A Sample from SSE - Introduction, Getting Ready
I’m truly grateful to the mentors and colleagues who helped me during my career. Their hard work, advice, support and constructive challenges all contributed to my entrepreneurial experience. Others challenged me - forcing me to test my logic and beliefs. I dedicate this book to these friends and to the next generation of entrepreneurs. You are the enablers of our great economy. We’re counting on you.
StreetSmart Entrepreneuring (SSE) is not based on deep research; it’s simply a collection of insights and beliefs based on forty plus years practicing entrepreneurship as a CEO and as an entrepreneurial coach, advisor and director. I’ve used web-based search to verify facts that I use to support my beliefs.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with all my beliefs. I urge you; however, to think about them and keep them in mind as you face new experiences. Discuss this material with your entrepreneurial colleagues to stimulate controversy and vigorous debate – only good will come from this.
I believe my advice fits well with emerging businesses from 1 to 1,000 FTEs (Full Time Equivalent employees). I’d like to think that larger businesses are well advised to form semi-autonomous business units and apply these ideas to those units as well.
My experience is primarily built on a business-to-business perspective commercializing “Primary Demand” products. Primary demand products are those creating entirely new markets or market segments rather than simply offering incremental, perhaps large, improvements to existing products. Generally primary demand products are relatively sophisticated products linked with significant service components that aim to obsolete current practices. Consumer markets may differ in detail, but the principles should generally apply.
This guide focuses on the entrepreneurial CEO. But, even if you’re not the CEO it will help you understand your bosses’ behavior. And, who knows, you may become a future entrepreneurial CEO.
Entrepreneurship is less science and art and more actual practice. An internet search for “entrepreneurship” will lead you to numerous educational sites. More than any other field, however, entrepreneurial success is results based. It’s not surprising that many of our most respected entrepreneurs are college dropouts – Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs for example.
I’ll occasionally use sports analogies because entrepreneurship and sports share many attributes; in most cases they are competitive, time constrained, focused on scores and demand team play. Entrepreneurship and sports live in the present. Athletes and entrepreneurs must constantly re-earn their jobs or be replaced by more effective people. Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots football team recently commented; “If you live in the past, you die in the present”.
SSE develops several key principles through, I hope, compelling logic and real case examples. In various forms, they will frequently reappear. These include:
In this spirit, I’ve organized this guide into three major segments; Are you Ready?, Get Set and Go. Each major segment begins by highlighting its “Guiding Principles”. The chapter then develops the underlying logic behind these principles. I’ll try not to bore you with lots of words, sentences and paragraphs, wherever possible, I’ll use bullets, tables and graphics.
As we progress through these three segments, I’ll organize my points around my entrepreneurial success framework:
Entrepreneurial Success Framework
1. Vision – what you hope to achieve through this venture.
2. Culture – a set of underlying, shared values.
3. Innovative Product/Market Strategy – what you will sell and how you will sell it.
4. Sound Business Model – how you will earn a profit.
5. Passionate Execution – without passion an entrepreneur is just a manager.
My goal is to motivate potential entrepreneurs to pursue their dream, but also to discourage those without real entrepreneurial potential and commitment from spending valuable time distracted from a more suitable career.
Throughout this book, I’ll use the politically incorrect “he” - intended to be race and gender independent.
I’ll also use the term “product” to include all components of the value package be they physical products, software or services.
Successful entrepreneurs create market discontinuities – dramatic changes rather than incremental improvements to current practices. They may or may not require technological inventions. Let’s cite some examples:
Think about it - to a great extent, these innovations came from entrepreneurs with limited resources rather than large companies’ R&D efforts.
As you read through this book, please; Do not always take me literally, but please take me seriously.
To get and retain your attention, I need to be provocative. I want you to react to and challenge my perspectives. If you cut me some slack and follow my logic, I think you will discover I’m raising valid issues while, perhaps, over generalizing. Yes, I may create simplistic symbols to emphasize my point.
