas to put in your book.

You need to be working ON your business, not IN your business. This is key to your business's growth.

Systems beat genius.

The customer is an individual. Provide for her individual needs.

To increase market share, you must be relentlessly curious about the customer.

If you can divide by 2, then a divorce is easy.

Some businesses can be like a pony in a room with lots of shit - you need to figure out where the pony is!

SOA = 3 legged stool of any business = Sales, Operations, Admin

Your Vision = Idea + Concept + Content = What You're Selling

Sales Renewable Resource Library

5 Skills of Successful Entrepreneurs

1. Creativity and Ideation = how do you come up with ideas?

2. Market and Opportunity Research = how do you recognize opportunities that are worth doing?

3. Customer Interviews and Discovery = how do you get out of the building and talk to 30-100 potential customers?

4. Lean Hypothesis Testing = how do you validate hypothesis that someone wants what you are selling?

5. Pitch and Persuasion = how do you tell a compelling story about your product or service?

6. Grit = how do you get knocked down 7 times and jump up the 8th time with a smile on your face? (...practice...read Grit by Angela Duckworth)

10 Lessons in Startup Leadership from Reggie Aggarwal, Founder of Cvent

1. Asprin > Vitamins = locate pain point to solve

2. Not everyone should be an entrepreneur - 99% people grow by slowly building businesses as intrapreneur who cares about the company

3. Fall down 7 times. Get up 8 times with smile on your face.

4. Be persistent and consistent. Grind. Grit. Hire the best. Build the best customer service.

5. DNA of company is your people. Spend 50% of your time on people/hiring. A hires A. B hires C. C hires F. Don't hire B or C players.

6. Think deeply before giving away 50% or more of your equity. Make sure partners/team are vesting - 4 year equity schedule with 2 year cliff to get a mid to long term commitment from team.

7. Creativity is the #1 Leadership Trait. Disruptions are coming. Create a culture of innovation. Focus on execution.

8. Build plane (business) with multiple engines. In case one engine fails, you have additional power, income streams, and revenue.

9. Understand the Basic Laws of Business

10. Secret Sauce. Don't forget where you came from. Travel economy and share rooms. Always be frugal. Find gritty entrepreneurs and hire them. Ask candidates, "what have you done lately that was creative and/or disruptive?"

Value Proposition

FOR [customer type]

WHO [pain point to be solved]

WE OFFER [solution]

THAT [features]

WHICH MEANS [benefits]