To be successful as an entrepreneur, you don’t have to be a fabulous person, but it helps. Some people, and some entrepreneurs, have that something extra, like Simon Cowell is searching for on the X-Factor, that you can’t quite put your finger on. But the entrepreneurs that have “it” seem to be able to effortlessly get team members, investors, and customers to follow them anywhere.

I just finished a book on this subject, “The Essentials of Fabulous,” by Ellen Lubin-Sherman, who has been tracking fabulous people most of her life, as a writer and journalist. She identifies less than a dozen primary qualities for fabulous people in general, and I have honed and tuned these to ten that apply especially to entrepreneurs, in my experience:

1. Be passionate about life, as well as your business. Entrepreneurs who have passion in business, as well as their life, may drive us all batty, but there is never a dull moment. These moments are always being transformed into options to be explored. They make life interesting and an adventure, and everyone loves an adventure.
2. Be delightfully authentic and honest. Authentic entrepreneurs are destined and determined to have fun, as well as move forward in business. They have an unerring confidence that’s inspiring yet attainable. They savor relationships, and are generous with themselves and their smarts, so they attract a savvy following.
3. Be revered for an amazing positive attitude. Rather than cave when things get tough, optimistic entrepreneurs go analytic, looking for pivots that keep their goals in sight. They are disciplined, upbeat thinkers, but they don’t take themselves too seriously, and know how and when to laugh it off. A negative attitude takes everyone down.
4. Be warm and completely accessible. Warmth comes from your smile, and facial expressions that indicate genuine interest. Investors and partners look for entrepreneurs that will look them straight in the eye when speaking, and give their full and undivided attention while you’re speaking. Everyone looks for “rapport talk” rather than “report talk.”
5. Have impeccable manners and flair. Entrepreneurs who are always looking for opportunities to be gracious and considerate are going to be liked, admired, sought after, and trusted. In business, that means staying connected, showing up on time, with no signs of boredom or preoccupation. It’s not always about you, so dress and talk for them.
6. Be competent and confident. Competent people accomplish more in business because they’re driven by a pronounced sense of purpose. They are willing to put themselves on the line, and have confidently done their homework to know what it takes. They are reliably consistent, and unafraid to ask for help.
7. Able to just “get it.” Entrepreneurs who “get it” are emotionally attuned to peers and customers, so that their gut-level instincts become informed judgments that move the business forward. “With-it”-ness takes work, like reading the right blogs every day, challenging yourself to stay abreast of the latest technology, and social media marketing.
8. Have a big bandwidth. Can you talk, with equal engagement and respect, to your company’s CFO and the guy who pumps your gas? Look for opportunities to praise and nurture the people with diversity. Get comfortable out of your circle of interest and expertise. Go for that black belt in networking.
9. Be vivid virtually. Developing a superior virtual presence requires a mastery of several mediums – phone, email, text messaging, as well as handwritten notes – but the payoff is undeniable. But don’t overuse virtual communication to the exclusion of face-to-face time In all cases, don’t forget your sense of aplomb, mastery of tone, and the spell-checker.
10. Build and use a board of advisors. The right board is a group of individuals who may not know one another, but know you, and know your business domain. Plus, they need to be willing to put their brains and their expertise at your disposal as long as you need it. No entrepreneur is an island, so take the initiative to build and use an advisory board.

Paying attention to all these things is how you become a fabulous entrepreneur, with the X-factor. I’m sorry, but there is no magic, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Of course, it will never happen if you don’t start or don’t believe. But it’s worth the effort, unless you have something better to do?

Just because you are an entrepreneur, or work in a startup, you can’t ignore the rules of building and maintaining relationships. Many despise these experiences in corporate environments, and leave for a startup, only to find that they have to be able to navigate a similar minefield there of workplace and business relationships to be successful.

Jan Yager, Ph.D., an author and speaker on this and related subjects, outlines in her latest book “Productive Relationships: 57 Strategies for Building Stronger Business Connections.” From my experience and hers, here are ten top relationship strategies for people in startups:

1. Create a favorable first impression. You only get one chance for a first impression. Don’t miss an opportunity for face-to-face communication, where you can use body language that welcomes relating, estimated at over 50% of all communication. Limit the use of e-mail and texting for early interactions, where you miss the body language.
2. Avoid negative personality types. By recognizing negative personality types, like the control freak, the blameless type, the idea thief, and the entitled, you will have a better chance of not taking his or her behavior personally. Avoid associating with them.
3. Proactively form relationships with positive types. These are the people who will help you to thrive and prosper. They include real mentors, facilitators, visionaries, motivators, and negotiators. Of course, it still pays to keep your eyes open and carry your own weight.
4. Find a way to motivate others to want to get along with you. Understand your own agenda, and figure out the agenda of others, hidden or obvious, to make it a win-win relationship. How can you appeal to others on an emotional level to work together?
5. Reexamine your attitude toward conflict. Some conflict is inevitable. The key is how to deal effectively with it. Recognize points of view, respond to what happened, resolve what needs to be resolved, and reflect on the lessons learned. Then move on.
6. Deal with the “back-off” before it turns antagonistic. Rather than have a confrontation, someone backs off. You can’t make someone want to deal with you, but you can try to increase their motivation to deal with you – like getting together for lunch, or trying to communicate in another way.
7. Benefit from harsh feedback about your work. Receiving criticism is never easy. Try some recovery techniques, like taking a deep breath, give yourself time, and look at the issue from their perspective. Keep your initial response short and sweet and in control.
8. Cope with the “lonely at the top” syndrome. One of the prices that you pay for being a CEO is giving up a lot of the social relationships within the company. There is a line beyond which you cannot go. You cannot compromise what is right for the company just to be liked. Join associations, or rely on your family for support and feedback.
9. Say goodbye, if leaving is the best option. Sometimes it’s better to just move on, rather than endure extended pain. Even if you cannot quit this instant, you can at least start looking for a new job. Be proactive in planning for your next position.
10. Use social networking to improve your work relationships. Savvy workers at all levels are using these sites to develop and strengthen their business relationships as well as to reconnect with previous business connections. Make your own luck by giving and seeking referrals.

Compounding these strategies in today’s startup environment are two divergent concepts: a heightened degree of competitiveness, and a greater emphasis on teamwork. This means you need even more emphasis on effectively engaging others, and learning to deal effectively with potentially negative work relationships.

The startup world of the past, run by a couple of autocrats, no longer works. To succeed in today’s collaborative, customer-driven, networked economy, requires real business relationship efforts by everyone involved. No matter where you are in the spectrum, there is no time like the present to kick it up a notch.

It would be no fun if starting a business was simply plotting a straight line between your idea and success, with no challenges along the way. Zigging and zagging amongst the obstacles is the fun part of being an entrepreneur, and it’s what sets you apart from the average worker who knows exactly what he or she has to do every day to get paid. Relish it, or if it scares you, don’t try it.

