Curious Jimbeau

1. Hire the best talent. Surround yourself with smarter people who have complementary skills and who challenge the status quo.
2. Think big. Develop BHAGs: big hairy audacious goals. Imagine the impossible and you will be surprised how much you can accomplish.
3. Aim to make a difference. Make the world a better place.
4.  Say what you mean and do what you say. Execution and follow-through are critical. Thomas Edison said “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” My father used to always remind me of this.
5. Competition makes you stronger. It also makes you serve your customers better.
6. Always put the customer first. And remember, you have to have a great product or service that is differentiated to win.
7. Take on the hardest challenges. Get out of your comfort zone. If you have not failed at something, you are probably not innovating.
8. Truth-seeking is half the battle in winning. You need to know where you stand in the war.
9.  Move fast in a land-grab. Get network effects first. Remember, you need both popularity and profitability.
10.  You can be an entrepreneur in a big company.
11.  Pay it forward. Be a mentor.
12.  If you make a mistake or fail, it’s OK. Fix it fast and move forward. But make sure to take the lessons away so you do not repeat them. Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Truly wish I could credit the author of these wise words but I don’t have that information.

Small Business entrepreneur, get it done, Small Business, to do list

Entrepreneurs utilize innovation to exploit, change or to create a new business or opportunity.  The word Entrepreneur was coined by French economist J.B. Say around 1800 who said, “the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”  The tool most often wielded by these champions of bold and new is Innovation.

Innovation can be experienced, learned; it is not a trait but a behavior.  The resources to challenge, question, or otherwise disavow contemporary thoughts or patterns and implement them into change are readily available to most.  The practice of entrepreneurship is about doing something differently, rather than doing something better.  Therein lies the essence of what Say meant, 200 years ago when he stated that, “the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes,” his task is, “creative destruction.”

In a down turning economy, innovation is required to arrest the equilibrium and optimize the present into new, and economically stimulating practices.  McDonald’s, Bell Labs, IBM, Procter & Gamble represent some of America’s best entrepreneurs who practiced both technical and managerial entrepreneurship and still maintain a near-perfect track record of innovative products.

Like these successful firms, you and I have the same analytical tools needed to identify opportunity irrespective if it lies in our own failure or within the mistake of another.  How can I improve, alter, or exploit it?  What would result if I did?  How could I engineer the result into positive change?  What would I do then?

Give yourself the time you need to investigate, to ponder and go through all the possibilities, make a plan then treat its positive results as probabilities.  Therein lies the epitome of innovation and risk.  When we ask ourselves a question, we are starting at the very beginning of innovative practice.  Yes, it is risky to be an entrepreneur, especially in the technology sphere, as most technical genesis begins with a lack of knowing what is to come.  But a methodology of purposeful innovation will increase the likelihood of success and should be more than enough to justify your risk.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  And even failure can be the spectacle another will use to ask, Why?

Small Business entreprenuer, innovation, invention, Small Business

In the book “How to Remember Names.” Harper Collins. 1992 it is stated that one needs eight seconds to completely focus your attention on something to effectively transfer it from short to long-term memory.

My ability to stay atop a single thought for eight seconds is not unlike the challenge faced by a pro bull rider astride a bucking bronco.   My brains’ encoding, storage and retrieval skills are being revamped after a successful hip surgery that relieved it of the constant strain of pain control.  Now, as I begin to test dormant leg muscles to become the uber fit mid-lifer, I am also taxing my hippocampus to dredge up memories required to help with my kid’s homework.

I was encouraged to read that there are some things one can do to prevent memory loss and maintain healthy brain functions.  One study I read showed that rats living in enriched environments with lots of toys and challenges have larger outer brains with larger, healthier brain cells; and subsequently much better memories.  Note to self, Buy more toys.

Small Business

At HotClickVideo Worldwide, Inc. we use Bryson Financial Group for our company insurance.  They supplied this brief about what changes small business owners should expect from new health care legislation.  Here are the bullet points:
Although the reform package has yet to be finalized, major changes are looming. Some of the package’s provisions that will affect employers include:

Employer Mandates. Effective in 2014, most employers with 50 or more employees must offer coverage to employees. Employers who do not do so may be subject to hefty penalties. The benefit plans offered will also have to meet certain requirements.

