By Nick Arvis
“Why am I doing this?” That’s the question dominating a President’s Advisory Committee board meeting (PAC). None of the members—all business owners—intend to give or sell their business to their children. Instead, in a reversal of traditional social norms, all of them plan to use their wealth to empower their children on whatever paths the kids happen to choose.. Continue reading YOUR BUSINESS AND YOUR CHILDREN
1. Build A Strong Leadership Team
We used to invest in technology. Then it was marketing. Then we woke up and realized it was all about the people. Bringing in the best, seasoned, Director/VP-level talent over the past 18 months has really helped the owners bring the company’s goals back in focus. Do your systems, workflow and technology always need to be evolving? You bet. But at a certain point in company’s growth, you will NEED an experienced leader helping you architect those things if you want to go to the next level. – Andrew Loos, CEO, Attack
2. Have A Great Mindset
Your mindset drives so much in business: the risks you take, opportunities you pursue, challenges to tackle, confidence level and vision. The great thing is that even if you have doubts and fears now, your mindset can change and grow with you as an entrepreneur. The things that once terrified me are now easy to manage and I understand much better why entrepreneurship is an excellent avenue for personal growth and development! – Kelly Azevedo, CEO, She’s Got Systems
3. Execute
Hands down, continuing to execute to accomplish your goals is the single most important factor in making your business a success. Without continual execution, businesses sink. However, executing on the right goals will not only keep you from sinking, it will help you excel. – Stacey Ferreira, CEO, MySocialCloud
4. Have a Passion for Change
At Star Toilet Paper, we have a deep-seated yearning to change the world and that is what we are doing and will continue to do. Each and every week, we have a weekly email that we sign off with, “Let’s change the world and disrupt the status quo.” Having an internal team slogan like that really helps bring out the best in us and continues to fuel our passion. – Bryan Silverman, CEO, Star Toilet Paper
5. Create Value
Purchase decisions almost always come down to value — customers must realize a benefit from working with your business. That can mean a multitude of things, such as cost savings, convenience, reliability, increased quality, etc. Effectively providing value is integral to the long-term success of your company; not only does it assist in retaining your current customers, but also provides the highest-quality referrals you can ask for when attempting to gain new business. – Charles Bogoian, CEO, Kenai Sports, LLC
6. Work With Clients Who Share Your Beliefs
Being ourselves and working with companies who share our beliefs is everything. We believe design makes a difference and we look to work with companies who agree. We also work with companies who know the people inside the building are what counts. Working with companies with soul has been the key to our success. – Chuck Longanecker, CEO, digital-telepathy
7. Focus
It’s so tempting early on to chase after every interesting idea and business opportunity. Learning to say “no” or at least “not yet” is paramount to every entrepreneur’s success. Focus on what’s most important. Your customers and investors will thank you for it eventually. – Ryan Buckley, CEO, Scripted, Inc.
8. Serve Your Customers
By providing your product or service in a fast, convenient, and friendly way, you’ll establish your business as one built for the long term. Any unsatisfied customers should be compensated to ensure they’ll still consider you for future business. Happy customers are everything. – Andrew Schrage, CEO, Money Crashers Personal Finance
9. Remain Unsatisfied
I am famous internally for saying “we’re almost there” when referring to the business. The truth is that “there” is a constantly moving goal post. As a team, we have a positive but relentless and never-satisfied attitude, which in turn results in our company always pushing for better and never being complacent. – Lauren Friese, CEO, TalentEgg
10. Hire the Right People
I was telling my team just last week that regardless of how much we market or sell, if we don’t create good products (in our case, websites), then we can’t progress. It’s people who create those sites, so hiring the best developers (or widget makers, or whoever makes your business succeed) is vital to keeping the engine of your business running. – Hassan Bawab, CEO, Magic Logix
These are the single most important things a leader must do to succeed in business according to ten successful young entrepreneurs. But wait – there are 10 different factors listed above! So which, in fact, is most important?
