Which is More Important - Entrepreneur's Character or Idea?

Whether you're the bank, an angel or venture capital investor which counts most, the entrepreneur's/business owner's character or their idea?  

View YouTube - What Counts Most - Character or Idea?

A big fallacy is people believing that if only they had one great idea the business takes care of itself.  Bill Gates developed someone else's idea into Microsoft DOS idea.  Steve Job leveraged Steve Wozniak's engineering prowess into Apple.  And if you look in the US Patent Office you'll find plenty of brilliant ideas that have gone nowhere without a person with the character to build success.  

Investors seek to understand the owner, their motives, beliefs, skills, values and identity.  They look into the owner's past performance and circumstances as to how they've overcome time, team, money and system challenges and still found success.  The investor is making money with money.  They want a commensurate risk/return "of" and "on" their capital.  They ascertain from the owner whether they will convert the investor's money into greater value.  

So before you seek an investor, work harder on yourself, your character than the idea - to be worthy of investment.  And if you're going to work harder, wouldn't you also want to work smarter?  

Just like any sports team with a coach they work smarter to achieve more faster than they would otherwise.  Is it any different in business?  

Do you believe that with an accomplished business coach would you get the know-how, insights to ask higher quality questions, improving your skills, impacting your beliefs and values about what’s possible which ultimately allows you to make higher quality decisions and take actions that move you to your goal of a commercial profitable business that works without you always being there?  And isn’t that why you started your business in the first place?  

Let's get started...give me a call today.  

ph:  972 709 6776  em:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

No Reason to Operate a Business in N Texas and Not Have Access to Business Coaching Tools for Growth

If you operate a business in N Texas there is no reason not to have access to the tools to grow your business.

At ActionCOACH - Business Coaching there are at least 5 major categories of products and services offered to business owners. View YouTube link.

1.  Our Flagship program is our one-to-one coaching  where we coaching week-over-week with the business owner toward the ultimate goal of a commercial profitable business that works without the business owner always being there.  This is our most intense program and it’s not for everyone.

2.  The next program is group coaching.  We gather 8 to 12 business owners to work bi-weekly together where the coach facilitates the knowledge to grow a business going through ActionCOACH’s 6 Steps - Mastery, Niche, Leverage, Team, Synergy and Results business level capabilities.  This is for owners not quite ready for the intensity of one-to-one coaching but often after these 3 months they find they know a lot more and graduate to the one-to-one coaching programs.  

3.  The third level consists of seminars and workshops on specific business growth topics from business vision and planning, marketing, sales, customer experience, systemization, team building to name a few of the topics.  These vary in length from a few hours, half day, day to two days.   These can be customized for your specific business or franchise group.

4.  Next are ActionCOACH’s digital products on the business growth topics similar to the seminar and workshops plus our ActionCOACH books.  With these products you can gain the know how and refer back to them for reference.  These are often included as part of the one-to-one and group programs.

5.  Finally, we offer special projects for business owners perhaps seeking expansion capital, hiring new talent, preparing for exit or transition, deciding whether they are ready for expansion via licensing, franchising or organic growth.

Based on the business owner’s needs, commitment to growth, resources and time availability, we select the right offer to move you forward.  Thus, no matter what level of budget and time availability, there is likely a program designed for you.

So let’s have the conversation to moves you and your business further faster than you thought possible.  Call me at ph:  972 709 6776  eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

The 3 Business Coaching Principles Leading to Higher Profits and Productivity

Thinking Bigger, Insisting on Win/Win and Being First to Inspire are three business coaching principles that lead you to higher profitability and productivity.  

View the YouTube Link

Business owners think back to a time when you were in high school or college when you had a teacher, mentor or coach that got you to perform higher than you thought possible.  They gave you know how, motivation and accountability to go further.  So as a business owner today, where do you get that kind of guidance when you need it the most?  0:04

Hi I’m Stephen Marino with ActionCOACH - Business Coaching.  When we work together in a coaching relationship our purpose is to achieve higher profits and productivity.  To do that, I use three major principles.  

1.  Thinking Bigger - Getting owners to think beyond the day-to-day toward a compelling vision so that when the going gets tough we keep going.  Giving owners confidence gained from proven time tested strategies that get you the result more predictably and less stressfully so you don’t have to go through the expensive and exhausting school of hard knocks.  Then giving owners the courage to act on what they know.  Closing the gap between knowing and doing.  And finally holding the owner accountable to doing the small things all along the way toward the bigger vision of tomorrow.

