“The Ultimate Start-Up Guide: Marketing Lessons, War Stories and Hard-Won Advice” by Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent (Career Press, $16.99). The authors, who’ve started businesses that failed and started others that succeeded, learned easy-way and hard-way lessons from their experience and that of angel investors and venture capitalists. They start by highlighting reasons that startups […]
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Hartford Business Journal and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Hartford and Connecticut business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Hartford Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
“The Ultimate Start-Up Guide: Marketing Lessons, War Stories and Hard-Won Advice” by Tom Hogan and Carol Broadbent (Career Press, $16.99).
The authors, who've started businesses that failed and started others that succeeded, learned easy-way and hard-way lessons from their experience and that of angel investors and venture capitalists. They start by highlighting reasons that startups fail, and rightly so — if you can avoid missteps at the beginning, you'll increase the odds of success. The top reasons startups fail:
“No market need” — Just because you create something new or improved, it doesn't mean the market will embrace it. If you haven't done your homework on the “why it's needed,” you won't be able to convince prospects to buy your product/service. Need deals with more than usability. Buyers have to make a business case that addresses affordability, scalability and smooth integration with existing operations.
“Running out of money” — Plans never go as planned. Budgets should include the costs of slippage in design, production and delivery. Slippage can be financially disastrous as windows of opportunity open and close quickly, especially with seasonal items.
“Expanding market focus too quickly” — This deals with loss of focus on the initial market “whether driven by early sales feedback or engineering desire.” Efforts to “improve (save?)” the product devolve into trying to be “a lot of different things to a lot of different markets.” Lack of focus creates operational and financial havoc; see “Running out of money” above.
“A founder that doesn't listen” — Many founders act like dictators by refusing to listen to what employee and market feedback tells them. Despite reality, they stick with their vision. The result: Employees bail and products fail.
If you can address the failure issues in the first two chapters, the “run your business” advice in the remaining chapters will increase the odds of long-term success.
• • •
“Crunch Time: How to Be Your Best When It Matters Most” by Rick Peterson and Judd Hoekstra (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $19.95).
Peterson, who coached some of baseball's best pitchers, and Hoekstra, a VP at the Ken Blanchard Cos., combine their knowledge to show how managers and employees can reframe high-pressure situations into less stressful ones that create opportunities to shine. To set the stage, let's take a drive. You hop into the car and tune the radio to a preset station. It's playing one of your favorite songs; you sing along and may even turn up the volume; negative thoughts disappear. The next song isn't one you like. What do you do? Change stations because the song evoked a negative thought and also a positive reaction. You reframed the situation.
At work, you can feel pressure because you believe that you have little control over the situation, you don't think you can handle it, or you're thinking about the consequences of failure. In these cases, your woe-is-me approach means you're playing not to lose. That's a game you can't win because the negatives create a reflexive bias on your approach to the task. By dumbing-down your ability, you become “your own worst coach.”
The “conscious thinker” focuses on what can be controlled. Doing so creates confidence in the ability to explore and grade options, and complete the task. This playing-to-win mindset sees problems as opportunities to showcase skills and shows that skills can be relied upon to produce results. To think consciously, slow things down. Before jumping into high-pressure tasks, ask yourself about the assumptions you're making about the situation and its possible outcomes. Filter out the negative ones by remembering that you've faced similar situations and won.
Key takeaway: Thoughts drive actions.
Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer.
