We asked them: What would be your best advice for a young, passionate entrepreneur or would-be entrepreneur?

Joe Ornato – Founder, Ornato Group

Create a backstage process.  Write down all the steps that it will take to give your customer the ultimate experience.  Natural sales people tend to “do” what they “know” intuitively, without getting into a well-defined process.  Building a process allows for: consistency, duplication, organization (of staff), enhanced service, and quick fixes because you can pinpoint errors.

Ricardo Robles – Founder, Capsity Offices

Focus on building strong relationships and learn how to leverage them.  It doesn’t hurt to know angel investors, venture capitalists, attorney’s, insurance brokers/agents, real estate brokers, etc.  It’s also key to look at building relationships with successful entrepreneurs and have them as mentors.

Laurie Hawkins – Focal Point Coaching

Ensure that you have a “flight plan,” and then execute on that plan.  Leverage all the available resources that are available to you – do not let that EGO have a position on your company!

Karl Allen-Muncey, CuteGecko Design Agency

“Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”  Network, get involved, and follow through!  Networking is about creating relationships and a reputation.  Go to community events, and assist other entrepreneurs where possible.  This process will cultivate your reputation and exposure as a valuable provider.

McKenzie Scott, Young Entrepreneur

As a young entrepreneur, nothing comes easy.  In this stage, persistence is key.  Make sure that you are selling your business in a sense that you actually UNDERSTAND what your customer wants.  Cater your product/service to the customer’s specific needs rather than having a one-size fits all solution.

Ben Yoskovitz – CEO/Co-Founder, Standout Jobs

First, have a mentor (or two, or three).  Find someone that has “been there, done that”.  Once you’ve found them, use them.  Second, get involved in the startup community.  There’s no excuse for not getting involved, participating and networking.

Ashley Bodi – Founder, BusinessBeware.Biz

Never give up!  It’s so easy to feel like you’re defeated when trying to start up a business, but don’t let that stop you.  You’re going to have ups and downs but it’s what you do with the things that get thrown at you that makes you a better entrepreneur.

Ben Walton – Founder, Tiger Networks

Systemize everything FIRST.  Run by the numbers, go faster than everyone else and don’t buy “toys” for your business until you sell up!

Janny Ke – Founder, The NOW Organization

Enjoy the adventure with courage, passion, and perseverance.

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Every year I update a personal inventory as part of my overall personal strategic plan. This strategic plan is separate from the strategic plan for my business. Having an updated personal inventory is helpful when I need to make tough decisions as an entrepreneur.

These are three self assessments you can get started with:

1. Personality Type Assessment -This is an important self-assessment because your personality type is a good indicator of your strengths and weaknesses. As an entrepreneur you need to lead your business with your strengths and find other talented people who can compensate for your weaknesses.

2. Entrepreneurial Self Assessment -This assessment measures you based on 3 criteria: motivations, aptitudes and attitudes. There is no “passing grade” but the assessment results give you some good insights and compare your results to other entrepreneurs.

3. Think and Grow Rich Assessment -This is the ultimate personal assessment. It was first presented by Napoleon Hill in his timeless book, Think and Grow Rich, a must read for entrepreneurs. John Dilbeck posted the assessment on his blog and goes through each question in painstaking detail.

Do you keep a personal inventory? Do you have any recommendations for self-assessments?

As an EIT (Entrepreneur-in-Training), you need to realize that a great business idea will never just ‘fall into your lap’.  In my experience, and from speaking to successful young entrepreneurs, you must actively partake in an ideation process.

There are many places that you can look for a good idea, but some of my favorites have been included in a past post that I wrote on Entrepreneurial Resources.  Among those are:

Twitter: Following like-minded entrepreneurs who dedicate their time to reviewing and sharing entrepreneurial resources is very worthwhile.

Google Reader: It’s difficult to follow all the great entrepreneurial blogs out there but Google Reader helps me keep up to date.  It shows all new blog posts and will mark them as ‘unread’ until I read through them – great system.  Ben Yoskovitz mentions a few great ones in his recent post Check Out These Startup Blogs.

Newsletters: Check out Trendwatching and Springwise – enough said.

Magazines: Although I do a lot of online reading, I still enjoy sitting down to read a good old fashioned magazine every once in a while.  I subscribe to Inc., Fast Company, and Canadian Business.

Free E-Books: We have many free e-books in our Resources section, but there are many more available on DocStoc.com as well as Google Books.

After you’ve been inspired, there are a few options for figuring out when you should become an entrepreneur.

First, you could put some time into researching and (using some suggested entrepreneurial resources to find an idea now) plan to pursue an idea as soon as you are able.  You could use the above resources and, either individually, or as a team, review new start-up ideas periodically.  In fact, you could start finding an entrepreneurial-minded team today on Garage Entrepreneurs!