2.  Insisting on Win/Win/Win - We start with having your customers and clients win.  When they win you’ll attract lots of them and then you win.  When you win then I win.  It’s got to work in that order.  And I want you to win as fast as possible because you control my reputation.

3.  Being First to Inspire - I practice what I coach.  Based on successes and experience from the military leading troops, from corporate sized engineering and development projects to 15 years of business ownership and coaching, you benefit.  You don’t need to make my mistakes.  There are plenty more mistakes to be made.  You just don’t need to make mine.  If I only wish I knew then what I know now.  

If these principles sound like the type of environment where you can see yourself going further faster, then let’s talk.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

How Aligned are Your Employees to Your Growth Targets? And What You Can Do About It

Is your business on track?  Yes, toward the double digit growth targets that you’ve set for increasing customers, revenues and profits.  If you’re like most business owners with 3 to 30 employees it’s the daily time, team, money and system challenges that get in the way of predictable increasing profits and productivity.

View the YouTube link

Here’s a business tip that will test how well aligned your employees are to your growth targets:

1.  Ask each employee to describe how their specific job impacts customers, revenues and/or profits?  Now how does that description compare to their key performance indicators?

2.  How do their performance matchup to your expectations for the strategies employed?

3.  How big is the gap between where your are and where you want to be?  

4.  And finally, what gives you confidence the team and strategies you’ll employ will get you to your growth targets?

If you’re open to getting solutions that will overcome the time, team, money and system challenges and humble most business owners then let’s talk.

Call me today at ph:  972 709 6776 or eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

What's the Distinction Between Consulting vs. Coaching? And Why it Matters

I'm often asked what’s the distinction between consulting and coaching. Consulting is about problem solving and fixing.  Once a consultant fixes that particular problem they leave.  When the problem recurs you bring them back.  They keep the intellectual know how.  You’re dependent upon them.

 View the YouTube link

With coaching the emphasis is on you - the business owner and your business’ productive capacity to sustain the growth, keep the motivation and drive long after I’ve gone.

To use a sports analogy, the coach is on the sidelines.  They prepare the team to compete.  Similarly in business, business coach is at your side.  But, I'm not doing it for you.  I prepare you and your team to compete effectively on the business field for customers, revenues and profits.  

So ask yourself if the top teams in the World Series, the Super Bowl, the Olympics or Wimbledon every one of those teams have a coach.  Where do you as a business owner get that kind of guidance today?  You may be saying it's too expensive or takes too much time. My response is what's it costing you not be be working as profitably and productively as possible. What's the cost to your clients, team and family...the one who count on you the most. There are lots of coaching programs to fit into your budget and time availability. The important thing is to learn from coaches that have proven how to accelerate you growth.

That's my role.  I keep you focused on your vision to own a commercial profitable business that ultimately works without you always being there.  And isn’t that what you had in mind when you started your business initially?  To give you your time back and create financial wealth!  

So let’s get started.  Contact me now…

pH: 972 291 5566 eM: StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Is Microsoft's Future Really About Building Technology or Socialization?

The conversation about Microsoft remains about technology vs socialization.  Facebook, Google+ and Twitter growth is about socialization i.e. easily making connections and interactions with people - the ones we know, the many that are just interesting as well as those interested in common subjects.  

Microsoft announced that Satya Nadella was its next leader, betting on a longtime engineering executive to help the company keep better pace with changes in technology.  What can we learn from his insights on focus, customer's unmet desires and approach to learning and growth?

In an email to Microsoft employees on Tuesday morning, he wrote that he is “defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning.”

“I buy more books than I can finish,” he wrote. “I sign up for more online courses than I can complete.  I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things.”

He said, "The most important factor in Microsoft’s ability to remain a growing business in the future was its ability to become a player in what he called new paradigms in computing, like cloud computing.

“That is, you could say, the existential issue for us,” Mr. Nadella said.

“I think that with any new paradigm there will always be a couple of new players who come at it,” he continued. “But to me the thing that is perhaps more interesting and challenging, and gets me excited, is, hey, how can we renew ourselves?”

In his statement Tuesday, Mr. Nadella said: “The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly.”

The technology trends allows us to be digitized thus connected.  How will Nadella do that with Microsoft?

