DARING TO DREAM - The Entrepreneur Mindset

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." — Michelangelo Buonarroti

I will never forget the night that it really hit me. I didn’t sleep once during the 6 hours that I tossed and turned in bed. I could barely keep my eyes closed. My brain was racing at breakneck speed with plans and ideas and visions of a future that was so bright and vibrant that I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm. I had just figured out that I really could succeed as an entrepreneur.

Earlier that day I had a dialogue with fellow BlueSky Software founder Jørgen Lien. He insisted that we had a shot… a real shot at busting open a segment of a large and growing software market, and in doing so a shot at creating a wildly-successful software company. This was my first technology startup. Although I had seen the possibility, I never really believed in it.  Before then. During that night it finally hit me.

20 years later and my dream is still alive, vibrant, bright and part of my everyday reality. BlueSky succeeded in busting open that market and went on later (without me) to be acquired by Macromedia/Adobe. Two other tech startups I did went well and are still flying high. I have worked closely with hundreds of talented entrepreneurs since then and yet I still have that moment in my mind.

For me, the biggest excitement was never about the riches and the wealth. It was not about fame and notoriety. Most of all, it was the realization that I could create.

The process of creation that an entrepreneur can experience is amazing. One minute you sit there with two empty hands and a head full of ideas. In the next moment your thoughts have been converted to real things and you have your hands full of value and new opportunity. It is like modern day alchemy – the ability to turn common objects into gold.

Three weeks from now I will be one of the keynote speakers at the Oslo Leadership Event (Fornebu Arena, May 27-29, 2011). I will use the opportunity to share some stories from my experiences as an entrepreneur. There have been a lot of crazy moments, but most of all I will use this opportunity to encourage everyone to think like an entrepreneur.

The Entrepreneur Mindset
Whether you want to create a business, or lead a sports team, or teach a classroom of students, sail alone around the world, become a master yoga instructor or just simply get the most out of today… it all starts by DARING TO DREAM. Dream big. Dream wild. Dream like you did when you were a kid. You would be amazed at what is really possible.

If you want to learn more about visualization tools or how to accelerate your business, then contact me or join one of my seminars. If you are going to attend the Oslo Leadership Event, then please come up and introduce yourself to me and share your dreams with me as well!

Why are you an Entrepreneur... really?

What motives you as an entrepreneur? What is the real reason that you are willing to work long hours 7 days a week with low pay, few colleagues, no flashy benefits, no fancy office, no job security, and the constant risk of failure staring you right in the eyes? Are you crazy, reckless or just stupid?

These are questions that I ask myself often, and yet I have no intention of quitting being an entrepreneur. It is what I am. It is what I do. It is the skillset that I have learned, developed and have made into a lifelong career.

Watch the fantastic video below from Daniel Pink’s book entitled DRIVE. Ask yourself why you are an entrepreneur and what it is that really will motivate you and your colleagues to succeed.



Whether you are working alone in a startup or building a dynamic team, finding the right factors for motivation is critical. Aligning values and creating empowering assignments will unlock peak performance in yourself and in your colleagues.

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Want to turn-around your business and achieve results in record time? Contact me to discuss Executive Coaching, Group Facilitation and Management for Hire services for technology companies. You can learn more at www.ricksalmon.com ,  www.xelerator.com and at www.e-unlimited.com.

Rick Salmon is an energetic entrepreneur who lives in Norway and believes that European startup companies can succeed and grow quickly if only they get the proper help and assistance. Please join the discussion and leave your comments. Subscribe to this newsletter/blog to receive frequent updates and tips.

Marathon Man for Startups

A startup is a marathon, not a 100 meter sprint

Have you seen the old movie called Marathon Man? Dustin Hoffmann plays the part of an amateur marathon runner who gets mixed up with a group of nasty ex-Nazis who torture him with a dental drill. His training as a marathon runner helps him to endure the pain until he is finally able to win in the end. It is a great movie and a good lesson for entrepreneurs.