My answer to this question:
Focus is the single most important factor in determining your success as a business leader.
Focus means understanding what your priorities are in any given hour, day, month, quarter or year. Focus means knowing what’s most important – product, service, hiring, fundraising, sales or innovation, and then concentrating on that one thing. Focus means knowing what’s not as important in any given time period. Without focus, it’s easy to wander – it’s easy to become reactive instead of proactive – it’s easy to fail. With focus and determination, you and your team will understand what’s most important, and help you execute – to success. So that unlike that 70%, you can beat the odds and maintain a successful business over time.
(VIA. Dave Kerpen – Linkedin – CEO, Likeable Local, NY Times Best-Selling Author & Keynote Speaker)
(Reuters) – Google Inc launched a music service on Wednesday that allows users to listen to unlimited songs for $9.99 a month, challenging smaller companies like Pandora and Spotify in the market for streaming music.
With its new service, announced at its annual developers’ conference in San Francisco, Google has adopted the streaming music business model ahead of rival Apple Inc, which pioneered online music purchases with iTunes.
Google’s “All Access” service lets users customize song selections from 22 genres, ranging from Jazz to Indie music, stream individual playlists, or listen to a curated, radio-like stream that can be tweaked. It will be launched for U.S. users first, before being rolled out to several other countries.
Google unveiled a string of improvements to other services, including new mapping features and a voice-activated search, at the conference. The focus was on giving more options to users of mobile devices using its Android software, the operating system that now runs three out of every four smartphones sold.
Shares of Google, the world’s largest Internet search company, jumped more than 3 percent while Pandora Media Inc shares were down more than 1 percent on Wednesday afternoon.
Google’s new music service amps up the competition in the nascent market for subscription-based, streaming music. Amazon.com Inc and Apple are among the Silicon Valley powerhouses sounding out top recording industry executives, according to sources with knowledge of talks.
Pandora is spending freely and racking up losses to expand globally. Even social media stalwarts Facebook and Twitter are jumping onto the streaming-music bandwagon.
All these companies see a viable music streaming and subscription service as crucial to growing their presence in an exploding mobile environment. For Google and Apple, it is critical in ensuring users remain loyal to their mobile products.
With a music service, Google further “locks” consumers into its sphere of products and services, said Chris Silva, an analyst with Altimeter Group.
“They’re trying to sell an ecosystem,” he said. “The more things I’m doing, the more things that tie me to Google services.”
At $9.99 a month, Google’s service is costlier than the $3.99 required for Pandora, but on par with Spotify.
The music service features millions of tracks from Universal Music, Sony Entertainment Group and Warner Music Group, as well as from thousands of independent labels, according to a Google spokeswoman.
Some analysts said the new service allowed Google to catch-up to offerings from the likes of Spotify, but did not offer anything unique. Forrester analyst James McQuivey said combining the service with video or game content might have made it stand out.
“You don’t dismiss Apple, you don’t dismiss anyone. But that is not the point,” said Rich Tullo, an analyst at Albert Fried & Co. “Pandora is the market share leader in the space and their platform is so disruptive — it’s very hard to disrupt them. When you have 70 million people use it – they are the disruptors.”
CEO APPEARANCE
A procession of Google executives described and showed off a litany of new features and software updates at the annual “I/O” developers’ conference, from picture touch-ups on Google+ and re-designed Maps that spot when a user is walking or driving, to Star Trek-like voice-activated search that understands a users’ sentences and figures out what he or she is looking for.
“We haven’t seen this rate of change in computing for a long time — probably not since the birth of personal computing,” said CEO Larry Page, who began his address reflecting upon a significant moment in his life, when his father got him into a robotic science fair.
“We’re really only at 1 percent of what’s possible,” said Page, whose on-stage appearance came a day after he acknowledged suffering from a rare nerve problem affecting his vocal cords. The problem, which affects his breathing and makes it difficult for him to speak at length, sidelined Page from public speaking engagements last summer, though Page spoke for 45 minutes on stage on Wednesday.
