Entrepreneurship

Choosing/Decision-Making / Education / Entrepreneurship / Perception

Where do you see yourself in five years?

The college course catalog fascinated me---hundreds of courses in dozens of subjects from amazing teachers. I wanted to take them all! Choosing four or five course from them was wonderful torture. Choosing which to take wasn't nearly as hard as choosing which not to. I used to think, "I'll take these two courses ... which will set me up for this major ... which will set me up for this job ... which will set me up for this career ..." and in a few hours I'd plan out my life's next few decades. The next semester I'd find other courses and plan a new and different several decades. By graduate school I learned to plan only a couple years ahead. Who knew what experiment…

August 17, 2015

Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Op/Ed Fridays: “How Much Is a C.E.O. Worth?” misses the point

Everyone outside large corporations believes they pay their CEOs more than necessary for their performance, or at least a huge majority. In the latest of a million articles on the topic, "How Much Is a C.E.O. Worth? America's Confused Approach to Pay," the New York Times continues to ask ineffective questions about changing anything. Like most articles, it asks "Do corporate chief executives make too much money, or too little?" and other questions of value. We already know there is no absolute measure of worth. Corporations pay what they negotiate with CEOs, the same as with other employees. Nowhere does the article use the most relevant words in pricing: supply and demand. Therefore the article never reaches any helpful solutions. I can tell you that…

August 7, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Op-Ed Friday: Men and learning leadership

At a meeting to promote the teaching of leadership a couple months ago, I saw several proposals to support women pursuing leadership but none for men. I sensed that others there felt that since men held nearly all corporate and government positions of authority that men had greater access to positions of leadership. I didn't feel comfortable bringing it up, but I found a few perspectives missing. Advantages existing for men to attain leadership positions doesn't make the average man happier or make his life easier. Most men have no access the corporate or political power of any sort. Actually, men having advantages unrelated to leadership would suggest men would learn less how to lead, since they'd need less skill. We as a nation, society,…

July 10, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Leadership

Why leadership and entrepreneurship exercises work

It sucks when you're playing a team sport and you get shut down trying to cut to get open, the other team scores on you, you throw into an interception or some mistake like that. Few of us enjoy admitting to faults, so we often make excuses that the problem was with your team mates, the sun, the equipment, or something out of your control. When you run drills or exercises in practice, it's another story. Effective ones are designed to focus on particular skills. A cutting drill, for example, focuses on cutting. You might have to run the same cut many times in a row against different team mates but everything else is the same. If you don't get open, you can't blame anyone…

July 7, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Events

See me speak on entrepreneurship: Princeton, July 16

Join me at Princeton's tech meetup, July 16, 6:45pm! The title of my talk is "8 Steps from No Idea to Funding." I hope to see you there. From the announcement: Topic:Â 8 Steps from No Idea to Funding Speaker:Â Joshua Spodek 6:45 - Arrival - Snacks, Pizza and Networking. 7:15 - Introduction / Announcements by the organizers. 7:20 - 7:30 Apply for Startup Demo / PitchesÂ (ONE MINUTE each) 7:30 -Â 8 Steps from No Idea to Funding - Â Joshua Spodek 8:30 - Open-mic to quickly promote your business or broadcast a need that someone in the group might be able to ï¬ll. 8:45 - Wrap-Up, discussion of Meetup, feedback and opportunities for improvement or future topics. 8:55 - End of formal part of meeting. 9:00 - Exit…

July 6, 2015

Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Habits / Leadership / Relationships / Tips

How to make a phone call with someone you don’t know but want to help you

[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I just got off the phone with a client who was preparing for a call with someone important to help her. She was nervous because of his status and not sure how to make the call work. She typically would talk too much about herself, which didn't get the results she wanted of the other person wanting to help her. I told her, based on "Fundamentals and technique: what you do when you don't know what to do," that in such situation I…

June 16, 2015

Entrepreneurship

Today’s problems were yesterday’s solutions. Today’s solutions will be tomorrow’s problems.

Entrepreneurs want to improve the world. They want to solve your problem so much that you prefer their solution to your money so that you give it to them. If every entrepreneur is trying to improve things, why doesn't entrepreneurship finish? The same could be asked for business in general. As times change, solutions become problems. We may have collectively created more material prosperity, but in terms of happiness and health, for all the improvements our innovators claim, I'm not sure if we're better off, and most of our improvements came from simple innovations like washing hands. In other words, much of what people in the past considered improvements didn't sustainably improve things. Those improvements became today's problems, or at least things that we can…

June 11, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

How much time did you waste on that project you loved?