Sorry to write this, but you have to be able to endure a lot of discomfort and pain if you expect to succeed with a startup business. There are no real short cuts. There are no easy paths to success. There is an old line that says “the harder I work, the luckier I get”. The truth is that there is a lot of hard work and it usually takes time. Lots of it.  Creating a successful startup is a marathon, not a 100 meter sprint.

Read John Nesheim’s blog post entitled: Longest Tennis Game in History : Lesson for Startups.
He writes about the recent Wimbledon tennis match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut that lasted 3 days and ended in a tie-breaker with the score 70-68 (which is 183 games).  He writes the following:
BOTTOM LINE: Prepare for a very long run as you prepare to do your startup. Reality says you'll be running a lot longer than you believe you will run. And you'll run into unforeseen surprises as you round each corner. Those tennis players fought to the last stroke. You'll be expected to do the same. When that is in your gut, your soul, then you'll have what it takes.

Prepare indeed. Prepare yourself and adopt a strategy that will get you to the finish line with your startup business. Get help from experienced entrepreneurs who have already run the course.

I run a program for European Entrepreneurs called Fast-Track Funding. It is a program to accelerate the business development process and to increase the chances of getting seed funding quickly. It is not a short cut, but it will speed your progress. You can put your business on the fast-track to success. If you are interested in learning more, then contact me directly.

Worshiping Genius

“Italy worships Genius, but has not yet figured out how to create a culture of entrepreneurship”.
This was an interesting statement made by the CEO of the Italian Angels for Growth, Lorenzo Fanchini at last week’s semi-final of the European Venture Contest (EEVC) held in Turin. Italy is a country filled with brilliant scientists and engineers. There is a huge supply of new technology, brilliant engineering and mechanical precision but unfortunately a shortage of businessmen – those boring guys in business suits that focus on cash flow instead of electron flow. Don’t get me wrong. There are good businessmen in Italy, but as an outsider, I am struck by the inequality in the number of engineers.

At the event I listened to 12 startup entrepreneurs pitch their companies to a panel of judges representing venture companies. Most of the entrepreneurs were heavy-duty techies but lightweight money-guys. Why is it that technology is so sexy while a moderate but healthy cash-flow draws only yawns? I watched one biotech company presentation where the entrepreneur race through 26 disorganized slides in just 8 minutes. 25 were about technology and only 1 was about business. It stayed on the screen exactly 1.8 seconds because it painted such a dismal picture. These were scientists that live off government funding, not businessmen who produce quality customer-driven products in return for a solid profits. There was no business plan, only a lot of fancy technology. There was a second company that presented a solid business model based on already-developed products that will reach breakeven quickly and continue to generate new patents and also a healthy cash-flow. The first company got an award. The second company was sent home and told to find bigger and more sexy markets. Should investors worship genius or invest in good, solid performance companies?

At the University of Colorado School of Business I studied with two other buddies. Two of us left school and went to work in the computer industry. We have spent our careers chasing hot and fancy new technologies. The third buddy started selling coffee machines to business customers. We mocked him. We laughed and felt so superior as we worshiped our marvelous technology advances. Today, he is the one that is outrageously wealthy while we others are perhaps still chasing.

If we worship “Genius” but fail to provide seed funding for sound businessmen, then we will never create a sustainable culture of enturepreneurship.

If you are an European entrepreneur and want more information, help and assistance, suscribe to this blog. I write frequent articles about the startup companies and events that I participate in.

Want to turn-around your business and achieve huge results in record time? Contact me to discuss Executive Coaching, Group Facilitation and Management for Hire services. You can learn more at www.ricksalmon.com and at www.xelerator.com.

Rick Salmon is an energetic entrepreneur who believes that this beautiful world that we have created needs our help. Subscribe to this newsletter to receive frequent updates and tips.

For more information about the EEVC European Venture Contest,
see: http://www.e-unlimited.com

For more information about the Italian Angels for Growth,
see: http://www.italianangels.net

If you are so smart, why are you not rich?

“If you are so smart, why are you not rich?”