That doesn’t mean that starting a business should be a random walk into the unknown. There are certain foundational elements that every entrepreneur must build on to succeed, as well as some critical tools we all need. I found these tried-and-true principles summarized very well in a new book “The Zigzag Principle” by serial entrepreneur Rich Christiansen:

1. Assess your resources. At some point financial capital is usually needed to meet business goals. But it’s not a substitute for the other critical resources, mental capital (domain knowledge, skills, and passions), plus relationship capital (friends and advisors). Money results from mental and relationship capital, not the other way around.
2. Identify your beacon in the fog. Start with a big audacious goal to guide you, so that every once in a while you can hit a smaller goal, to provide a break in the fog and catch sight of the beacon before those next steps into the darkness. Goals need to be written down, measurable, and realistic. Expect your fair share of zigzagging to get there.
3. Create a catalyzing statement. This is a key element of every elevator pitch, with enough specificity and fuel to keep you and everyone around you moving toward the beacon in the fog. This quantified big dream should be a long-term goal that your short-term zigzags are all leading to. Use your values as the foundation.
4. Drive your startup to profitability. A first zig of getting to profitability is important to every business, because being broke and always fighting for funding can cause a lot of pain. More importantly, profitability can drive you to find hidden assets, zag to interim revenue sources, and force you to pace yourself in getting to that final destination.
5. Define processes and add resources. After the initial zigs and zags to get profitable, it is time to formalize and document the processes that worked. Only then can you expand those things that led to your initial success. It also means that it’s time to stop micro-managing, hire some of the right people, and start giving up some control.
6. Scale the business. This is implementing a model that you can replicate, to get your product or service out across the country, and around the world. Scaling models charge by the transaction, or subscriptions, or have digital assets with no cost to reproduce. Switch to a mindset of working “on” your business, rather than “in” your business.
7. Stay within your guardrails. Set up some rules to constrain your zigs and zags to prevent “out of control” situations. Common controls include some spending limits, time commitment limits, financial milestones. These guardrails should be closely aligned with your values. Practice the art of saying “no,” and the discipline of delegating.
8. Develop reward systems. To keep you and your team from burning out, you need to define a simple system of motivators and rewards. Too much reward leads to an entitlement mentality. As you hit each zig, you need to take a break from the intensity, celebrate, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

The alternatives to planned zigzags are a planned straight line, or a planned random walk. Neither of these are realistic for an entrepreneur seeking success, but I still see them every day, and I see the pain that results. Smart entrepreneurs are nimble and flexile, bootstrap to the maximum degree possible, and pivot for emerging opportunities. Be one.

It’s time for more entrepreneurs to reset their focus, and shift their thinking to completely different ways of doing things. Everyone talks about innovation, but the majority of business plans I see still reflect linear thinking – one more social network with improved usability, one more wind-farm energy generator with a few more blades, or one more dating site with a new dimension of compatibility. Serious changes and great successes don’t come from linear thinking.

In searching for ways to get this message out, I came across a no excuse, no apology, new book by Brian Reich, called “Shift and Reset,” which makes some excellent points on ways to increase the range of change in a person’s thinking, or an organization’s results. Here are some key principles that he espouses and I support:

1. Force and expect change. Everyone knows change is hard and messy, and occasionally painful. But unless we force ourselves to change, innovate, and experiment with different ways of addressing serious issues, we won’t find solutions that are needed. Major innovation won’t happen without real commitment, sacrifice, and hard work.
2. Measure ability and results, not experience. Move to a model where people are measured on their deliverables, not how hard they are working, or how many years of experience they have. For entrepreneurs, this may mean more learning from experiments, and for organizations it may mean dumping a stagnant team to start over.
3. Don’t settle, demand the best. If you want to perform at the highest possible level, you need to hire the best people, who have produced consistent exceptional results. More energy needs to be spent on how the teams are organized and how the individuals work together. Leading an organization or a movement requires skills not taught in school.
4. Launch fast, fail quick, and learn more. Indeed, even the most capable, passionate, and well-supported entrepreneur will succeed only if he or she has a clear plan to follow. But don’t believe that any plan will develop and must remain unchanged throughout the execution process. Plan in your plan for constant change, with learning.
5. The time is now to think bigger. Great new ideas are emerging from the massive and frenetic coordination of people online and through connections. Let’s make sure they aren’t lost or ignored as we head into the future. Now is the time when smaller, yet dedicated groups can communicate and work to bring together disparate ideas.

Reich makes the point that everyone has a role to play in solving major issues, and driving greater innovation. The Internet and social media facilitates cooperation and collaboration, which is what we need to shift our thinking, then reset our goals and ways of attaining them. It’s much easier to challenge everything we know, and turn them on their sides.

Especially for change in serious social issues and infrastructures, it’s now easier to motivate people to care enough and take action. We will never innovate quickly by following the same, old, tired patterns. We need to realize what being connected really means, and makes possible. Now is the time to change.

Innovation begins with knowing your customer, so that’s always the first place to focus. The shift and reset in thinking applies to finding the solution, more than in defining the problem. Linear thinking on the solution can doom a startup or an entrepreneur. A good step in the right direction is to build a team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

This helps break linear thinking, and greatly reduces the probability that you’ll solve a problem in the same old way, or just like your competitors. Another approach is to bring in team members from outside your domain to challenge your thinking. You as an entrepreneur can either take the lead to make real change happen, watch it happen, or wonder what happened. You decide.

The Hype Cycle was a concept put forward by Gartner, Inc. back in 1995 meant to apply to technology product evolution and acceptance. As I was reading about it recently, it occurred to me that the concept relates directly to how investors see startup opportunities and potential success as well, at least those with technology in their offerings.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the Gartner Hype Cycle characterizes the over-enthusiasm or “hype” and subsequent disappointment that typically occurs with the introduction of new technologies. Hype curves then show how and when technologies move beyond the hype, offer practical benefits and become widely accepted. A hype cycle in Gartner’s interpretation always comprises five phases:

1. Technology trigger. The first phase of a hype cycle is the technology trigger or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest. This is the “truly disruptive technology” that startups often claim.
2. Peak of inflated expectations. In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications and startups using the technology, but there are typically more failures.
3. Trough of disillusionment. Technologies and related startups enter the trough of disillusionment because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic.
4. Slope of enlightenment. Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the slope of enlightenment and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. Plateau of productivity. A technology reaches the plateau of productivity as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. Startups can now truly define a problem, and position their solution for rapid growth. Investors love this stage.

For the latest info, Gartner recently released their Hype Cycle Special Report for 2011, detailing some of the biggest trends in technology this year. This report evaluates the maturity of more than 1,900 technologies and trends in 89 areas. New this year are application services and outsourcing, cloud application infrastructure services, cloud security, privacy and smart cities. It’s definitely worth a look.

According to the report, private cloud computing, NFC and Internet TV are at the moment overvalued. While, in the field of social media, social monitoring and activity streams as well as shopping communities, have moved into the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Other newly featured high-impact trends include big data, and natural language question answering. Disillusionment, on the other hand arises in the case of augmented reality.