You may also keep your eyes open as you pursue other career options.  Many ideas stem from observations that entrepreneurs make in their immediate world.  Entrepreneurs build companies to exploit opportunities or fix problems that get noticed in our own lives and you will be more likely to encounter opportunities when you have a hands-on approach.

Expand your horizons and place yourself in the “idea flow” of new business ideas.  Websites like Springwise and KillerStartups review a large volume of new start-ups every week.  Get a group together and review some of these ideas today!

Passion: One common characteristic about all entrepreneurs is that they’re passionate about what they’re doing. If you’re a young entrepreneur starting (or thinking about starting) a new business, you need to be able to live it, breathe it, eat it and sleep it, EVERY DAY. Before you start off on your own, make sure you have the passion to follow your business idea through and be able to do it every day consistently.

Persuasiveness: Being passionate about your idea is one thing, being able to properly communicate that idea, and persuade others to buy into what you’re doing is another. In a new business you’ll have to be persuasive when talking to potential customers, or when dealing with suppliers, or when looking for feedback. You should always be ready and able to persuade someone that your business idea is a great one.

Patience: Whether it is waiting to hear back from a customer/client, or waiting for your new website to develop, you need to exercise patience as an entrepreneur. There were many times when I would have loved to pick up the phone and remind a customer that I’m waiting to hear back from her about a potential new deal, but exercising a little bit of patience can go a long way.

Pain Threshold: No matter what your business is, you’re going to experience a certain amount of pain as an entrepreneur. Whether it be waiting for a project to be finished that is three weeks over a deadline, or paying twice as much as you originally anticipated for a prototype, you’re going to have to have a high threshold for pain. Tough it out, it will get better.

The 4 P’s of entrepreneurship seem to come up again and again for entrepreneurs – be prepared for them when starting up your new business!

Eric: How did you start out as an entrepreneur?

Ben: I started my first company in 1996 while I was still at McGill University. I connected with my three partners at the time while working for an online magazine (remember, this was 1996!) They were interested in starting a company, and I joined along with them to help out. That launched me into being an entrepreneur. That company was later acquired by a U.S.-based firm. From that point in 1996 onward, I’ve been an entrepreneur. Incidentally, I did still complete my degree at McGill (which was a BSc. in Psychology).

Eric: Tell me more about Standout Jobs, your current startup.

Ben: I started Standout Jobs in 2007 along with Fred Ngo and Austin Hill. Since starting the company, it’s evolved considerably. Our focus shifted from helping small companies and startups with their recruiting effors, to helping larger companies, with broader recruitment needs.   It [is] really about taking the tools and techniques companies were using for marketing themselves and applying those to recruitment.

Eric: You say that you learned more in 2007 about business and startups than in all years prior – could you elaborate on that?

Ben: In 2007 we founded Standout Jobs. That was a big learning experience versus my previous experience founding companies, because it was done with a much bigger vision. We also raised capital for Standout Jobs from venture capital and angel investors. Up until that time my experience with raising capital was extremely limited.  [Since] Standout had just started, we hired employees, began product development, raised capital and we were racing like maniacs.  It’s been an incredible experience.

Eric: From that experience (2007), what do you think your greatest strength is as an entrepreneur?

Ben: My greatest strength as an entrepreneur is that I get things done. I can be extremely productive, even in a situation that requires you to juggle a ridiculous number of balls simultaneously. I have met a number of entrepreneurs that are stronger when it comes to their vision for the future, but I’ve always leaned more towards execution than anything else.

Eric: Where did you learn all your “entrepreneurial secrets”? What was your biggest source of information/motivation?

Ben: I don’t think there are any real entrepreneurial secrets. Luckily there are a lot of mentors out there who are willing and able to help young and first-time entrepreneurs. I do recommend you find a mentor with previous startup experience; it can be a huge help.

My motivation comes from within. I don’t think it can come from anywhere else for an entrepreneur.

Eric: What is the best advice you would give to an entrepreneur just starting out?

Ben: First, find a mentor (or two, or three). Find someone who has “been there, done that.” And once you’ve found them, use them. Don’t just list them as an “advisor” on your corporate website.

Second, get involved in the startup community. There’s no excuse for not getting involved, participating and networking.

[Finlly], understand customer needs and validate, validate, validate. A common mistake is for people to get a “good” idea, build something right away, launch it and then look for customers. That’s a big mistake. You need to take your idea and validate it against customer needs. I would recommend every entrepreneur reads Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, and that every entrepreneur does a Google search for “lean startup” and looks up the concepts being pushed by folks like Eric Ries.

Eric: Thanks so much Ben! Great lessons for entrepreneurs. I wish you all the best with Standout Jobs.

You can check out Ben’s blog at http://www.instigatorblog.com. Be sure to connect with Ben on Garage Entrepreneurs.  Check out Ben’s profile here.