I saw this written on a T-shirt yesterday at a gathering of entrepreneurs. It was a blatant challenge and it made me stop and think. In looking back on my 20 years as an entrepreneur, have I failed if I am not rich? Is that really what has driven me all these years? No, not really.

I immediately wanted to change the T-Shirt to read: If you are so smart, why haven’t you changed more lives? Why haven’t you helped more people… Created more jobs… Saved more children… Made a difference in the world?

According to a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, a rising new trend is the emergence of “Social Entrepreneurship”. Young entrepreneurs are realizing that just seeking wealth will not really make them happy. Finding meaning in what you do on your route to making money is ultimately much more rewarding and fulfilling.

I may not have yet acquired the riches of a sultan in all my years with startup , but I have been able to create companies and I have had the freedom, the drive and the turbo-motivation that comes from giving birth to ideas that grow to be corporations.

If your highest personal value is the creation of wealth, then remember Howard Hughes who died alone, isolated and lonely after building one of the greatest fortunes of the last century. Go ahead and make money, but also create a better world in the process. If you are so smart, then you will get this.

Want to turn-around your business and achieve huge results in record time? Contact me to discuss Executive Coaching, Group Facilitation and Management for Hire services. You can learn more at www.ricksalmon.com and at www.xelerator.com.

Rick Salmon is an energetic entrepreneur who believes that this beautiful world that we have created needs our help. Subscribe to this newsletter to receive frequent updates and tips.

A Crisis is a Terrible thing to Waste (Part 2) – Smoke Signals

When I was a boy I loved to watch “Cowboy and Indian” programs on television. The plots were always the same. They usually started with a group of settlers – who were traveling in their covered wagons towards some dream of a better life in a faraway place. Then would come some sort of a crisis. The crisis was usually the Indians. First the Indians would signal their attack by sending up smoke signals that would be visible from far away (because the Indians didn’t have mobile phones). The smart cowboys would see the signals and take cover, but most cowboys would ignore the signals and keep right on moving along until the Indians swooped down from the hills and attacked the wagon train.

When a business ends up in a crisis, it is usually because they fail to pay attention to the smoke signals. Most of the time the signals are there on the horizon, clear and easy to see, yet they choose to ignore them. And then when the Indians swoop down upon them, they are just as surprised each time.

The first stage of any crisis is the realization that a crisis has emerged. Just like with the Indians, it usually comes as a shock but still takes a while before the reality sinks in.

So what can an entrepreneur do to see the signals? What are some of the practical things a startup business can do in order to avoid ending up in a deep crisis?

1. Take frequent Reality Checks. Ask yourself tough questions about your business and give yourself honest answers. It is better to face the facts and get prepared than to avoid them and just hope that things will improve.
2. Guard your Optimism, but Be Prepared. The Arabs have a saying “Trust in Allah, but tie up your camels”. Optimism for an entrepreneur is essential, but it can sometimes lead to difficult situations. I have observed this many, many times with startup companies.
3. Practice sound Financial Planning. I have seen over 100 entrepreneur venture pitches over the past 6 months and very few had done sound financial forecasts and cost analysis. There is a general lack of planning with startups and this is perhaps one of the biggest reasons so many struggle to get early-stage funding.
4. Hire a Board of Directors. Most startups have a Board that consists of the 2 young founders and Uncle Bob. You can avoid crisis if you have a good board of advisers who are also minority shareholders and interested in helping your company prosper and grow. Give away shares if you need to, but get the best possible people you can find and ask them to be tough on you. If this is the only thing you do from all the suggestions in this blog entry, then you will still have made a big change.
5. Stay close to your customers. Even if you don’t have customers yet, stay close to your target market. Talk with them. Ask them questions. Get their feedback. Make sure you are providing products and services that they don’t just need, but that they really want. I may need a new car for the purpose of basic transportation, but I really want that Audi TT sports car.
6. Think Long-term but Act Short-term. What I mean here is that you must keep your focus on the long-term goals and aspirations you have for your business, but you must take short-term action that provides the cash flow and resources to survive and ultimately grow. Many technology companies spend a long time developing their products, but run out of money either before they are completed or before they have been able to sell products and prove that they can generate revenues. It is much easier to get an early-stage investor to put money into your business if you can demonstrate sales revenues. Even if revenues come from services and not product sales, this does not matter. Think long-term, but act in the short-term to bring in revenue and lessen the possibility of a financial crisis for your business.