There have been numerous criticisms of the hype cycle, one of which is that it is not a cycle, and that all technologies don’t really have the same outcome. Another criticism is that the shape of the line has not altered or accelerated in ten years, even though all the evidence suggests that the half-life of new technologies is getting shorter, and the number of competing technologies is increasing.

So, of course you have the option of ignoring hype cycle predictions, and pushing forward with your latest technology startup. Just don’t be surprised if you get investor pushback while early in the cycle, and be prepared with counter arguments. Great startups always beat the hype.

The first question most people seem to ask when contemplating a new startup is where they will get the money. That’s certainly a valid question, but all the money in the world won’t make your business a success if you hate what you are doing, and you aren’t prepared to do the job. I suggest that there are several other questions even more important than the money one.

The best way to assure the success of your startup is to do something you love, as opposed to something that will make you a lot of money. Of course, all these things and many more are critical, so it’s important that you keep your priorities straight. Here are the right questions to ask yourself, in the right order, before asking others about money:

• Do you understand and aspire to entrepreneur lifestyle? Being a startup founder is not a job, but a lifestyle, like getting married versus staying single. In fact, it’s more like being single, since founders usually have no one to lean on, no one to make decisions for them, no one to blame, and no vision to follow but their own.

• Do you have a passion for your idea and business opportunity? There is no joy in starting a business, if you can’t stand the people, business climate, or the day-to-day responsibilities of the job. Some people relate to service businesses, while others are more comfortable with manufacturing or construction.

• What type of business startup best fits your mentality? Beyond the traditional new product or service model, you can always buy an existing business, purchase a franchise, join a multi-level marketing (MLM) company, or simply go out on your own as a consultant. Each of these has their unique challenges and payback. Ask around.

• What level of experience and training do you have for this business? Be wary of stepping into an unknown business area, just because it looks easy or promises a big return. The real secrets of any business are not in textbooks, and you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Experience is the best teacher.

• Do you have real self-confidence and self-discipline? Starting a business is hard work and will require sacrifices. You will be operating independently, making all the decisions, and shouldering all the responsibility. Will you be able to persevere and build your new venture into a success?

• Do you have a viable plan? If you haven’t yet written down a business plan, you probably have no idea how much money you really need, or even if the opportunity is real. I believe the process of writing the plan is more valuable than the result, because it forces you to think through all the elements, and make sure they fit together and fit you.

• How much money do you really need? From your plan, calculate the absolute minimum amount you need to make your plan work, and then buffer it by 50%. Consider the non-cash alternatives, like offering equity instead of cash and bartering for services. Fundraising is extremely difficult, which is why most entrepreneurs do bootstrapping.

If you have made it this far, it’s fair to now start asking people where and when you can find the money you need (if any). Professionals will tell you that the sequence is friends and family first, angel investors second, and only then venture capital. Each of these has a cost in time an effort.

The process for all of these is networking (not email blasts or cold-calling investors). Start with the local Chamber of Commerce, industry associations, or investor seminars. Just attending doesn’t work. Use your entrepreneurial spirit to start some exchanges and relationships that can lead to your next step.

Starting a business is a marathon, so do your preparation and training before you ask for that bottle of water. Finding money is tough, but it’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is to do it all while enjoying the journey. Get busy, and have fun.

We can all dream about what it takes to make our startup a success. From recent survey feedback, it seems evident that the urban legends leading to success are wrong. The average entrepreneur is not the one who dumped a promising career, sketched his idea on the back of a napkin, and accepted millions from an investor to make billions of his own.

I was just perusing a more realistic report from the Kauffman Foundation for Entrepreneurship, titled “Making of a Successful Entrepreneur.” They surveyed 549 successful company founders across a variety of industries, and gathered their views on success and failure factors. Many are predictable, all were interesting, and a few even surprised me:

1. Stick with the business area you know. We all have a tendency to think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but 96% of these founders ranked prior work experience in their business area as an extremely important or important success factor.
2. It’s the learning; not success or failure, that makes the difference. Successful founders try and try again. 88% attributed their success to prior successes; 78% attributed success to prior failures.
3. The management team is critical. In looking back on their success, 82% of the founders attributed their success to strength of the management team (not the idea, business plan, or money). No surprise here.
4. A little luck never hurts. Surprisingly, a full 73% said that good fortune was an important factor in their success. 22% even ranked this as extremely important. Perhaps we can discount this a bit for humility, but there is nothing like being in the right place at the right time.
5. Don’t discount the value of your network. Professional networks were deemed important in the success of 73% of the founders. 62% of the respondents felt the same way about their personal networks.
6. Dropping out of school is not recommended. 95% of these founders had earned Bachelor’s degrees and 47% had more advanced degrees. 70% said their university education was important, so only a few said skip it. Born to be an entrepreneur may not be enough today.
7. First-timers usually fund their own venture. Venture capital and private/angel investments play a relatively small role in the startups of first-time entrepreneurs. 70% said they had to use personal savings as a main source for their first business.
8. Advice from investors is not worth much. Of the entrepreneurs who received advice from their company’s investors, only 36% ranked it as important, and 38% said it was not important at all. Surprisingly, even in venture-backed businesses, 32% said it was only slightly important. It sounds like founders want to make their own mistakes.
9. Willingness to take a big risk. When asked what may prevent others from starting their own business, the highest ranked factor by 98% was lack of willingness or ability to take risks. Founders clearly found entrepreneurship to be a risky endeavor.
10. Huge time and effort commitment. Along the same lines as the previous item, 93% felt from their own experience that the work and time challenges were a major barrier (no support for the part-time, work from home, get rich quick crowd).

Hopefully, by understanding what entrepreneurs think and believe, we can foster more successes, fewer failures, and better guidance, to those of you who haven’t taken the big step yet. If you are already committed, take heed of the advice of those who have been there and done that. People who don’t learn from other’s experience pay a high price just to get to the starting point.

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Yet, according to many sources, over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it.

According to a new book, “Small Business, Big Vision,” by self-made entrepreneurs Adam and Matthew Toren, it’s really a question of need versus want. We all want to have our vision realized sooner rather than later, but it can be a big mistake to bring in investors rather than patiently building your business at a slow, steady pace (organic growth).

In fact, most of the rich entrepreneurs you know actively turned away early equity proposals. Too many founders are convinced they “need” equity financing, for the wrong reasons, as outlined in the book and supplemented with a bit of my own experience:

• Need employees and professional services. Of course, every company needs these, in due time. In today’s Internet world, enterprising entrepreneurs have found that they can find out and do almost anything they need, from incorporating the company to filing patents, without expensive consultants, or the cost to hiring and firing employees.
• Need expensive resources up front. Many people think that having a proper office and equipment somehow legitimizes their business, but unless your business requires a storefront, everything else can be done in someone’s home office, or a local coffee shop, on used or borrowed equipment. Consider all the alternatives, like lease versus buy.
• Need to spread the risk. Some entrepreneurs seem to get solace and implied prestige from convincing friends, Angels, and venture capitalists to put money into their endeavor. If nothing else, these make good excuses for failure – no freedom, wrong guidance, etc.