I do pick on big companies. First, let me be clear, I’m incompetent to lead and manage a large company. Big companies are not bad they’re simply products of their environment and needs. Most big companies are publicly owned and must report sales, profit and other financial information every quarter. Big company managements are rewarded for meeting short-term financial goals and punished for unpredictable results. This motivates management to protect past successes, try to minimize risk and uncertainty and seek incremental improvement. Of course this may actually lead to even larger risks and more serious consequences – but maybe someone else (the next CEO) will deal with these in the future. Many large companies today try to grow and increase earnings through developing incrementally improved products, acquiring innovative companies with high growth prospects and buying back stock to improve earnings per share. Big companies need entrepreneurs – they can’t internally generate enough innovation nor tolerate the risk of failure. I recently attended an investment conference where the CFO of one very successful large company explained their company-wide business model of a 20% minimum return on invested capital and that any new initiative had to quickly achieve this threshold. This doesn’t seem like a fertile environment for breakthrough innovation requiring extensive market development (Primary Demand).
In the Appendix, I’ve introduced ESSs, Entrepreneurial Snap Shots, as my technique for describing a few key lessons from entrepreneurial companies that I’ve been close to. I’ve included seven ESS highlights in Appendix A and will refer to them throughout this book. Even though the ESSs are in the Appendix, they are important and I recommend you actually read them after “Are You Ready?” I served as CEO of two of these companies, as a co-founder and Chairman of one and as an involved director of three. The final ESS is Rico Lingerie. Rico Lingerie is the story of my father’s business in the 1920s and 1930s. In this brief introduction, you will see why this stimulated me to entrepreneurship and how it inspired me over my career.
Appendix B is an anecdotal narrative covering a few key events during Zymark’s first two years. My purpose is to help you feel the urgency and passion required to begin building your new business.
Entrepreneurs, among other characteristics, are not bureaucrats. Bureaucrats love documentation – more is better. Entrepreneurs, however, value their time and appreciate concise, easy to read and rich content communication. I respect your needs, and hope you extract a few valuable ideas from my thoughts. Keep this book nearby and consult it when you face challenging issues. I’ve left white space for you to annotate this guide as you read through it. Note your agreement and/or disagreement for future reference.
The world is changing and success for all businesses is far more demanding than in years past. Let me illustrate this with one personal example. In the 1950s and 1960s my father drove Buicks. Every three or four years, he would visit the local Buick dealer and select a new car. He never considered another brand or another dealer. He then looked the salesman in the eye and asked for his “best price” and then my father would buy the car. As consumers in those days, we were loyal to and trusting of big, established corporations. Since then, we all have transitioned to highly informed and demanding customers for virtually every purchase – and the Internet is accelerating this process. No one today would buy a car by visiting one dealer and considering only one brand. Informed customers demand quality and value from their vendors and competitive alternatives keeps raising the standards. Many of our old corporate icons have failed and no longer exist.
To just survive, businesses must demand and earn the same quality and value from their managers and employees as their customers’ demand of them.
Today we’re concerned about outsourcing American jobs. Yet the action is here – nearby our markets! Early in the 20th Century we began exporting jobs from the Northeast and Midwest to lower cost factories in the south. Following World War II, we transferred manufacturing jobs to low cost foreign countries. Now, we see knowledge work also moving off shore. Much is written about China and India educating their people in technology and instilling a strong work ethic – good for them. We’re now clearly challenged to create new jobs that need to be performed near our US-based customers – the largest global market. In this book, I will try to develop an underlying principle that the greatest strength of entrepreneurship is intimate customer relationships and understanding of unmet customer needs. If this is true, entrepreneurial companies will need highly capable people constantly interacting with their customers in order to lead their companies forward. You cannot do this by phone, e-mail or videoconference. We’re actually in sourcing entrepreneurs from around the world. This is still a land of opportunity.