What to Forget During Wild Economic Times

As a business owner you’re already privileged to benefit from one of the most effective means to create wealth and serve clients there is. Yet the statistics show fewer than 10% achieve our goals and lifestyle sought after when we went into business originally.  Not because we won’t work hard or take risks, instead it’s about what we believe or “I Knows." The way we think about business limits our actions and sabotages our dreams.
 
Are we taking credit for more than what our own initiatives merit? More responsible than we actually are for the success of projects? Do we begin to believe that our value is much higher than reality actually shows. Yes, our knowhow brought success yet what you believe brought you success may or may not be true. 

"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so." 

 Will Rogers 

Whenever we experience success in the workplace, we usually get a very positive feeling out of it, and this generally results in a net positive for us. Our self-esteem goes up and we have more confidence in our abilities. However, this only goes so far: often, when we have a string of successes, we begin to adopt a handful of beliefs that aren’t necessarily true. 

This is a human failing, one that anyone with some measure of success can fall prey to. I’ve fallen prey to it myself - more than once, I’ve managed to make myself believe that I was somehow superior simply because I performed my individual role well. This is a dangerous thing to ever believe, even if it happens to be true. It alters your own behavior in a lot of ways and sets you up for failure, not for success.

What to Forget During Wild Economic Times…

At a recent global conference of top business coaches where practical business building tips for wild economic times were being documented – counter intuitive findings arose. The business owners doing well and who succeed further knew what to forget, ignore and stop doing. Essential business is learning to forget. These owners challenged beliefs about what brought them success during good times, carried forth what’s true and applicable and disregarded old believes or “I Knows” to be even more profitable and productive during today’s uncertainty. Picture your “I know” cup filled to the brim without capacity for more know how. Unless you release or forget the “I know” contents there won’t be room for business truths to be revealed. 

Yet forgetting is darn near impossible because there is such a vested interest intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically into “I know”. After all it got you this far. Forgetting means change and has implications affecting how others view who you are and how you view yourself. In essence your very identity and ego are at stake.

The Trouble With Success

During good times the tendency to believe we're responsible for far more of the credit than we deserve.  Where to know what to do and stop doing?

You realize rationally it makes sense then to forget. It is difficult and until I learned to forget these key “I know” beliefs about business building I was limited on the amount of success I could attract. I absolutely needed to forget these powerfully limiting beliefs in order to attract future success. 

1. Forget about being the best business “doer”, the perfectionist and believing “no one” can do it as well as me 

2. Forget about re-enrolling in the “school of hard knocks” where by the time I discover success it is going to be too late and 

3. Forget about just knowing “how to” when it is about getting it done that matters.

Forget About Being the Best Business “Doer”

Often business ownership leaves us vulnerable to an “I know” attitude. Your strong need to express entrepreneurial creativity and independent autonomy are the very reasons why you are providing the product or service.  We are passionate about what you are doing.  And this is where we get entrapped - doing vs. being the business owner. This is an expensive lesson.  No matter how strong your entrepreneurial traits and “I know” beliefs are they cannot defy the laws of business success. Until I forgot my “I knows” I was doomed to limited success. 

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Commerce still show approximately one million business failures a year. Why would you go into business to work hard, defy long odds of success, and assume a large amount of debt to earn less and sacrifice more to receive only a meager return on your life’s energy?  The answer is you would not.  Yet if you are like most business owners with the key relationships to vendors and customers while simultaneously performing most of the key operations you are likely to end up in the situation described.  Certainly, we went into business to achieve loftier goals and not to drain our energy for the title of “employer and employee”.  We have an expensive job today, not a business.  We are the chief business “doer” and not a business owner. 

Before I became the business owner of a business coaching firm in Texas, I was an entrepreneur with several start-ups companies while I concurrently reviewed over 838 companies over a several year period with the intent to acquire a company I was passionate about. During that extensive research I met tens-and-tens of business owners at that pinnacle point in their business ownership career.  I recognized that very few sellers were going to see any significant financial reward for their efforts.  Why? Because these business owners were the chief business “doers”.  The value of a business is the sustainable discretionary cash flows under the new ownership.  And without the original owner, the cash flows were appreciably less under new ownership.  These business owners forgot that to get full economic value the business-of-business is to be profitable regardless who owns it. 