On the other hand, there are clearly situations where your needs call for investors. Even in these cases, all other options should be explored first:

• Sales are strong – too strong. If you are not able to keep up with demand due to lack of funds for production, and your company is too young for banks to be interested, you will find that investors love these odds, and are quick to go for a chunk of the action.
• Your company has outgrown you. Some entrepreneurs are quick with creative ideas, and even excellent at managing the chaos of initial implementation. That’s not the same as instilling discipline in a larger organization, where most the challenge is people.
• You need a prototype. When you have invented a new technology, you need expensive models and testing, including samples for potential customers. If you don’t have the personal funds to make these happen, investors might be your only option.
• You need specialized equipment. If your solution depends on high-tech chips, injection molding, or medical devices, and you can’t get financing from suppliers, giving up a portion of the company to investors is a rational approach.
• General startup expenses are beyond your means. Investors are not interested in covering overhead, unless they are convinced that you have already put all your “skin in the game” (not just sweat equity), and have real contributions from friends and family.

When deciding whether and how an investor can help you, remember that finding outside investors requires a huge amount of time and work, perhaps impacting your rollout more than working with alternate approaches and slower growth. Perhaps you really need an advisor rather than an investor.

Even under the best of circumstances, working with an investor requires give and take. More likely, you now have a new boss – which may be counter to why you chose the entrepreneur route in the first place. Maybe that’s why bootstrapped startups are the norm, rather than externally funded ones. You alone get to make the big decisions on your big vision.

I see more and more entrepreneurs who seem to have everything going for them – vision, motivation, passion, even a good business plan, product, and money, and yet they can’t close customers. Maybe it’s time to look harder at the mantra of a new breed of gurus and successful entrepreneurs, including Steve Blank and Eric Ries, called “nail it then scale it” (NISI).

You can review all the specifics of this approach in a new book by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, appropriately titled “Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation,” but I will net it out here. I found their five phases of the process to be compelling, based on my own years of experience mentoring startups:

1. Nail the pain. Great businesses begin with a customer problem that has a big and monetizable pain point. Avoid the three big mistakes, of guessing but not testing the pain (on real customers), selecting a low customer pain (solution is only nice to have), or selecting a narrow customer pain (small number of customers willing or able to pay).
2. Nail the solution. Neither breakthrough technology nor maximum features will assure that “if we build it, they will come.” In fact, NISI recommends starting with the minimum focused set of features and technology that will drive a customer purchase. Success demands testing the solution early and quickly in the market, then iterating to get it right.
3. Nail the go-to-market strategy. In parallel with nailing the solution, you need an in-depth understanding of your target customer’s buying process, the job they are trying to get done, the market infrastructure, and a stable of serious pilot customers. Do real tests with real pricing to see if customers will pay you, without being pushed.
4. Nail the business model. Leverage your customer conversations to predict and validate your business model. For example, when you think about distribution channels, revenue streams, or the relationship with the customer, ask customers what they expect. Don’t forget a viable financial model of costs, margins, customer acquisition, and break-even.
5. Scale it. Don’t attempt to scale it until you have a proven repeatable business model that predictably generates revenue. Only then is it time to focus on the get-big-fast strategy, and the transformation of three key areas from startup to a managed growth company. These areas include market, process, and team transitions.

These pragmatics and points of focus can effectively counter three core myths which trap too many enterprising and capable entrepreneurs today:

• Hero myth: Why believing in your product leads to failure. All too often, founders fall in love with their products or technology, ignore negative feedback from customers, and spend years building a product based on a vision that no one else shares.

• Process myth: Why building a product leads to failure. Conventional wisdom is that after a great idea, the next steps are raise some money, build a product, then go sell the product. This doesn’t work when attacking unknown problems with untested solutions.

• Money myth: Why having too much money leads to failure. The old saying that “it takes money to make money” isn’t so simple. Money allows entrepreneurs to execute a flawed business plan far too long, rather than stay focused on the market and adapt.

At the heart of it, to be a successful entrepreneur you have to be totally customer centric, and learn to change and adapt as fast as the market. The pace of change in the marketplace is escalating, so entrepreneurs have to improve their ability to deal with change.

At the same time, more entrepreneurs are jumping into the fray, and less money is available from investors. It’s time for a new startup model. In my view, savvy “super angel” investors such as Mike Maples, Jr., and leading incubators such as Y Combinator, are already on this one. How far behind is your startup?

Behind most great startup success stories is a long list of mistakes! Unfortunately, for every success story you see, there is an even longer list of failure stories with mistakes that you don’t see. But rather than dwell on the failures, I’ve tried to extract from them a list of practical action items that will improve your survival probability.

Every startup mentor has his favorite list of basic strategies to avoid pitfalls, and I’m no exception. If my experience and insights can save just one founder from the stress, lost time, and lost money associated with a startup misstep, then I’m a happy man. I offer these pragmatic recommendations:

• Buffer your funding requirements. Consider both the money you need before funding, and the size of investor funding requests. You should buffer the first by 50%, and the second by 25%. You will be amazed at how many items you forgot to cover, and how fast the cash disappears. Severe cash flow problems may not be recoverable.

• Adapt your strategy monthly. Assume your initial strategy will be wrong. Most startups I know have “refined” their target market several times during their rollout. So be alert and be flexible. Watch out for the unknown, such as an economic recession you hadn’t counted on, or a new competitor with deep pockets.

• Reign-in expenses. The most important task of a startup CEO is to review every expense with a miserly hand BEFORE the money flows out. Do not delegate this task! Barter services and use equity to get things done for minimum cash. Make every effort to do things “in house”, rather than rely on outside services, accountants, and law firms.

• Create intellectual property. Start early by registering your company, and reserving the name as your website domain name. Reserve the same names on the leading social networks and blogs. The patent process is far from perfect, but it’s a huge step ahead of no proprietary content. Also don’t forget trademarks and copyrights.

• Make marketing and sales a priority. Every new startup needs to fight the urge to get the product out, and then start selling it. Do it in parallel, or the other way around, to keep from building the wrong thing. It takes leverage, effort and money to get in the public eye and stay there. Budget for it in time and dollars.

• Find and use top-notch advisors. One or two “experts” (largely unpaid) who have “been there and done that” can head off many mistakes and suggest a calm recovery plan for the ones you make. Resist the ego urge to “go it alone” or to convince yourself that you are smarter than your competitors.

• Temper theory with reality. There is no substitute for domain experience. No matter how well-educated you are, and how certain you are that you understand all the nuances of a business area, it is a good idea to work in a similar business for a few months to get a feel for the market and observe the unwritten rules before taking the plunge. This is especially true for students tackling their first venture.

• Manage your time. It takes practice and effort to focus on the most important things first. In business, “most important” means time to market, customer service, low cost, and beating your competitors. It also means knowing when to delegate, when to rest, and reserving time for effective communication with your team.