While offering my lecture services to university entrepreneurship programs, I’ve visited many university websites. The universities’ business schools sponsor many, but not all, entrepreneurship programs. I was surprised how many courses still are organized around functional areas – marketing, finance etc. My experience, however, reinforces a principle that entrepreneurial leadership requires a holistic approach to integrate management techniques into a unique entity. After the September 11, 2001 tragedy we asked “How could this happen?” The common reply was that we had a lot of data but we’re unable to connect the dots. StreetSmart Entrepreneuring describes the Principles, Practices and Passion of connecting entrepreneurial dots.
If I’ve been successful, as you finish this book, you will observe that Frank only made a few points - supporting them with simple logic and examples. If you remember these underlying principles, I’ve done my job. Start and end here:
In StreetSmart Entrepreneuring I’ll try to be:
Provocative - Get your attention and stimulate you to think deeply and to challenge conventional logic and practices.
Pragmatic - Suggest clear and straightforward actions with their underlying logic. Act faster and analyze real customer-driven results.
Persuasive - Energize you to get going. You have plenty of time to become a skilled, successful entrepreneur, but no time to waste.
Entrepreneurship is not an intellectual exercise; it’s ultimately behavior – beliefs in action.
If you’re ready, go for it. I wish you the best.
Click HERE to see SSE's "Table of Contents".
I’m truly grateful to the mentors and colleagues who helped me during my career. Their hard work, advice, support and constructive challenges all contributed to my entrepreneurial experience. Others challenged me - forcing me to test my logic and beliefs. I dedicate this book to these friends and to the next generation of entrepreneurs. You are the enablers of our great economy. We’re counting on you.
StreetSmart Entrepreneuring (SSE) is not based on deep research; it’s simply a collection of insights and beliefs based on forty plus years practicing entrepreneurship as a CEO and as an entrepreneurial coach, advisor and director. I’ve used web-based search to verify facts that I use to support my beliefs.
I don’t expect anyone to agree with all my beliefs. I urge you; however, to think about them and keep them in mind as you face new experiences. Discuss this material with your entrepreneurial colleagues to stimulate controversy and vigorous debate – only good will come from this.
I believe my advice fits well with emerging businesses from 1 to 1,000 FTEs (Full Time Equivalent employees). I’d like to think that larger businesses are well advised to form semi-autonomous business units and apply these ideas to those units as well.
My experience is primarily built on a business-to-business perspective commercializing “Primary Demand” products. Primary demand products are those creating entirely new markets or market segments rather than simply offering incremental, perhaps large, improvements to existing products. Generally primary demand products are relatively sophisticated products linked with significant service components that aim to obsolete current practices. Consumer markets may differ in detail, but the principles should generally apply.
This guide focuses on the entrepreneurial CEO. But, even if you’re not the CEO it will help you understand your bosses’ behavior. And, who knows, you may become a future entrepreneurial CEO.
Entrepreneurship is less science and art and more actual practice. An internet search for “entrepreneurship” will lead you to numerous educational sites. More than any other field, however, entrepreneurial success is results based. It’s not surprising that many of our most respected entrepreneurs are college dropouts – Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs for example.
I’ll occasionally use sports analogies because entrepreneurship and sports share many attributes; in most cases they are competitive, time constrained, focused on scores and demand team play. Entrepreneurship and sports live in the present. Athletes and entrepreneurs must constantly re-earn their jobs or be replaced by more effective people. Bill Belichick, the head coach of the New England Patriots football team recently commented; “If you live in the past, you die in the present”.
SSE develops several key principles through, I hope, compelling logic and real case examples. In various forms, they will frequently reappear. These include:
- Starting a company is easy; building a successful business is hard.
- The Purpose of a successful business is to create and serve its customers. Profit and wealth is the reward for doing this well,
- Entrepreneurs Build Businesses by providing Innovative Solutions to unmet or poorly met Customer Needs. The focus being Building a real business (not just a clever idea), Innovation (not incremental product improvements) and a truly Customer centric commitment.
- Markets don’t exist, only customers.
- Entrepreneurs disrupt current product/service practices by redefining old market definitions. Entrepreneurs are disruptive and create discontinuities – change from linear to non-linear thinking.
- Vision and Culture enable effective Leadership.
- Get on the “Field of Play” quickly with your innovative new product and/or service. Let your customers help you get it right.