If you see smoke signals on the horizon, take action immediately. The sooner you do, the less the consequences and the pain of a crisis. If the situation has already swooped down upon you like a tribe of angry Indians, then in the next blog entry I will discuss how to circle your wagons and stage a defense. In the meantime, remember that becoming a successful entrepreneur is about the learning to master the game… and A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste.

Want to turn-around your business and achieve huge results in record time? Contact me to discuss Executive Coaching, Group Facilitation and Management for Hire services. You can learn more at www.ricksalmon.com and at www.xelerator.com.

Rick Salmon is an energetic entrepreneur who believes that this beautiful world that we have created needs our help. Subscribe to this blog to receive frequent updates.

Let the old trees die

While the global finance crisis might be showing some signs of improvement, the outlook for the entrepreneur is still bleak. Without easy access to capital, entrepreneurs cannot grow. A forest without new growth will age quickly just like an economy without new growth will fall. While governments around the world are busy propping up old businesses in order to save jobs, they might just be missing an important point. Old forests are supposed to die in order to make way for the new.

This weekend I read about Joseph Schumpeter, a Czech economist who was a professor at Harvard for over 30 years. His theory was that there is a process he called Creative Destruction, in which after a long period of growth, a crisis must arise. Each crisis creates its own new dynamics and as a result, new technologies will emerge or be used in a new manner. As a result of this, entrepreneur activities will increase, new companies will start and some of the old companies will die off. The old professor believed that this is a natural cleaning process, especially after long periods of sustained growth, and it is necessary because it creates a capacity for new growth.

Early-stage entrepreneurs must have access to capital in order to survive. During the internet boom of the early 1990's we learned that giving huge amounts of money to young and inexperienced entrepreneurs is like inviting the local Hell's Angels group to your house for an all-you-can-drink free beer bash. They will probably drink you dry and trash your house in the process. Even if in small amounts, early-stage entrepreneurs must have access to capital in order to keep their dreams alive and to meet simple milestones for solid growth.

For the representatives from local government who are reading this article, please keep the programs alive that give small loans and grants to early-stage entrepreneurs. Make it easier for them. You can also encourage companies that assist startups by offering them tax breaks and incentives. Make certain your local new growth economy is getting help so that it does not wither and die. When your big old trees come crashing to the ground, it is only the new growth that will sustain you.

For the entrepreneurs who are reading this article, don't give up. This crisis will also pass. They all do. Whether it takes 6 months or 2 years, if you keep your dream alive, you will be positioned for rapid growth when the smoke clears. Get help from companies that promote meetings between local governments, entrepreneurs and venture capital. Keep the faith. Help is on the way.

Response to a Crazy Stock Market

To succeed in a difficult economy, you have to stay focused on the true value you provide for your customers. Remember that they started Google during the dot-com collapse. - RICK

clipped from sethgodin.typepad.com In search of value The stock market is going to be bonkers today. And for most people, it won't matter so much. Because most of us aren't focused on flipping assets. We're building value by creating interactions that work, by writing stories that spread or by designing products and services that actually create something worth paying for. That sounds like a treacly mission statement, but it's easy to get distracted by external noise instead of focusing on what counts. Hint: They started Google in the middle of the dot com melt down. The short-term consequences of an unstable stock market are real and uncomfortable. More (and better) adult supervision would have gone a long way, imho. But we can't control this, all we can do is focus on what matters. Hang in. Posted by Seth Godin on September 15, 2008 | Permalink

2 Xelerator Companies pitch to international Venture Capital firms at Norwegian Techtour 2008

Two companies that Xelerator is working with were chosen as finalists in the Norwegian TechTour 2008. Both MobileAxept and RPR Technologies presented their business plans to a group of Norwegian and international investors and Venture Capital companies in Oslo and Stavanger.