A final recommendation, which is really the most important one, is not to even start any business without an overriding passion, confidence, and commitment to it. These alone will play the largest part in defining your success along the way. Apply the recommendations outlined here, define your own rules and goals, and you will be well on the way to creating a successful and profitable business.

Startups are usually so focused on selling more of their branded product or service to their own customer base (organic growth) that they don’t consider the more indirect methods (non-organic growth) of increasing revenue and market share. Non-organic growth would include OEM relationships, finding strategic partners, “coopetition,” as well as acquisitions.

This initial focus is usually driven by limited financial and people resources, as well as the bandwidth of the executive team. Yet a creative and skilled team will often find that non-organic growth techniques can better leverage these limited resources.

An example of a startup which used non-organic growth early and effectively was Microsoft. Bill Gates started producing software solutions, like his Basic Interpreter and MS DOS, but quickly focused on adding thousands of small partners for applications, and major partners like IBM and other hardware manufacturers. Even mergers and acquisitions (M&A) came early.

Some people feel that organic growth is “better” because it requires real innovation and sustained effort to create long-term competitive advantage through differentiation and efficiency. They might agree that it cannot compensate for the speed and scale of growth of the non-organic approach, but has lower risks of failure.

Despite the risks, there are many advantages of non-organic growth, even in startup environments:

• New product or service lines. Organic growth assumes innovation in the product or service, but non-organic growth through white labeling and strategic partners may add totally new brands and services to your revenue stream.

• Fresh customer base. Teaming with another company, or buying another company, can add new geographical locations and new customer segments to the business. These relationships need not require cash investments; often they are done with exchanges of equity or assets.

• Economies of scale. In many cases business opportunities with competitors (coopetition) will open up a new marketing channel, and definitely give you the cost advantages of scale. Economies of scale also apply to marketing, distribution, and sales.

• New management skills. New business relationships mean new perspectives and new executives working on the opportunity. This can be a significant competitive advantage over major competitors, and overall reduces competition in the market place.

I’m certainly not proposing that one mode should be used to the exclusion of the other. Rather, I recommend that you pursue both concurrently, per the advantages of each. For example, if you are in an industry which is fragmented or has a slowing growth rate, with too many competitors, non-organic growth may be required for survival.

Use organic growth options for things which you do best, where there is plenty of room for growth by selling your products in new geographic areas, or using new sales channels, such as through a wholesaler or website. Organic growth is typically safer because you’re using a tried-and-tested business model, and you can reinvest profits back into the business.

Certainly non-organic growth has its pitfalls. Entrepreneurs, while partnering with or acquiring a new business, must check for compatibility and strategic fit. Yet startups looking for investors need to evaluate all the growth alternatives from the very beginning. “No growth” or even slow-growth companies waiting for an angel may have a long wait.

Change is about the only thing constant in the world of startups. Despite their own focus on changing the world, they often forget that they too have to change rapidly and often as the market evolves. Too many find that out too late, and are left chasing a rabbit that is long gone.

The solution is to establish and maintain a culture and processes that don’t view change as a discrete event to be spotted and managed, but as an ongoing opportunity to improve competitiveness. Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe, in an HBR article last year on change readiness for large companies, define it as “the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance.”

Since the startup environment is usually more volatile, the challenge there in balancing advantage, risk, and performance, is more critical than in big companies. The following initiatives that Chris and Tammie define for large companies apply just as directly to startups:

1. Improve change awareness. How good are you and everyone on your team at proactively scanning the environment for opportunities, emerging trends, and customer feedback? This contextual focus is critical to innovation and survival – the right product at the right time.
2. Increase change agility. Change agility represents a startup’s ability to immediately and effectively engage everyone in pending changes and innovations. It starts at the top with the founder and CEO, but has to extend quickly to the bottom of the organization. This requires leadership, teamwork, and trust at all levels.
3. Expedite change reaction. This is the ability to appropriately analyze problems, assess risks, and take responsibility for problem-dictated and market-dictated changes, while still sustaining the day-to-day business activities. It’s called the management of unplanned changes, or how well your startup reacts to crises.
4. Implement change mechanisms. Every organization needs to have specific mechanisms in place to facilitate change, including regular effective communication, reward systems that reinforce desired change behavior, and accountability for results. These won’t work in an autocratic or dysfunctional management environment.
5. Build a change readiness culture. Change readiness is hard work, and requires creativity sometimes in conflict with task orientation. People have to have the right attitude, and make the choice from the beginning to be ready to change at any time. They need a sense of urgency to handle change, and confidence in their leaders.
6. Imbue customer change focus. The more everyone in the startup is obsessed with satisfying customer needs and providing better customer service, the more effective the startup will be in adapting to change. Provide direct customer contact to everyone, as well as training.

Experts say that we live in a world where the pace of change is accelerating at the fastest rate in recorded history. On the other hand, change management practices seem to be changing very slowly, resulting in a 70% failure rate of change initiatives. Failure rates this high demand a new mindset and startups are the logical place for this to happen.

For starters, the whole team needs to be constantly trained and encouraged to develop their skills. Relevant skills include continuous improvement of existing methods, processes and devices against a set of quality metrics. The ultimate skills, which lead to innovation and totally new processes, usually come from experimentation and special studies.

In summary, change will happen. If your people and your startup do not change, statistics say you won’t succeed. It’s up to you to get out of your comfort zone and make things happen in your startup, rather than let things happen to your business.

Everyone in the business world has heard of the book by Geoffrey A. Moore titled “Crossing the Chasm” (1991), but most entrepreneurs have no idea how it relates to them. In fact, it’s all about the “focus” required to get early stage technology products across the deadly chasm from early adopters to mainstream customers.

Most investors and startup professionals expand this concept of focus to apply to key issues of every aspect of strategic and tactical planning in a startup. Missions and products that are too broad confuse your team, your customers, and potential investors. There are other chasms out there just as deadly as the technology one, such as the ones below:

• Market requirements chasm. The first chasm is getting the customer requirements right, product or service, to satisfy a real need that a large number of customers will pay real money to satisfy. It takes focus to resist adding a long list of features that seem to make the opportunity larger, but dilute to focus of both you and potential customers.

• Product development chasm. Another common chasm is never-ending product development. Focus is required to resist adding a few more neat features, made possible by the new technology, which in fact make the product more complex to use, impossible to test, and very expensive in time and cost.

• Marketing and sales chasm. Lots of people still believe the major cost of a new product is development. These days, with all the clutter in the marketplace, the highest cost is usually marketing. Focus is required here to pick the low-hanging fruit, break through the clutter, and then move on to the next segment. Marketing costs can be a deep hole.

• Customer support chasm. Products that have features which are unfocused, or aimed at too broad an audience, can be almost impossible to support. Customers need lots of help with installation, or can’t make the product work the way they expect. The result is that customer satisfaction in unachievable or at least very expensive.

In his book, Moore limits his discussion to the transition between customers that are visionaries (early adopters) and customer pragmatists (early majority), in the context of high technology products that appear “disruptive,” meaning they move innovation in that arena to a new level.