Decrying a “negativity” in the technology industry which he said impedes progress, Page singled out competitors Microsoft Corp and Oracle Corp, criticizing the companies for not being sufficiently collaborative with Google and other companies. Google was sued by Oracle last year, and companies affiliated with Microsoft have complained about Google’s practices to European antitrust regulators.
“Most important things are not zero sum,” Page said.
LACK OF GLASS
The conference comes as Google’s Android software has become the most popular operating system in both smartphones and tablet PCs. Executives said Wednesday that some 900 million smartphones and tablets running Google Android software had been activated since the platform’s inception in 2010
Google’s popular mapping service, a mainstay of Android devices, features tighter integration with reviews off Zagat, the popular dining-reviews brand that Google bought last year. It also sports more pictures from inside important buildings, sourced from user-uploaded photos. It can now even display the earth realistically as viewed from outer space, something Page said he personally requested.
Shares in Yelp Inc, which like Zagat is built off users’ personal reviews, slid 3.8 percent to $29.80 in the afternoon.
Conspicuously absent from the more than three-hour opening keynote session was any mention of Google Glass, the wearable computing device that the company began distributing to a limited set of early users and developers last month.
The futuristic-looking device has elicited admiration from many technology-lovers, but some have questioned whether the stamp-sized electronic screen mounted on eyeglass frames will appeal to mainstream consumers.
While many enthusiastic attendees and Google staffers strolled about the conference center sporting the Glass devices, executives spent little time discussing it on stage.
Google missed an opportunity to “show that they think they’re onto something big,” said Forrester’s McQuivey.
(With additional reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by David Gregorio, Bernadette Baum and Bob Burgdorfer)
BBM Channels will allow users and brands to create their own followings, just like Twitter and Facebook.
ORLANDO, Fla. — BlackBerry wants to take on Twitter by creating its own social network through its BlackBerry Messenger service.
The company on Tuesday unveiled BBM Channel, which allows users and brands to create a BBM profile that other users can follow, similar to how people can follow brands and users on Twitter.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, speaking at the BlackBerry Live conference here today, touted the strength of the BBM network, which has 60 million users, and 10 billion messages sent and received each day.
More importantly, Heins said that half of the messages received are read within 20 seconds, touting the high level of engagement that BBM boasts.
BBM Channels will launch in beta today. Heins touted high-profile users such as Formula 1 racer Lewis Hamilton, as well as Mercedes Petronas racing team (for which BlackBerry is a sponsor), as early supporters of BBM Channels. Alicia Keys, who serves as global creative director for BlackBerry, will also have her own channel.
Users will be able to receive notifications when new posts are available, and are able to choose how they will be notified. In addition, they can comment, “like,” and share other comments. There’s also the opportunity for one-to-one chatting, allowing brands and notable users to create private dialogues with other BBM members.
Brands and users, meanwhile, will be able to track metrics such as subscribers and engagement, Heins said.
(VIA. CNET)
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately talking with young entrepreneurs; more than normal, actually. I’ve been finding 15 minutes on my schedule to sit down for coffee, 5 minutes for a phone call, 10 minutes for a quick visit to VaynerMedia, and more interestingly I’ve met quite a few of them through my Q&A 365 series that I’ve been doing this year. Through all these meetings, there’s something that I’m only recently starting to notice about myself. Not that I’ve been taking it for granted, but something I was blessed to be born with, and that is the Entrepreneurial Skin. It’s an extra layer of belief/hunger/no-holds-barred/ego/determination. It’s this extra entrepreneurial layer that allows you to go in for “The Ask.”
The Ask, for those of you who might not know the term, is the moment when you go in for the kill. The moment when you finally convert on all your hard work and ask for that funding, or that business you wanted all along, or even something as simple as the sale of a $15 product. Everything leads up to The Ask and if you can’t make it happen, you can’t succeed.