If I could go back in time and give some advice to myself when I was starting my first business, these are the 10 things I would say:

1. This first attempt at this business is going to fail. But do it anyway because you’re going to learn a lot that will make the next attempt successful.
2. Don’t listen to the critics. A lot of people will tell you your idea will never work and to just give up but they didn’t write the business plan and do the research –you did.
3. Listen to the constructive criticism your mentors and supporters give you but don’t feel compelled to accommodate all of their feedback.
4. Being an entrepreneur is tough. Perseverance is key. Stay focused on your vision and don’t even think about giving up.
5. Work on making meaning first. Making money will follow. This may not make sense to you right now but by making meaning, people are going to talk about you and this exposure will bring more opportunities than you would have been able to get without it.
6. Build personal relationships with people even if there’s nothing in it for you. Reach out and help others when you can. People notice the little things you do even when you don’t think they do.
7. You crawl before you walk. You walk before you run. Things may not always move along as fast as you’d like but businesses are built one step at a time.
8. You can’t please everyone. There will always be people that you just can’t please and those people aren’t worth your time.
9. Don’t be afraid to take risks and make major changes if something isn’t working. Entrepreneurs must be dynamic.
10. Follow your gut. If something doesn’t seem right, it probably isn’t. Intuition is a powerful force that you shouldn’t ignore.

As an entrepreneur, or EIT (entrepreneur-in-training) do you sometimes find it difficult to stay on track?

If you don’t set limits on your time, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed.  I’ve come up with a technique that helps me stay on track, it’s called “Buckets“.

About every four months I come up with a list of buckets that are most important to me.  This list is short and sweet – and currently consists of five buckets:

1) Spending time with family/friends.
2) Physical fitness.
3) Building the ‘Me Brand’.
4) Reading.
5) Exploring new opportunities.

Every day, to feel like I’ve accomplished something, I simply need to make a contribution to each ‘bucket’.  These buckets actually guide my daily thinking.

Example 1: Should I take an hour break today to have coffee with a long-time friend or catch up on e-mails?  Do the coffee date!  E-mails can wait, and although a coffee break can sound like procrastinating, it is helping me fill my #1 bucket.

Example 2: Should I kick back and watch TV after a day at the office, or go to the gym?  Get to the gym!  I’ll feel so much better after I’ve contributed to my #2 bucket.

These buckets not only help shape my thinking on a daily basis but I’m able to actually guage how much I’ve achieved in a given day based on how many contributions to each bucket I’ve made!

Today I was able to: Go to the gym with a friend of mine (Bucket #1 and #2), write a new blog post (Bucket #3), attend an entrepreneurship networking event (#3 and #5).

On any given day it can feel like you’ve been ’spinning your tires’.  Develop your own buckets so that you can accomplish something great today.

The theory of business ethics seemed like a distant cousin of ethical business in practice. When I think of ethical companies I think of Ten Thousand Villages for its fair trade policies, Toyota for its commitment to the environment and attention to safety, and Starbucks for its policies on fair trade and commitment to people. These companies aim to act ethical and portray themselves as companies that “do good,” however, they still wouldn’t receive perfect scores by the standards set forth in Business Ethics class.

Despite what you think of ethics in business, every business should have a set of guidelines. These are three pillars upon which to develop a Code of Ethics for your business:

1. Environmental Policy –How will your business minimize environmental impact?
2. People Policy –How does your business treat its employees, customers and stakeholders? How do you strive to improve people’s lives?
3. Production policy –How are products produced or services delivered?

I hope our generation can run ethical businesses that don’t just care about creating wealth but also creating purpose -because that’s what entrepreneurship is all about.

When you’re tempted by opportunities that are outside of your core business (in our experience) you’re prone to fall. This is not to say that you should not turn down good opportunities (after all how will you ever discover new oceans if you never lose sight of the shore), however with multiple opportunities, some will fail.

The good news: entrepreneurs can recover. Success never comes right away. In my first student-advertising business I struggled to bring in my first clients, and I was tempted to make changes before I really knew what I was into. I fell after spreading myself too thin, and I began to waiver from what my original goals for the company were. But I recovered after I re-focused and devoted my daily efforts towards those activities that would move my business forward.

For those of you who are new at the entrepreneurial lifestyle I’d be surprised if you don’t soon (or haven’t already) discovered the: tempt, fall, recover routine.

From day one, this was a cause that all of us were incredibly passionate about. We spent hundreds of hours coming up with new ideas, staying up late dreaming about how great this thing could become, driving to Toronto to set up meetings, contacting key stakeholders at the largest Canadian universities; it had become so much more than a business project, in our minds it was a plan that was really going to happen. We were figuring out how to get grant money so that we could actually do it full time that summer! We didn’t.