The following is from the Tech Tour press release:

"The European Tech Tour will be coming to Norway in August 2008 to meet the most promising start-ups and early stage technology companies from Norway. Applicants will compete to become one of the 25 successful finalists invited to present their business expansion plans to representatives from the global venture capital world. Finalists will receive advice from these venture capital experts and enjoy numerous networking opportunities."

Finalists are assessed and identified by the committee based on six key points:

1. Uniqueness of the technology
2. Solid business model
3. Vision
4. Capability to execute the business plan
5. Targeting relevant markets
6. Quality of management team and track record

MobileAxept was presented by Helge Krøgenes, who is a founding partner at Xelerator and CEO at MobileAxept. RPR Technologies was presented by Rick Salmon, who is also a founding partner at Xelerator and CEO at RPR Technologies.

Links to news articles about the Norwegian Tech Tour:

• Finansavisen, May 18, 2008 (Norwegian) Page 1, Page 2
• EuroInvestor, Aug.28, 2008 (Norwegian) TechTour
• Argentum, Aug.27,2008 (Norwegian) TechTour winners

The value of Focus and Commitment

In an extract from their fantastic interview, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs get a question from the crowd... "What is the single piece of advice you would give small business owners?". Enjoy their answers.

International Training Camp

Join us for the most unique, effective and dynamic workshop available for Norwegian entrepreneurs!

RICK SALMON explains Xelerator
International Training Camp

”Within 3 weeks after starting Training Camp, my sales revenues rose by 40%. This is a great experience and very valuable for any tech startup. – Thomas Moen, iPublish AS

What is the Xelerator International Training Camp?

Training Camp is a unique 12 week intensive workshop for Norwegian entrepreneurs and SMB leaders. It gives them direct access to some of the leading experts in international sales & marketing and is both instructional, practical and highly interactive.

Training Camp uses a unique combination of live seminars, teleconferences, webcasts, homework assignments and individual executive coaching to achieve significant results in record time.

Want to learn how to rapidly expand your sales to international markets and position your startup company for immediate funding?

What stage is your business at?

• Stage 4: I already have products and am selling internationally
• Stage 3: I have customers (but none in international markets)
• Stage 2: I have a product (but no customers yet)
• Stage 1: I have an idea (but not a product yet)

Next Training Camp Starts:
January 2009

For mer informasjon, KLIKK HER

Secrets to rapid international market success for startups

Attention to all Norwegian entrepreneurs with startup companies that have products & services suitable for international markets…

• Do you need funding for your early-stage startup company?
  

• Would you like to get advice and assistance from experienced experts without paying a fortune in consulting fees?

• What would be the effect if your small company was positioned and recognized as a global leader in your chosen market niche?

• What would be the effect if you were able to communicate a powerful and compelling message directly to your prospects and customers?

• In Norway it’s easy to get government funds for R&D, but how do you get funds for sales and market expansion?

• What would be the effect if you mastered Guerilla marketing skills?

• Most startups fail miserably. What if we could show you how to easily avoid this trap?

Xelerator is looking for Scandinavian SMB companies that want to accelerate their international sales and market success. Since many Norwegian startup companies fail because they do not get the help and assistance they need at early stages, Xelerator is offering a unique, intensive training program for entrepreneurs.

ATTEND A FREE ONLINE WEBINAR TO LEARN MORE
REGISTER HERE:
Go To http://www.xelerator.com for latest webinar info

Xelerator AS would like to invite you to a fun, unique and free online webinar where you can experience the following presentations:

1. A SENSE OF URGENCY – the key to creating a multi-national startup
2. FIVE SECRETS TO RAPID INTERNATIONAL SUCCESS – Guerilla tactics for Scandinavian SMB companies

Presenter: Rick Salmon – Serial Entrepreneur and Senior Partner, Xelerator

Webinar blir holdt på norsk. Registrer deg nå! De eneste kravene er tilgang til internet og telefon. Det tar kun én time. Ingen forpliktelser eller kostnader. Se www.xelerator.com for registreringsinformasjon.