I’m watching a lot of people build up great brand equity; build up great little micro-media companies; building up nice little products, but they often have the similar background of either A) Recently quitting a job to become an entrepreneur, or B) Just starting out and not having been doing it long enough, that is not enabling them to go in for that Ask.
What’s fascinating to me is that I’ve met some others who are now just hitting that point, and are completely blown away and excited by the dividends paid off by The Ask.
So I implore everyone here on LinkedIn, whether you’re an entrepreneur, or you’re a sales person, or you’re a manager, adding that entrepreneurial skin that gives you this magical potion to go in for the ask, no holds barred, with no concern for the repercussions (especially when you do it in an appropriate way) and is kind of the final step in starting to see results. Too many people are crippled by being unable to go in for The Ask, but The Ask, and that layer of skin, is where so much of the greatness comes from.
(VIA. Gary Vaynerchuck – Linkedin – CEO Co-Founder of Vayner Media)
(Reuters) – SoftBank Corp President Masayoshi Son may get a frosty reception when he comes to the United States this week to meet Sprint Nextel Corp’s major shareholders, as he tries to drum up support for the Japanese company’s proposed takeover of the No. 3 U.S. wireless service provider.
SoftBank’s billionaire founder, who proposed a $20 billion deal for a 70 percent stake in the U.S. wireless carrier, said on Tuesday that he would discuss the deal with shareholders in a bid to fight off rival Dish Network, a U.S. satellite TV provider, which offered Sprint a $25.5 billion bid.
The executive for the Japanese mobile operator may have a tough time selling the deal, as several shareholders have told Reuters that SoftBank would need to raise its bid in order to win their vote at Sprint’s June 12 shareholder meeting.
Two big Sprint shareholders, Paulson & Co and Omega Advisors, have publicly said the Dish offer looks better than SoftBank’s. Other shareholders said on Tuesday that they would go to meet Son during his trip but they were skeptical about his arguments against Dish.
While Dish’s offer would provide more cash upfront to shareholders, Son has argued that Dish would not be good for the company as it would require Sprint to take on a heavy debt load. He also promises a July 1 close for the deal and warned that Dish regulatory approval may not come until 2014.
Robert Lynch, the director of research for Westchester Capital Management, which owned over 14 million shares in Sprint at the end of December, said that the prospect of a quicker deal close would not be enough to win over his company’s vote.
“We think right now that Dish has a better offer on the table. We think SoftBank’s going to have to improve their offer,” Lynch said, noting that SoftBank’s comments about the prospective debt leverage from a Dish deal were overdone.
“We think the leverage is manageable. We think there are synergies here. While raising the leverage is something we looked at we think its not as big of a obstacle as SoftBank is saying,” Lynch said.
A big Sprint investor who asked not to be named said they were happy to meet with Son while he is in the United States but that they were hoping to convince him to raise his bid.
“If Mr. Son wants to own Sprint he will have to raise his bid,” said the person from a top 25 Sprint shareholder who did not want to be quoted by name ahead of the meeting.
BIDDING WAR
Sprint shares have risen about 16 percent since Dish made its rival offer on April 15, as investors have been betting that the offer will result in a bidding war. The stock was up 3 cents at $7.23 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
Son, speaking to reporters at an event unveiling SoftBank’s latest smartphones and mobile gadgets, dismissed suggestions from Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen last week that the Dish deal would be good for U.S. jobs, saying Americans would continue to be employed under a Softbank deal.
Son also said SoftBank offered more expertise than Dish in the latest mobile technology.
“They have never been in mobile before and that will be their biggest hurdle,” said Son.
But another big investment manager, who said their firm was a top-20 Sprint shareholder based on recent share purchases, said Son’s concerns about Dish were “not insurmountable.”
“I don’t think shareholders are going to fall for this,” said the manager, who asked not to be named because of a lack of authorization to speak to the media.
The issue of deal timing could be overcome by a higher-priced bid, according to the manager.
TECH ADVANCES
Sprint is currently spending billions of dollars upgrading its network with high-speed wireless services using a technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE).