Here are the five customer segments outlined in his analysis:

• Innovators – they love the challenge of a new technology and expect problems
• Early adopters – customer visionaries driven by technology who expect it to work
• Early majority – pragmatists that buy only with peer review, references and support
• Late majority – conservatives who wait until the product is no longer state-of-the-art
• Laggards – skeptics who will only adopt when forced or the need is critical

The reason that his book was so popular, and is still studied in MBA programs and talked about by investors, is because his analysis has proven to be right so many times. There is a big gap between people who love to try new technologies, and the rest of us, who tend to be much more “technophobic.” Startups need to show real traction before attempting to cross the chasm.

I always recommend focus as the key to avoiding Moore’s chasm, as well as the others highlighted here. Start your business with a narrow niche and a focused strategy, but don’t stay there. As the company matures, and you learn more about your customers and your market, then it is time to go broader or deeper.

Build an overt strategy with feedback triggers to enhance the product to meet the needs of another segment of customers, and add more features to serve additional needs for the customers you already have. With this approach, you will find it a lot easier to jump all the chasms without crashing or breaking a leg.

With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 behind us, and the ongoing financial woes, there seems to be a growing population out there worried about all the people and companies watching to hurt them. Why is everyone so paranoid these days? My plea to entrepreneurs is to recognize it as an opportunity, and go the extra mile to make people’s life better rather than stoke the fires.

I must be the only one who believes that most of the “watching” in the real world, and on the Internet, is done by businesses to help you find what you want, protect you, and improve your experience, rather than invade your privacy or scam you.

I certainly agree that just like in the real world, consumers have to assume that there are always bad groups on the Internet, as well as down the street, trying to rip you off, so stay out of bad neighborhoods, and keep your wits about you at all times. Internet users need to start watching out for themselves, like looking both ways before you cross the street.

In addition, there is a real business opportunity here for startups. I know companies who collect sensitive data from consumers all the time, and still seem to keep a squeaky clean image (Amazon.com, Ebay). There are others who are always a bit suspect, or have been hit hard by their mistakes.

The opportunity is to take advantage of the new power and tools on the Internet. Here are a few specifics on how to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem:

• Put a personal face and address on your site; don’t hide behind an “info” email address.
• Make your company visible, reachable and responsive through social networks.
• Market your solution and user benefits, not the mysterious technology behind it.
• Use video and audio, rather than jargon, abbreviations, and computer lingo on your site.
• Make navigation simple and consistent, with abundant online help

The good news is that, if your company does it right, it might be another Amazon. There seems to be an insatiable demand from consumers for a better shopping experience, meaning they will pay a premium to a company that can present them a better match in products to their interests, without jeopardizing their good name.

In support of this, despite qualms, consumers seem very quick these days to provide more personal data to get something they want. Young people naively enter their pictures and personal data for fun on social networking sites, ignoring constant feedback from the media that these are bad practices.

The bad news for startups is that your company can lose big if it’s caught in the middle. A few months ago, the Sony PlayStation Network was hacked, with personal data of up to 70 million people stolen, and this black eye won’t soon go away. A few years earlier, PayPal was hit by a scam to get the personal information of its users, and some feel it hasn’t really recovered since.

Sometimes the problem cause is that startups forget the technical standards and quality processes that every Internet rollout must follow to reduce the risk. Don’t take shortcuts on these. I see lots of new software put together on a shoestring as a “proof of concept” – but then gets rolled out to customers “asis” due to lack of time or money to “harden” the product.

What I learned from a panel discussion a while back, sponsored by an association of lawyers, is that lawyers don’t have any answers, and are all too quick to fan the flames of fear and paranoia. They merely highlighted consumer privacy rights, with much hand-wringing about big bad companies that are capturing shopping habits without consumer knowledge on the Internet.

A better approach is to use your marketing power to tell people that you can now ring their cell phone in front of their favorite store for a special sale, and allow them to “opt in,” rather than surprising them with your new technology. Few people are paranoid about something they want and expect. That’s just good business.

When I heard a friend make the statement “Your startup can’t fail if you don’t quit,” I realized that every entrepreneur should adopt it as their mantra. Pivoting or dealing a new hand is not quitting. If we all take this mantra, we can drastically improve the statistic that over half of new startups fail within five years. Nothing is more discouraging to future entrepreneurs than a failed startup.

Why do most startups fail? There are a thousand reasons listed by pundits across the media, but most of them agree that the number one reason is NOT running out of money. The number one reason is that the founder quits. Of course, they may be quitting because they ran out of money, but good entrepreneurs tell me that running out of money is most often an “excuse” rather than a “reason.”

Let’s take a look at the main reasons given for startup failures, and suggest some alternatives to quitting:

• “I’ve lost interest – I don’t want to do this anymore.” This suggests you have lost your passion for the current business model, probably because someone suggested you change from your original concept to make it easier, or to make more money. My suggestion is to morph the current idea into one you love and enjoy, rather than quit and take an employee role you never wanted.

• “I can’t find any investors in this economy.” If you can’t bootstrap the venture yourself, find a partner, friend, or family member rather than a professional investor to carry some financial weight. Otherwise, look for advances from distributors, vendors, and even future customers. Try bartering services you have for something you need. I’ve seen countless creative solutions to the cashflow problem, from people who don’t quit.

• “The people around me are all turkeys.” We all make people mistakes. So you made some bad hiring or partner decisions. Now is the time to face up to these issues and move out the people who don’t fit, rather than let them destroy your startup. The sooner it is done, the happier both of you will be.

• “I don’t have the skills or discipline to run this business.” If you knew everything that had to be done, and could do it easily, you would be bored and lose interest (back to item #1). If millions of people all over the world run businesses, there is nothing implicit in the role that is beyond normal intelligence. Half the fun is learning, so get started today, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

• “I finally realized there is no market for what I do.” Big markets rarely spring “full grown” out of nothing. Every entrepreneur has the challenge of making a market, or differentiating his product to match an existing market. Every startup I know has tweaked (or totally transformed) their product several times, rather than quit.

• “I grew too fast and everything is spinning out of control.” This is probably a good reason to scale back and focus on organic growth, but it’s not a good reason to quit. You must have something of interest, or growth wouldn’t be the problem. Reset to the basics, get financial or management help, and failure should not be an option.

Another important point is that even if you declare your current startup a failure, don’t let it defeat you. Most people agree that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. The bright side is that investors tell me they are wary of funding an entrepreneur who has never failed (in his own mind), since that often leads to a cocky and unrealistic view of future expectations.

Overall, my view is that starting a business is just like everything else. Nothing important is all that easy, and all of us stumble a few times and pivot along the way as we learn. There is a real difference between cashing in your cards for a new hand, in the face of unbeatable odds, versus quitting and walking away from the challenge. You don’t learn any lessons by walking away.