Individual Mandates. Citizens and legal residents will be required to have a certain level of health coverage, or pay a tax penalty. These rules could restrict the usage of high deductible health plans and will decrease the chance that your employees will decline coverage under your plan.

Coverage Subsidies. Small employers that provide health insurance for employees will be eligible for a tax credit. Also, employers who provide insurance to retirees over age 55 who are not eligible for Medicare are eligible for a temporary reinsurance program.

Health Benefit Exchanges. In 2014, state exchanges will be established for small businesses and individuals to shop for health insurance. Larger businesses will be able purchase coverage in the exchanges in the future.

Insurance Reforms. These reforms require policies to provide dependent coverage for children through age 26. They prohibit lifetime coverage limits, rescission of coverage except in cases of fraud, and imposing pre-existing condition exclusions on children. Many of these provisions will take effect in 2010. They may affect your benefits and how you administer your benefit programs.
The health reconciliation bill would increase the thresholds to $27,500 and $10,200 for family and individual coverage; it also delays imposition of the tax to 2018
Caps FSA annual contributions at $2,500 (indexed) The health reconciliation bill delays the effective date of the cap by one year.
Neither the bill that was signed into law, nor the health reconciliation bill, would repeal (or restrict) health insurers’ antitrust immunity.
Additional Reconciliation Bill Issues of Concern:

A proposed 3.8% tax (the proceeds of which would go to the Medicare trust fund) on high income ($200,000/individual and $250,000/married) taxpayers’ unearned income.

A new rate review entity at the federal level that would have to approve health insurance premium increases.

Uncategorized

As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields, or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies;
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

Environment

I have been struggling to help my daughter Lily with her 4^th grade homework.  Not entirely because my math skills are tested in the process but because I lack patience.  Lily has a familiar inability to focus on the details of her homework and as a fellow Right Brain thinker, I haven’t been much help.

What I found is that while we prefer a right or left brain approach to processing information, we can overcome this tendency.  As right brainers, Lily and I naturally process the whole question leaving the details for last.  We have to consciously line up the pieces of information in a logical order, where a left brain thinker would do this automatically.

Lily (and I) tend to start with the answer first and work backwards.  This is impossible in situations where we must process new information.  We need to know Why first, then it becomes easier to determine How.  Now that we start each homework exercise with a review of the entire project, Lily is finding it less difficult to find a starting point.

I have lived my life in the big picture – starting with visions and working backwards to determine execution and viability.  It’s not the outline but the outcome that comes to me easily.  But, more and more I appreciate the lefty inside me who can approach conclusions after lining up the facts.  To be sure you are right, engage what you have left.

Uncategorized

To You

by Walt Whitman

(1819-1892)

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why
should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

Uncategorized

Beneath our planets oceans and lakes, embedded in its rocks and tree roots lay nearly half the living material on our earth.

Scientists are claiming that our “subsurface biosphere,” extending thousands of meters, may hold keys to solving major environmental, agricultural and industrial problems.

I was interested to read about an Ocean Drilling Program that will send its high-tech drill ship, the JOIDES Resolution, to the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the Canadian coast in the Northeast Pacific.   They will pump dyed fluids into selected places so scientists can follow the flow of water and microbes through a maze of subsurface “plumbing.”

One objective will be to determine whether deep sea chemicals, such as hydrogen and sulfur, that don’t depend on energy from the sun on Earth’s surface can nourish subsurface microbes.  Too cool!

Environment

Our firm’s primary task these days is articulating the vision of HotClick Video to large groups of savvy investors.  These presentations almost always include a Powerpoint Presentation and require that we get our points across in a short period of time.  I have found that if I lose my audience for even a moment it is almost impossible to get their full attention again.