There are hundreds of thousands of businesses between 3 to 75 employees in the USA that perform below their capabilities. Often the business owner lacks the people and systems to emphasize how to play the game of business better.  Our ability to play up to our potential is not only about technical ability.  It is our ability to attract, select and retain a team dedicated and aligned with your vision who can service clients with your distinct products and services in order to win.  I recognized this in my own businesses that my strengths at doing were my strongest shortcomings at being a more effective leader – business owner.  As an entrepreneur and business coach I can now look more objectively at another entrepreneur’s business. I see the opportunities and shortcomings of these businesses from an outsider’s perspective to recognize when the owner is being the chief “doer”. 

Sports teams and athletes have long recognized the benefit of a coach whether they are winning or not. Why would the coaching benefits to business owners be any different? Business coaches identify what you need to forget and place you on a predictable success path. They help us get more business, learn how to run our business and become a better business owner by sharing the time tested and proven methodologies of the success with us.

Isn’t this definition more like what we had in mind when we started our business?  A commercial, profitable enterprise that operates without the business owner always being there.  This definition provides us the business ownership freedom you were seeking.  Even if we are committed to working the hours then earn more for our labor.  Working hard ourselves does not get us further ahead long term as we saw then it came time to sell the company.  We are still trading our time for money.  There is a limited amount of time available to us.  We need to forget about doing it all and harnessing our team and systems.

• Key Thing to Forget – Don’t be the chief business “doer”. 
• Key Thing to Learn – Be the best business owner – leader. 

Forget About Re-Enrolling in the “School of Hard Knocks”

Prior to business coaching, I enrolled and re-enrolled into the “school of hard knocks” or self-discovery and invested at least $30m to $50m per year tuition for several years for this difficult doctorate. From my academic, corporate and family backgrounds, I believed that originality, complexity and difficulty was better, more true, more important, and made the most difference in success.  Furthermore, my mindset was of economic scarcity.  The world was a zero sum game.  In order for you to win I had to lose and vise versa.  I did not trust the concepts of simplicity and abundance.   Although, this thought kept recurring.  If economic scarcity was “real” then the world would be exactly as it was thousands of years ago. Today we have more of life’s riches than ever before.   I was looking for the hard way – no the hardest way - my way to success.  After several years of seeking I found the better knowledge.  I had exhausted my ways and discovered that easy was better than hard. What was it in your belief that makes discovery of success difficult? 

The knowledge was out there.  Why was I not receptive to tap into it?  I did not believe in the altruism of people willing to publish their success and share it in such explicit detail.  Yet when I finally decided to seek I discovered that there were numerous laws of success as true as the laws of nature and philosophy.  The law of correspondence - cause and effect was most significant because if do the same things others have done I should get similar results. I was delighted to have discovered these laws and eagerly wanted to begin applying them in my businesses.  These laws generate the same result each time regardless of who applies them and they don’t wear out. I don’t fight these laws any longer. I work with them. I’m still learning what to and how to apply them - when, how much and/or how fast. I willingly forgot my old beliefs, ate “crow” and choose to enroll as a student of success vs. re-enrolling in the “school of hard knocks”.  Do you believe you can learn these laws of success from what others have done and can you do as well by applying them?

Business coaching brings you this business literacy while accelerating your learning effectiveness. 

• Key Thing to Forget:  Don’t continue to re-enroll in the school of hard knocks 
• Key Thing to Learn:  Be a student of success

Forget About Just Knowing “How To” When It Is About Getting It Done That Matters

I’ve spoken to hundreds of business owners that state that even when they finally know what to do and want the reward they are not willing to pay the price in dollars or personal energy.   Instead they want things to be easier.  They tend to forget the hidden price they pay by remaining where they are in the perception of security and comfort that comes in the form of loss of personal freedom.   By failing to invest in their team, they spend more hours working, earn less and generally receive less of life’s rewards.  What is this worth to you to get your time back, work with a higher quality team and make more money? Priceless. 

Business coaches specialize in holding you accountable to your dreams. 

• Key Thing to Forget:  Knowing without acting is not enough
• Key Thing to Learn:  Hold yourself accountable with a business coach

If you're having this discussion about what you believe that ain't so, then give me a call.  This is what ActionCOACH - Business Coaching do!  Challenge your beliefs and give you insights as to what works.  Thinking Bigger, Insisting on Win/Win, Being First to Inspire!

eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com ph: 972 709 6776