“Will the dogs eat the dog food?” This rather crude expression weighs heavily on the mind of all good startup founders, no matter how confident they appear. We all know the products they give away, and the ones purchased by family and friends don’t count. The real milestone, proving the business model, is that first product sold for full price to a total stranger, leaving him happy.

So what can you do to expedite this event, or even improve the odds that it will happen at all? Of course, one sale isn’t really enough, so you need to get the first customer to recommend you to a second, and make sure rate of sales ramps up quickly enough to keep the business alive and growing.

This whole process is particularly worrisome to many startup founders, since their expertise and background more likely technology than sales. If you are one of those, here are some basics principles you should follow and live by until that milestone is behind you:

• It’s the market, stupid. I still see too many entrepreneurs who build a product and spend lots of money because THEY are in love with the idea or technology. There is no substitute for good market research, talking to experts, analyzing the competition, and listening to potential customers from day one.

• Sell what you have, not what you dream. Customers don’t buy the impossible dream. I believe in pre-selling and early marketing, but make sure you don’t oversell what you can deliver. I recently knew a founder whose sales pitch was always the next generation of his product, and he never understood why customers always decided to wait.

• Your revenue model has to make sense. If you lose money on every sale, it’s hard to make it up in volume. On the other hand, if your price is over the moon, even the best product features probably won’t sell it. Many of the Internet business plans I see these days say the service is free, and revenue will come later from a huge user base. You need deep pockets to make this one work.

• You need a sales channel that works, and one you can afford. Even with the global reach of the Internet, selling your first product from your website will likely not be much of a business. To get the reach you need probably requires one or two levels of distribution, partnerships, or joint ventures. Direct sales are too expensive, and word-of-mouth is too slow.

• A product, without customer support, is not ready for sale. Remember that your ultimate goal is satisfied customers, not just the best product. The sales process has to be smooth, the customer support impeccable, and the customer-facing people delightful and empowered.

• Selling is a learned skill, and takes effort, just like building a product. Everyone in your startup needs to understand sales, and needs to be a salesman. Don’t assume that only “fast talkers” are good salesmen, or that you can hire a good salesman at the last minute to sell your product. The best salesmen know their products and their customers better than anyone else, and they believe in both. That should be you.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you wait until all these items are perfect before you open your doors. If you do that, you will never achieve this milestone. The real job of an entrepreneur is to manage the right variables, with the right level of risk, to get and stay just one step ahead of their competitors.

What I am suggesting is that you laser focus on that first real customer from the very beginning. His real requirements might keep you from getting sidetracked by all the neat features your technology could deliver, and your dreams of delivering the perfect product. What you really want is a successful business and all your customers to be happy puppies.

Every time I hear about a new startup that is in stealth mode, I wonder what problem they are hiding from whom. Of course they pretend that they are trying to avoid alerting competitors prior to launch, but too often it becomes an excuse to move slowly in a world that’s all about getting to market fast.

I believe stealth makes sense for large companies who can be sued for “pre-announcing” a new product to stall the market or kill a competitor. It also makes legal sense to never disclose the details of your patent application, before the product is ready to ship. But otherwise, startup companies should seek out publicity and the open sharing of information, from day one.

Openness is part of the business culture of entrepreneurs and technology centers around the world. People talk to people, and even competitors freely exchange news on trends and discoveries. Here are seven ways this can actually help your startup efforts, rather than hurt them:

1. Initiate media interest. These days, new technologies and social trends are fanned from an ember into a flame by the media and word-of-mouth. This takes time, and is more valuable than any advertising you can buy. It’s probably here that you need the “first-mover advantage” more than in the lab.
2. Get concept feedback early. No matter how good you are, your initial idea is likely to be at least partially wrong. The sooner you get that feedback from people who count, the better your chance of recovery, and the less money you have wasted. Don’t be so arrogant to assume you won’t need course corrections.
3. Find your real competitors. The sooner you disavow yourself of the notion that “we have no competitors,” the more likely you are to survive. “No competitors” may mean no market (give up now), or customers are happy with alternatives (keep their car rather than ride the new fast train). Face reality early, and you can deal with it.
4. Deliver minimum product and iterate. Stealth mode can give you a false sense of security that you can take additional time to get it right the first time. Time is your biggest enemy, and customer feedback is your biggest ally. A startup that has been incorporated for two years or more without shipping is already seen as a bad investment.
5. Prime the investor world. Don’t talk directly to potential investors until you have the business plan and other basics complete. But start networking with advisors, industry pundits, and domain experts early. Your direction will get back to potential investors, and create a sense of heightened expectations that can help you get in the door when ready.
6. You need time to pivot. The good news is that almost every mistake can be undone, if you have the time. Customers are more forgiving of early visible changes in direction, and the cost is much lower for you. With stealth mode, you can’t learn early enough to pivot gracefully.
7. Tune your website. Most startups need funding before shipping, and investors expect to see your website to validate your business plan. In addition, a website needs several weeks of presence for indexing by search engines, search engine optimization, blog activity, and link building. These things can’t be done while in stealth mode.

To enforce stealthy behavior, startups often require everyone, even potential employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, and strictly control who may speak with the media. This is a turnoff to everyone, and real investors never sign nondisclosures. It’s all an expensive distraction that doesn’t work.

Overall, I recognize that there are some startups, like biotech and semiconductors, with long highly technical development cycles and huge competitors, where early stealth makes sense. With most others, like web services, incubation time must be short, and secrecy can be the kiss of death. For these startups, stealth mode can keep you under the radar, just when you wish you could be found.

If you want people to invest in your idea, then my best advice is first write a business plan, and keep it simple. Don’t confuse your business plan with a doctoral thesis or the back of a napkin. Keep the wording and formatting straightforward, and keep the plan short. For minimum content, see my article “Investors Expect Ten Essentials in a Business Plan.”

The overriding principle is that your business plan must be easy to read. This means writing at the level of an average newspaper story (about eighth-grade level). Understand that people will skim your plan, and even try to read it while talking on the phone or going through their e-mail.

But don’t confuse simple wording and formats with simple thinking. You’re keeping it simple so you can get your point across quickly and effectively to team members and investors. With that in mind, here are some specifics updated from an old article on simple plans by Tim Berry:

1. Keep the plan short. You can cover everything you need to convey in 20 pages of text. If necessary, create a separate white paper for other details and reports. The one-page Oprah plan is a good executive summary, but it’s not enough to get the investment.
2. Polish the overall look and feel. Aside from the wording, you also want the physical look of your text to be inviting. Stick to two fonts in a standard text editor, like Microsoft Word. The fonts you use should be common sans-serif fonts, such as Arial, Tahoma or Verdana, 10 to 12 points.
3. Don’t use long complicated sentences. Short sentences are the best, because they read faster, and reader comprehension is higher in all audiences.
4. Avoid buzzwords, jargon and acronyms. You may know that NIH means “not invented here” and KISS stands for “keep it simple, stupid,” but don’t assume anybody else does.
5. Simple straightforward language. Stick with the simpler words and phrases, like “use” instead of “utilize” and “then” instead of “at that point in time.”
6. Bullet points are good. They help organize and prioritize multiple elements of a concept or plan. But avoid cryptic bullet points. Flesh them out with brief explanations where explanations are needed. Unexplained bullet points usually result in questions.
7. Don’t overwhelm the plan with too many graphics and flashy colors. Pictures and diagrams can effectively illustrate a point, but too many come across as clutter.
8. Use page breaks to separate sections. Also to separate charts from text and to highlight tables. When in doubt, go to the next page. Nobody worries about having to turn to the next page.
9. Use white space liberally, spell-checker, and proofread. Include one-inch margins all around. Always use your spell-checker. Then proofread your text carefully to be sure you’re not using a properly spelled incorrect word.
10. Include table of contents. No investor likes searching every page for key data, like executive credentials, or exit strategy. Most word processors these days can automatically generate a table of contents from your section headings. Use it.