- You must become a successful start-up to earn the right to become an emerging growth company.
- Big companies are the entrepreneur’s best friend. They create entrepreneurial opportunity, by being slow to fill changing customer needs and expectations. Big companies manage markets; rarely create them. (Apple in the 21st. Century is the exception) Never model your entrepreneurial business after the bureaucratic practices of large companies.
- Don’t over-analyze competition – always ask the question how can we serve our customers better.
In this spirit, I’ve organized this guide into three major segments; Are you Ready?, Get Set and Go. Each major segment begins by highlighting its “Guiding Principles”. The chapter then develops the underlying logic behind these principles. I’ll try not to bore you with lots of words, sentences and paragraphs, wherever possible, I’ll use bullets, tables and graphics.
As we progress through these three segments, I’ll organize my points around my entrepreneurial success framework:
Entrepreneurial Success Framework
1. Vision – what you hope to achieve through this venture.
2. Culture – a set of underlying, shared values.
3. Innovative Product/Market Strategy – what you will sell and how you will sell it.
4. Sound Business Model – how you will earn a profit.
5. Passionate Execution – without passion an entrepreneur is just a manager.
My goal is to motivate potential entrepreneurs to pursue their dream, but also to discourage those without real entrepreneurial potential and commitment from spending valuable time distracted from a more suitable career.
Throughout this book, I’ll use the politically incorrect “he” - intended to be race and gender independent.
I’ll also use the term “product” to include all components of the value package be they physical products, software or services.
Successful entrepreneurs create market discontinuities – dramatic changes rather than incremental improvements to current practices. They may or may not require technological inventions. Let’s cite some examples:
Think about it - to a great extent, these innovations came from entrepreneurs with limited resources rather than large companies’ R&D efforts.
As you read through this book, please; Do not always take me literally, but please take me seriously.
To get and retain your attention, I need to be provocative. I want you to react to and challenge my perspectives. If you cut me some slack and follow my logic, I think you will discover I’m raising valid issues while, perhaps, over generalizing. Yes, I may create simplistic symbols to emphasize my point.
I do pick on big companies. First, let me be clear, I’m incompetent to lead and manage a large company. Big companies are not bad they’re simply products of their environment and needs. Most big companies are publicly owned and must report sales, profit and other financial information every quarter. Big company managements are rewarded for meeting short-term financial goals and punished for unpredictable results. This motivates management to protect past successes, try to minimize risk and uncertainty and seek incremental improvement. Of course this may actually lead to even larger risks and more serious consequences – but maybe someone else (the next CEO) will deal with these in the future. Many large companies today try to grow and increase earnings through developing incrementally improved products, acquiring innovative companies with high growth prospects and buying back stock to improve earnings per share. Big companies need entrepreneurs – they can’t internally generate enough innovation nor tolerate the risk of failure. I recently attended an investment conference where the CFO of one very successful large company explained their company-wide business model of a 20% minimum return on invested capital and that any new initiative had to quickly achieve this threshold. This doesn’t seem like a fertile environment for breakthrough innovation requiring extensive market development (Primary Demand).
In the Appendix, I’ve introduced ESSs, Entrepreneurial Snap Shots, as my technique for describing a few key lessons from entrepreneurial companies that I’ve been close to. I’ve included seven ESS highlights in Appendix A and will refer to them throughout this book. Even though the ESSs are in the Appendix, they are important and I recommend you actually read them after “Are You Ready?” I served as CEO of two of these companies, as a co-founder and Chairman of one and as an involved director of three. The final ESS is Rico Lingerie. Rico Lingerie is the story of my father’s business in the 1920s and 1930s. In this brief introduction, you will see why this stimulated me to entrepreneurship and how it inspired me over my career.
Appendix B is an anecdotal narrative covering a few key events during Zymark’s first two years. My purpose is to help you feel the urgency and passion required to begin building your new business.
