Founder Vishen Lakhiani shares 5 Lessons Learned Bootstrapping a $15M Lifestyle Business

After reading this article, I just can't stop myself from looking at office images of Mindvalley and you know what I wish I could have been working from that office. Mindvalley offices are among one of the unusual and coolest office I had seen.

Mindvalley Office (source: http://www.mindvalley.com/careers#prettyPhoto)

 Founder and CEO of Mindvalley Vishen Lakhiani shared 5 lesson he learned which look like travelling the tough road which I found is must for every person who want to be an Entrepreneur. As me many of you who visualize themselves wearing a hat of future Entrepreneur must by-heart these lessons.

5 Dumb Startup Mistakes

1: Your college degree is meaningless (and sometimes a liability): College degrees are just an evidence for world to identify you as a qualified resource. Degrees are good to get you in JOB but to get JOB done you may need many things beyond your degrees.

2: Don't quit your day job too soon: People often think that to start their own business they had to quit Job and to focus to nurture their business idea. True, but for that you should have a hefty pocket with lot of $ to allow you to try, as each start-up has equal probability of success and failure. Being in a day job not only give you liberty to have continuous cash flow but also provide a fall back bed.

3:  Business plans are mostly unnecessary: Plans are necessary but when they can be easily aligned and mapped to present. Many companies failed in their business even though they have carved out detailed level of plans tracking each and every small thing they need to do successful business and the reason is they spend too much time in planning and the plans they built are far away from commuting world. Plans with either 1-2 year of horizon or less are good enough to guide team, but if you are all alone just an tangible pecuniary objective should be more then enough to get you going.

4: Control you equity: Its visible that many start-up in their initial phase distribute its equity either to attract contributors or to raise money. A tricky thing in business but sometime may lead to problem when vision of decision makers skew. When we give equity we don't give ratio of profit or loss but we give away our ownership. Instead of giving away equity one should look for alternative way like performance-based bonus scheme etc. It's not "NO" to distribute equity but always measure it against what you are getting in.

5: Forge networks and learn to connect:  The half truth in business is that networking is always important to get you business, other half is it is only possible when you had a substance. The other advantage you get mingling with people is you get continual inspiration, motivation, creativeness and ideas which are essential especially when "time goes tough".

Reference

Source:  5 Lessons Learned Bootstrapping a $15M Lifestyle Business

Author: The YEC

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Disclaimer: The above content is just a summary of author understanding of original article. All rights of original content belongs to Author  mentioned in summary.

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Before You Innovate, Ask the Right Questions

Each one of us face various problems in our day to day life and smartly with aide of our intellect and knowledge we overcome those in best possible way we can. Where there is a problem there can be an innovative way to address it. No one can be labeled as innovator and no one can be denied of being that, it’s just a matter of being at right-place, at right-time with right-tools sprinkled with little bit of creativity and out-of box thinking.

I just summarize my assimilation and sharing a snippet with viewers of my blog what author Greg Satell had explained about innovation, various methods of innovation and how companies are dwelling to build a balanced portfolio of innovation in very interesting articles “Before you Innovate, Ask the right Question”.  Synopsis of Greg detail article can be found below.

Two Questions each Innovator/Organization should ask to themselves:

1: How well is the problem defined?

             Problem definition should not be mundane following the traditional problem collecting templates it  can be as creative and as small as possible revitalizing all divisions and people to contribute.

For example: Steve jobs define problem about I-Pod like "I need 1000 songs in my pocket?"

2: Who is best-placed to solve it?

                    Once the problem is well defined, this is the next step where we should evaluate and identify people/organization those are best placed to address solution to underlying problem. A point of notion is that a person/ organization which identified or created problem may or may not be capable of proposing solution to it solely at this time we see various options of collaboration, cooperation and alignment.

     Various methods of innovation:

       1: Basic Research:

       Research activities focusing on some future technologies, with long time horizon, huge capital  investment and can be collaborative activity.

       2: Breakthrough Innovation:

       Where problem is well defined but organization lack capability to crack it either due to lack of expertise, or it requires insight and collaboration from external world.

                                        

3: Sustaining Innovation:

       Everything exist in world possess characteristics being improvised; such an improvisation is categorized under category of sustaining innovation

      4: Disruptive Innovation:

       These innovations are much complex as these innovations have potential to change the existing process, business models, theories etc.

As suggested by Greg, I do also believe that companies should starve to maintain a balance across entire quadrants instead of just running across a single vertical.

Reference

Blog source: Before you Innovate, Ask the right Question

Author:  Greg Satell 

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Disclaimer: The above content is just a summary of author understanding of original article. All rights of original content belongs to Author  mentioned in summary.

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Constant and Strategic Innovation is a Must! It’s About Providing More Value Than Anyone Else

Those days are passed when Innovation was equated to 'Ëureka' moments yielding breakthroughs. Today innovation is about doing right things in more creative and novel manner.

Innovation in today's world is in charter of up most every organization and they unwittingly injecting innovation in blood of their employees. The size of today's organizations are 30 time greater that those in late 90's and in today Innovation is an outcome of constant motivated endeavor of communities. Innovation now is no more an accidental journey but a strategic momentum.

Author Tony Robbins, mentioned 4 principle by which individuals and organizations can shift their gears more swiftly on path of Innovation.

Blog Source: Constant and Strategic Innovation is a Must: It’s About Providing More Value Than Anyone Else
Author: Tony Robbins

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Disclaimer: The above content is just a summary of author understanding of original article. All rights of original content belongs to Author  mentioned in summary.

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Five Essential Innovation Questions

A very nice blog “Five Essential Innovation Questions” disclosing why many companies suffer to generate innovative ideas and do fail to persistently chase one identified. The 5 core essential questions author poised seem to be must for every organization or individual to answer at start of innovation.

We should also remember teaching from life of Great innovator of Decade i.e. Thomas Edison who emphasize and practice to measure his ideas and effort he put in rationalizing his ideas against the metrics of SMART.

SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Relevant and Timeline ^{[Innovate like Edison by Michael J. Gelb]}

Blog Source: Five Essential Innovation Questions

Author: Gijs van Wulfen

Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything!

A very detailed article published in HBR, Magzine May 2013 edition which emphasize that lean-startup a methodology for starting a startup is reducing the potential risk bonded with starting anew business.

Author Steve, clearly mentioned about how these new start-up not only challenging the traditional way of running a business and how emerging startup setting new trends and ways of operation minimizing risk by early prototyping and early exit based on quick result hence yielding promising success.

Good read to know about Lean-startup movement, Lean-Startup methodology, Trends of starting Anew

Article Source: The Magzine (HBR)
Edition: May 2013
Article Author: Steve Blank