Son noted that SoftBank had been at the vanguard of introducing high-speed wireless services in Japan and could help Sprint with its upgrade.
SoftBank uses TD-LTE, one of two key versions of 4G LTE (long-term evolution) technologies that have been adopted by global carriers and promises faster speeds for mobile wireless.
“The difference here is that SoftBank has the network architecture, that SoftBank has the additional know how to bring to Sprint as the sole commercial provider of TD-LTE,” he said.
(Reporting by Mari Saito; Editing by Miral Fahmy, Edmund Klamann, Alden Bentley and Andrew Hay)
(VIA. Reuters)
(Reuters) – Intel Corp said on Thursday its board had elected Chief Operating Officer Brian Krzanich as the chipmaker’s next chief executive, disappointing investors who were looking for more aggressive change.
Intel shares fell 1.3 percent in early trade but later traded flat. The world’s biggest chipmaker had said last November that it might go external for the next CEO, raising hopes that it might find someone to shake it out of recent doldrums.
“An external candidate might have been a better choice – with no negative reflection on Brian – simply because of the juncture Intel is at with what’s happening in the PC market and the need to take major action outside of PCs,” said Cody Acree, an analyst at Williams Financial Group.
“Brian may very well come in and make those same very difficult dramatic choices, but it’s less likely.”
Krzanich, 52, who has worked at Intel since 1982, will take on the top job at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on May 16, replacing Paul Otellini.
The board also elected Renée James, 48, to be president of Intel and is expected to expand to 10 members to add Krzanich.
SMALL CHANGE
Intel announced in November that it was looking for a new CEO as Otellini announced plans to retire.
The company came under fire during Otellini’s tenure for missing out on the mobile revolution, insisting that emerging markets would prop up growth while underestimating the scale of the eventual drop-off in personal computer demand, and orchestrating a push on “Ultrabook” laptops that have so far failed to excite consumers.
Against that backdrop, Intel surprised investors by suggesting it could break with tradition and look outside its ranks for a new chief. But analysts said they were not necessarily shocked that the board settled on Krzanich.
“I’m not hugely surprised. He was probably in most investors’ minds a frontrunner,” said Stacy Ragson, an analyst at Bernstein Research.
“The strategy that they are on embarking on, the way they are trying to go really involves leveraging their manufacturing technology assets and he’s the guy.”
Last month, Intel warned that current-quarter revenue would fall as much as 8 percent, given the drop in PC sales. The company affirmed its full-year revenue growth target, but analysts think that forecast will be increasingly hard to hit.
Intel set Krzanich’s 2013 compensation package at $10 million including base pay of $1 million, an annual incentive cash target of $2.5 million and equity awards for 2013 with a grant date fair value of $6.5 million.
A chemical engineer by training who went to school in Northern California, he started with Intel in New Mexico as a process engineer before moving on to a series of factory management positions.
He holds one patent for semiconductor processing and sits on the board of an industry association.
Intel shares were down 2 cents at $23.97 on Thursday morning on the Nasdaq, off an earlier low at $23.67.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana B. Baker in New York and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; writing by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Alden Bentley and Matthew Lewis)
(VIA. Reuters)
If you have not heard by now, former VP of Google Marissa Mayer will step in as the new CEO of Yahoo. What makes Ms. Mayer ready for the challenge?
As the former VP of Google, Marissa is used to filling a challenging position. Yahoo’s numbers have steadily been declining over the past few years and Marissa will hope to change that moving forward.
As a female CEO, a large amount of pressure has naturally already been pushed upon her by the media. Not to mention the fact she is also pregnant.
Marissa claims she will take no more than a few weeks off for maternity leave as Yahoo continues to move toward a positive future. “A few weeks” she says, where other woman in her position would take close to six months before returning to work.
This proves her drive and passion to see the success of a once great company. Yahoo looks to be in good hands as long as Marissa Mayer remains at the head of the table.
SoshiTech - Soshitech.com 