Entrepreneurs, among other characteristics, are not bureaucrats. Bureaucrats love documentation – more is better. Entrepreneurs, however, value their time and appreciate concise, easy to read and rich content communication. I respect your needs, and hope you extract a few valuable ideas from my thoughts. Keep this book nearby and consult it when you face challenging issues. I’ve left white space for you to annotate this guide as you read through it. Note your agreement and/or disagreement for future reference.
The world is changing and success for all businesses is far more demanding than in years past. Let me illustrate this with one personal example. In the 1950s and 1960s my father drove Buicks. Every three or four years, he would visit the local Buick dealer and select a new car. He never considered another brand or another dealer. He then looked the salesman in the eye and asked for his “best price” and then my father would buy the car. As consumers in those days, we were loyal to and trusting of big, established corporations. Since then, we all have transitioned to highly informed and demanding customers for virtually every purchase – and the Internet is accelerating this process. No one today would buy a car by visiting one dealer and considering only one brand. Informed customers demand quality and value from their vendors and competitive alternatives keeps raising the standards. Many of our old corporate icons have failed and no longer exist.
To just survive, businesses must demand and earn the same quality and value from their managers and employees as their customers’ demand of them.
Today we’re concerned about outsourcing American jobs. Yet the action is here – nearby our markets! Early in the 20th Century we began exporting jobs from the Northeast and Midwest to lower cost factories in the south. Following World War II, we transferred manufacturing jobs to low cost foreign countries. Now, we see knowledge work also moving off shore. Much is written about China and India educating their people in technology and instilling a strong work ethic – good for them. We’re now clearly challenged to create new jobs that need to be performed near our US-based customers – the largest global market. In this book, I will try to develop an underlying principle that the greatest strength of entrepreneurship is intimate customer relationships and understanding of unmet customer needs. If this is true, entrepreneurial companies will need highly capable people constantly interacting with their customers in order to lead their companies forward. You cannot do this by phone, e-mail or videoconference. We’re actually in sourcing entrepreneurs from around the world. This is still a land of opportunity.
While offering my lecture services to university entrepreneurship programs, I’ve visited many university websites. The universities’ business schools sponsor many, but not all, entrepreneurship programs. I was surprised how many courses still are organized around functional areas – marketing, finance etc. My experience, however, reinforces a principle that entrepreneurial leadership requires a holistic approach to integrate management techniques into a unique entity. After the September 11, 2001 tragedy we asked “How could this happen?” The common reply was that we had a lot of data but we’re unable to connect the dots. StreetSmart Entrepreneuring describes the Principles, Practices and Passion of connecting entrepreneurial dots.
If I’ve been successful, as you finish this book, you will observe that Frank only made a few points - supporting them with simple logic and examples. If you remember these underlying principles, I’ve done my job. Start and end here:
- If you don’t have the passion, energy and commitment to entrepreneurship, go get a job. If you’re unsure, get a job working for an effective entrepreneur.
- The purpose of your company is to create and serve customers. Creating wealth is your reward for doing this well.
- You lead, not manage entrepreneurial businesses. Your vision and culture enable you to lead because your colleagues want to follow.
- Your only bosses are your customers. If you serve their current and future needs well and don’t stupidly squander your financial resources, good things happen and everyone will support you.
- Don’t assume that smart people, enthusiastic investors, an intellectual property portfolio and elegant products will ensure success. In business, you win or lose in the market place.
- Whenever in doubt, return to fundamentals.
- There are no time-outs or ends-of-game in business. You must re-earn your success every day, week, month and year. Keep re-inventing yourself.
In StreetSmart Entrepreneuring I’ll try to be:
Provocative - Get your attention and stimulate you to think deeply and to challenge conventional logic and practices.
Pragmatic - Suggest clear and straightforward actions with their underlying logic. Act faster and analyze real customer-driven results.
Persuasive - Energize you to get going. You have plenty of time to become a skilled, successful entrepreneur, but no time to waste.
Entrepreneurship is not an intellectual exercise; it’s ultimately behavior – beliefs in action.
If you’re ready, go for it. I wish you the best.
Click HERE to see SSE's "Table of Contents".