Three key things lessons I have learned recently:

Firstly, Your Presentation’s Objective is simple:  To Show…

1. Who has a Problem
2. How big a Problem is it?
3. How you are solving this Problem.

Secondly, Your PowerPoint Must Be Simple: More Points, Less Bullets

1. Prepare slides that evoke emotions not bullet points
2. Prepare speaking points for each slide that tell a story
3. Add motion – Video moves your audience

Lastly, Presentations Should Change every time: Relate to “this” Audience

1. Know your audience
2. Include meaningful problems and solutions of your audience
3. Practice each time – even

One of my personal mistakes has been not to practice for each presentation.  My innate knowledge of our company and the problems we solve hasn’t been enough.   Getting to know each audience or individual has proven to change my presentation every time.  By adding relevant and meaningful problems with a tailored solution to a specific audience, has improved their cognizance and our success rate.

Great Entrepreneur Blogger Mark Suster has some great advice from a 2 time entrepreneur who has joined the VC dark side.

Small Business

At the heart of Social Media are Communities (SMC’s) that facilitate B2B communication in unique ways.  B2B marketers that tap into powerful SMC groups can enhance their brand marketing objectives, establish Word of Mouth brand rapport and facilitate the resale of their client products.  Social Media embodies the very spirit of B2B marketing by utilizing partner platforms to proliferate the use of their own products and in the process establishing a new virtual retail frontier.

When Digg , a site for people to discover and share content from the web, announced the addition of a new Trending tool, they built a special Twitter account to make it easy for users to follow the action.  Twitter, a micro blogger community has utilized relative and meaningful business partners to make itself indispensable.  Last month, Twitter and Microsoft struck a search deal to integrate Twitter within Bing and the same day they struck a similar deal with Google.  More than likely if you hear about a top story these days it will come in the form of a feed from your favorite SMC instead of the front page of your daily newspaper.

We are living in a connected world where digital wrecking balls are tearing down communication barriers enabling cross-platform billing and universal data feeds to devices that can trans-code multi-media on the fly.  This clear path of information exchange is giving rise to close relationships between brands that target likeminded consumers and the SMC platforms that support them.  A B2B marketers’ challenge is to anticipate the unique needs each SMC and provide tools customized to these niche groups and their needs.

The spirit of B2B partnerships can be seen on LinkedIn a popular business network that now enables users to sync their status updates with Twitter so your updated LinkedIn status will also appear as a tweet on Twitter.  Reddit a site that enables users to vote on what is most popular on the web is composed of  hundreds of sub-communities, each focused on a specific topic. There’s a Reddit for Music and probably a Reddit for your nearest city.  Note that when you access Reddit Science content that has been uploaded by users and often times from companies such as The New York Times, Wired Magazine and the tech division at Yahoo.

One of the highest grossing films of all time, Paranormal, used the business platforms of Delicious, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Eventfull to promote, market and enhance their film.  The User Groups that evolved from these SMC’s helped ensure the film was released by submitting over 1 million votes on the website Eventful.com.  The viral nature of this program spawned hundreds of niche groups including a Paranormal Dating group on the dating site Geek 2 Geek.

According to ChannelAdvisor, Social media sites are now among the top 10 referring Web sites for most online retailers.  With Monetization at the heart of every business enterprise, a virtual store within a niche SMC creates a direct connection to a targeted consumer.  As more and more businesses seek to expand their identity and relevance on the WorldWideWeb, they are increasingly turning to SMC’s to establish storefronts.

While some SMC’s like Digg focus on advertising platforms and branded soft-goods a few SMC’s are providing commercial applications that will drive partner sales.  On Facebook 1-800-FLOWERS was the first retailer to launch a full-service online storefront so users leave birthday wishes for friends, and then order them a bouquet of flowers without ever navigating away from the home page.

Paving the way for cross-billing platforms are payment options from companies such as Amazon’s Flexible Payments and PayPal’s Payvment API’s that give developers full access to billing systems for SMC’s.  The ability to accept and distribute payments within SMC’s establishes a new commercial platform ripe for B2B marketers.  Companies like Alvenda have taken newsfeed purchasing to the next level with plug and play shopping platforms that enable shoppable advertisements that can be embedded into any blog or SMC site.

Small Business