People often ask me if I use my physics education today. You face similar questions from others, I'm sure. You probably ask them of yourself. Nobody's life follows a straight path from birth to where they are. I loved the field, but I don't publish or do physics experiments. I still love the field and can't believe everyone doesn't study it more in school. But I teach and coach leadership and entrepreneurship now. Was the six years of graduate school worth it? I don't look at the question that way anymore. I don't find evaluating the past useful. What I find useful is using the past to learn from and guide myself in the present for a better future. "Given my experience in physics, how…

May 9, 2015

Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Perception

You don’t have to overcome adversity to achieve a lot

I keep hearing people say that if only they lived in a time of greater crisis, they could have achieved more. They look at George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and other famous leaders and notice they emerged through crises. I read a Harvard Business Review article implying people have to go through crucibles to develop as leaders. You don't have to overcome adversity to achieve a lot. You don't need an outside challenge. I think people don't look for counterexamples because it's easier to blame external factors than to take responsibility for realizing your dreams. It's like a version of my touchstone strategy: Don't look for blame but improve things to the extent you can. There are plenty of role models if…

March 30, 2015

Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Tips

Know your geese!

A friend and colleague visited a couple weeks ago. He invited me to breakfast with another friend of his who happened to be an incredibly successful founder and CEO of a business related to a project of mine. You don't expect to make such valuable connections. We made a great connection and may find ways to collaborate. I met the visiting friend in the first place through another guy I didn't know well, but who suggested we meet. He also put me in touch with my book agent. Agents are notoriously hard to find and create relationships with, especially at the early stage I was at when I met her. That's three great connections from one guy. He's a goose who lays golden eggs. He's…

March 27, 2015

Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Tips

Involving people attracts and engages them. Pitching makes them evaluate.

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] You wouldn't believe how much access you have to people, both the number of people and how much each one will listen to and help you. This principle surprises and helps people more than the other three. They're used to asking people for their opinions on their ideas, followed by getting a judgment, followed by the end of a conversation, followed by them having to guess at what to do about it…

March 12, 2015

Creativity / Entrepreneurship

The idea of a lifetime comes once a month

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Even Thomas Edison, with over a thousand patents, only produced a handful of products that stood the test of time. If one of the greatest inventors of all time succeeded only about a percent of the time, what chance do I have, not coming up with a thousand ideas? If I come up with any idea at all, I better make sure I don't make any mistakes and mess it up. I…

March 11, 2015

Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Better than a great idea is an okay idea plus listening to your market plus flexibility

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] The most common reason I hear from people who want to start projects or companies but don't for why they don't is that they haven't come up with a great idea. I've written about this common myth of entrepreneurship. People look at successful companies and project based around products or services that people love. They assume someone came up with the idea, acted on it, and success followed. Rarely does it happen…

March 10, 2015

Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

More important than personality is skills you can learn

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] People with great soft skills seem to dominate many areas in business . I think of leadership and sales first, though also entrepreneurship. People erroneously see people who succeed in those areas as born, not made. Or they at least ask if great leaders or salespeople are born or made. The media propagate this myth because it leads to drama, which sells copy and movie tickets. Unsuccessful people like it because it…

March 9, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship

Four principles of creating ideas people want to help you with

[This post is part of a series on principles to create ideas people want to help you with and creating a helpful, supportive community around you. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view that series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] I'm developing a course on how to get a job doing what you enjoy. Like the leadership class I'm piloting, it's exercise-based. It walks you through how to find something you like, create a project based on it, which generally turns into a passion, and then share the project with a community in a way they support you and often want you as part of their team. So far four people have…

March 7, 2015

Art / Awareness / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Fitness / Habits / Tips

This pattern improves your life

Notice this pattern and you'll know how to improve it. It applies to an activity. I'm thinking of exercise when I write it, but many activities fit it. The pattern When you're not about to do it, you think of it as something you generally want to do. When you're about to do it, you feel anxious, maybe to the point of fear. You have to overcome that anxiety and fear to start it. Starting is hard. After you start, it's hard and unpleasant, but you feel emotional reward for doing it. As hard as it is, since you're doing it, you want to keep doing it and push your limits. As much as you want to keep doing it, you can't keep it up.…

February 3, 2015

See Fashion Entrepreneurs Coco and Breezy with Columbia Business School’s Alumni Club

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship

See Fashion Entrepreneurs Coco and Breezy with Columbia Business School’s Alumni Club

Coco and Breezy Prince wore their sunglasses -- from his album cover -- on Saturday Night Live. BeyoncÃ© showed them in her video. Vogue labeled them "fashion icons". Rhianna, Serena Williams, and more wear their accessories, sold in twenty countries and growing, as well as at cocoandbreezy.com. Find out how these twins from Minnesota started their brand in their teens ... with a thousand dollars between them. I didn't mention in my last announcement how dynamic, friendly, and open they are as speakers. Their brand is based on themselves, and they put themselves out there -- in social media, in public appearances, and when they spend time with stars. Whether you want to market products, market yourself, or learn to be more open and expressive…

January 29, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Influence and persuasion class starts Saturday

This Saturday begins my class at General Assembly on influence and persuasion. Register here We call the class "Entrepreneurial Sales" because it teaches entrepreneurial skills and uses a model of selling for its structure, but it's about broader concepts of influence, persuasion, value, and building relationships based on understanding others' needs. I used to think sales was part of the business other people did---something low-level that used pressure and made people feel bad, like selling used cars or souvenirs in tourist traps. Boy was I wrong! Sales is also Getting hired (selling your labor) Hiring people (selling your company's culture) Pitching proposals (selling your ideas) Getting funded (selling shares in your company) Influencing and persuading others (selling your perspective) Getting promoted (selling your skills) Knowing…

January 27, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises

New to the public: My Sales course!