Investors hear from too many entrepreneurs that envision a great business opportunity, but don’t have any written business plan at all. They think they can talk their way to a deal. It won’t work. On the other end of this spectrum are entrepreneurs who present long product specifications with a few financials at the end. This is a failing strategy as well.

If you’re not the type who can connect with people based on a simple message, told succinctly, then hire someone who can. In fact, simplicity and readability is one of the most effective strategies for selling even the most complex proposal. A business plan that is easily understood and looks professional is already half sold. Simple is not stupid.

Too many entrepreneurs confuse motion with momentum and results. We all know someone who repeatedly tells us how “busy” they are, when it’s hard to see what they get done. Momentum is moving things forward (mass x velocity). Founders or employees in constant motion, but with no momentum, will kill any startup.

It is true that motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all. But motion without momentum is even less productive than no motion at all. For a more thorough discussion of this phenomenon, see the book entitled “Fake Work: Why People Are Working Harder than Ever but Accomplishing Less”, by Brent Petersen and Gaylan Neilson.

So how do you fight this, and get real momentum going in your startup? Here are some key recommendations:

• Measure results, not work. Build your business plan and day-to-day operations around real results that are quantifiable and measurable. For example, a result is not forty hours of work, but a prototype complete, partner contract signed, or first customer sale.

• Focus and prioritize. There will always be more things to do than anyone has hours in a day. Focus means act instead of react, act on the important things. Don’t allow yourself to be interrupted by “urgent” issues of the moment, which may not be important.

• Live the 80/20 rule. Pick the 20% of your important tasks that will deliver 80% of the results. Judiciously apply the 20% of your energy where it will achieve 80% of the momentum you desire. Maintain that balance of work, family, sleep, and unwind.

• Communicate effectively. People can’t do the job you want unless you communicate effectively. So they scurry around trying to look busy, or work on random things that they hope might generate momentum. Tell people what results you expect, tell them how they measure up so far, and tell them how much you appreciate their efforts.

• Recognize the finish line. Don’t burn yourself and everyone out, by continuing a forced march after you pass the finish line, or even a major milestone. Gather your thoughts and savor the small successes along the way.

During the early start-up phase, most of the momentum in a new company derives from the entrepreneur’s own commitment and self-sacrifice. You do almost everything by yourself, and your focus is on building enough cashflow so you can start bringing in people to help you. Watch yourself for wasted motion during this stage.

Cashflow is the element of momentum that allows you to hand over jobs to other people and do more of your core passion jobs, like creating content or designing new products. This creates more value in your business and increasing cashflow – more momentum.

What you then want is for the momentum to compound, with each new employee or outsourcer you hire to help, to give you get more time to create value and ultimately, increase profits. At this point especially is where you need to watch out for fake work, which thrives in less dedicated hires, outdated cultures, and old work processes.

Recent research indicates that across all business organizations, as much as 50% the work that people do in that stage is just motion not related to their company’s strategies. Think of the drag this can put on your momentum.

Starting a new business is a little like taking off for the first time as the pilot of a new airplane. You need to push that throttle all the way to the dashboard until your knuckles are white, but never forget the relationship between motion and momentum. Are you pushing the right throttles?

Getting things done effectively in a startup requires total individual and team accountability. You can’t afford excuses and multiple people doing the same job. In my view, “taking responsibility” is the core element behind accountability. Many people hear responsibility as an obligation, but I hear it as “the ability to respond.”

Unfortunately many people don’t have the ability to respond, because they lack confidence in themselves, or simply don’t have the skills required. Therefore an entrepreneur’s first requirement is to hire or team only with people who are accountable (already have the confidence and skills you need) – training them on the job is prohibitively expensive when you have minimal income.

Even with the best people, accountability must be nurtured, since it can be killed more quickly than it can be grown. Here are some characteristics of business leaders who foster responsibility, and keep it growing:

1. You need to walk the talk. Above all else, you as the founder or executive have to be a role model of accountability. You need to exemplify the “buck stops here,” and never play the blame game. Reward accountability consistently and often.
2. Communicate continuously. You need to make sure that your team members understand your expectations, and you need to proactively listen and understand the expectations of all stakeholders. Frequent and consistent communications, both verbal and in written processes, are required. Take away the “I didn’t understand” excuse.
3. Measure objectively. Goals and objectives must be unchanging and measurable, based on results, with benchmarks for comparisons. Accountability assessments must be based on facts, not distorted by opinions, politics, and desire for power. Frequently changing expectations does not lead to accountability.
4. Give control before expecting accountability. A sense of responsibility and accountability requires a sense of control. If several levels of approvals are needed for a specific decision, no one will feel accountable, and no one can be held accountable. Real delegation is required.
5. Align functional groups with business goals. If key inputs are not under the control of the proper group, then they will cede accountability as well. If your sales group is measured on profitability, but is required to process leads from outside sources paid by volume, you have a conflict where everyone loses.
6. Manage up the line and support your team. You need to be the sponsor and the advocate for every member of your team. Team members who take risks through accountability need to see your overt support up the line, with no blame and no scapegoats.
7. Provide timely feedback on performance. High performance teams need immediate and useful information on how to improve, as well as regular full performance reviews, individually and as a group. Help people, including yourself, look in the mirror and see reality.
8. Conduct humiliation-free problem analyses. Getting to the source and fixing problems should never be a “name and shame” game. Leaders need to provide safe havens where difficult issues can be discussed without assigning blame. The goal should always be to solve problems, not hurl accusations.
9. Provide tools to support accountability. No tools and no data lead to total subjectivity and biased interpretations. Absolute dependence on tools leads to abdication of personal responsibility. Provide adequate tools, but trust the people.
10. Differentiate accountability from entitlement. Accountability is hard, so no one is entitled to be right every time. Don’t punish people for making a mistake, but make it clear the mistakes have consequences, sometimes painful ones, that we all have to live with. Higher responsibility means more work and more skills needed.

Many executives subscribe to the misguided notion that you can hold people accountable. This is usually a ploy to control others and hand off responsibility, without being accountable yourself. People need to make themselves accountable, and accept the consequences of their actions. Remember that you are the model, and what goes around, comes around.