If you think of used car salespeople when you think sales, you're missing out on some of the most important skills and perspectives for life. Not just business, but any interactions with people. Sales also means proposing ideas, job interviews (selling your labor),Â hiring great people (selling your organization), fund-raising (selling equity), and more. Approaching sales from a leadership perspective teaches you to influence and persuade to create long-term, productive, mutually beneficial relationships. As with my leadership courses, I teach skills anyone can use and that will be valuable your whole career and applicable across your life, not just in business. I'm teaching the class at General Assembly. Register here. From the registration page: A strong sales team is essential to any sustainable organization. Sales…

January 12, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

I don’t remember feeling this much passion for a project since co-founding my first company in the late 90s

I recently wrote how I finished recording the audio for the online leadership course I'm creating. I also posted about the leadership course I start teaching at NYU in a couple weeks. Both courses put into practice material that I've compiled for years, maybe a decade or so. This week I'll start posting the interview I did with Chris, the other guy in the recording for the online course. I played it for a couple friends in person and they described Chris's results as spine-tingling, based on his progress. I don't remember feeling this much passion for a project since co-founding Submedia in the late 90s. You can tell because I'm spending all the time I can find editing the audio, which, from the outside,…

January 5, 2015

Education / Entrepreneurship / Exercises / Leadership

My next seminar, January 12 at The Yard in NYC!

My next leadership seminar will be January 12 at The Yard, a premier office space and coworking community designed to support business growth whose environment promotes creativity, collaboration, and connections. Perfect for my seminar! If you've thought about attending one of my seminars, this will be a great chance in a beautiful space, conveniently located. Click here for testimonials. HOW TO LEAD PEOPLE ...so they want you to lead them again. ~ Leadership Workshop ~ Click here to register Why you should attend You've ascended to a position of leadership, but how can you ensure that the people you are in charge of will be responsive to your leadership style? In this class, you'll learn effective ways to motivate people in the context of…

December 29, 2014

My scientific and engineering view of coaching and teaching leadership

Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Models / Nature / Visualization

My scientific and engineering view of coaching and teaching leadership

Science is the study of nature, looking for patterns, to predict results. For the moment I'm not approaching leadership with the institutional view of science with researchers applying for grants from the National Science Foundation to do double-blind controlled experiments for peer-reviewed publication, though I've had a few graduate students approach me to do research like that. Here's a simpler view: science turns observations about nature into models and predictions about the future. It's simplified, but I think captures an important part of science. Thousands of years ago people noticed that what went up came back down. That's an observation about nature that worked for most purposes. Science turned that observation into Newton's laws of gravity, which was a specific model of nature. The process…

December 1, 2014

Awareness / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

Join Joshua Spodek’s leadership workshop, Saturday December 6 in Soho

I've been invited to lead a leadership workshop at a great location in Manhattan Saturday, December 6. If you like my material, want to lead better, and like the testimonials of recent attendees, come to the seminar. Below is from their announcement. Click here to register! "How to lead people so they want you to lead them again" by Joshua Spodek Saturday, December 6, 2014 10am to 5pm Soho - NYC Previous University Presentations Columbia, Harvard, MIT, NYU-Stern, INSEAD, New School, New YorkÂ Academy of Sciences Previous Coaching Clients Include Start-up Founders as well as Employees ofÂ McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, A.T. Kearney, UBS, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, American Express, Google, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy Lead…

November 22, 2014

Art / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

A reader shares a genius business idea in action

A reader responded to "Another genius business idea: Communities refurbishing their subway platforms" to describe the idea already in action in San Francisco: Hello Joshua, I want to share with you the concept of property and business improvement districts and how one in San Francisco beautified the plaza around the Castro Street subway station. I'm sharing this as a real-world example you might find interesting. The gist is that a group of commercial properties (or even residential ones) vote to form a district, levy an assessment on themselves, and form a board of directors to manage it. The district concept is interesting because it's not a one-off project, but a governing body with a yearly budget that manages and implements any number of projects and…

November 17, 2014

Choosing/Decision-Making / Creativity / Education / Entrepreneurship / Leadership

The problem determines the solution

"Which is more important as a leader, to work alone or to work in groups?" I heard that question asked of a panel of business leaders last week. The panelists all answered something like "in this day and age you have to be able to work in groups. That's where you get everything done" with some acknowledgment that you had to be able to work solo too sometimes. As soon as the moderator asked the question I thought, "You're asking about solutions in the abstract. The problem determines the solution." You can best solve problems that take solo work to solve solo and problems that take group work to solve by group. We've all seen solutions that were designed by committee that show input from…

November 10, 2014

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