What happened? Life. We were students. We got “distracted” by exams. We went out with our friends. We got offered summer jobs that paid well, we went home for the summer to see our families, and the idea died. We’d e-mail periodically and say: “We really need to get this thing going…seriously!” But it never happened. We were so enthusiastic about it, so involved in it, we put hundreds of hours into it, and it just died.

This is not an isolated incident, I see this all the time! Entrepreneurs come to me to ask how best to develop an idea, how to improve it, monetize it. After all the work, all the passion that they show me during the meetings, they forget about the project after they drop it off at the teacher’s desk.

I want to change this.

I want to have a user-friendly site that truly does want to help these individuals who are passionate about these really great ideas. I want to let them come together in a group setting and meet other people just like them who don’t know how to get to “the next level”. I want a pool of talent that is willing to help these young entrepreneurs take these ideas and develop them, critique them, and make them stand out. I want these individuals to make a summer job, or even a post-graduate, full-time job out of these ideas that they’ve slaved over for hundreds of hours just like I did.

I can’t wait to help these individuals get to the next level. I love young entrepreneurs.

Personal Income

It isn’t always realistic, especially when you are bootstrapping, to expect a regular salary from your business right away. Jeff Cornwall at The Entrepreneurial Mind discussed his bootstrapping experience in a recent post, Bootstrapping Should Be Part of Self-financing Formula. Jeff and his partners started a health care business in the 1980s with personal savings. It took two years before they could receive regular paychecks from the business. He said, “If your business can be worked on during any time of day, find a day job that can pay the bills. Or, be prepared to take on an evening job, such as waiting tables or bartending, to help create a bridge until the new business brings in a steady income.”

Lesson learned: Have a plan in place to make enough personal income to live on until your business can pay you a regular salary.

Needs Versus Wants

A good friend of mine got capital from a private investor for his software start-up. He set up a nice office and purchased really nice office furniture. Prime office space and nice furniture were not necessities for him to start the business. That money probably could have been used for more marketing since he did not allocate enough of his start-up funds to marketing his product and that hurt his bottom line. His company is doing well now but he admits he would have done things differently if he had funded the company entirely on his own or with a loan.

Lesson learned: Focus on your needs and only spend money on the essentials to get your business off the ground.

Harnessing Creativity

When you don’t have money you are forced to think of creative, low-cost strategies to build your business. This kind of “out of the box” thinking will help your business when you are making lots of money in the future by making your team better problem solvers. A lot of companies throw money at problems when more money is not necessarily the answer. Compare General Motors to Toyota over the last 10 years and you will find many examples that support this point. Look where GM is now -recovering from bankruptcy- and look at Toyota -now the world’s top automaker.

Lesson learned: Creativity is more valuable than money.

To change things up slightly, I’ve included the slide deck that we’ve used to teach this topic as a lecture in the past. This information has traveled as far as Togliatti, Russia in a lecture to local entrepreneurs looking to understand entrepreneurial marketing concepts.

Feel free to send it to a friend or use it in one of your own lectures!

I love talking to entrepreneurs, people who don’t follow the typical path, people who explore the road less traveled. Reminds me of a quote that I came across recently that I loved: “Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” Very entrepreneurial, very motivating, very reassuring, especially when you are first contemplating a path less traveled and starting your own business.

In speaking with this entrepreneur I became excited about what he was telling me, I effectually became excited about his business and the renewable energy industry, an industry that I previously had little interest in. The passion that this individual has and is able to convey to others is incredible…and it made me wonder if that passion could ever be extinguished. I too am in the middle of launching a new business with a few partners and I’m extremely excited about what I’m getting into. Often when my peers ask me what my plans are in the near future and I explain what my business does they ask tough questions, they prod for holes in my business model, they’re critical. Until recently I found myself getting frustrated with these individuals. I felt their prodding for errors in my logic to be disrespectful, and I asked this entrepreneur about these individuals. “How do you deal with the criticism all the time” I asked. “I listen to it” he responded. I listen to it.

He realized very early on the value in the critical assessment of his projects by his peers, a lesson that I learned only recently. These critical questions and comments can be hard to handle sometimes but maybe it does hold weight. He suggested I listen to these critics and take the free advice, and take it I have. I now have a more refreshed attitude towards fielding tough questions and I voice the concerns of my peers at business meetings with my partners. More often than not the critiques can be documented and overlooked, but every so often a few have weight, and we have actually modified our business model slightly to incorporate these “criticisms” which have actually turned into considerations and sometimes into marked improvements. This new attitude towards critical questions has refreshed my own excitement about my new business venture.

Listen to your critics – take the free advice.

Going “off on your own” is incredibly difficult. It’s more motivating than anything in the world, more intense than anything you’ve ever done, and scary as hell. The idea of starting your own business is easy; anyone can do it because all it takes is the ability to recognize a need and a way to capitalize on that need. Thinking about starting your own business is done by hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis – but how many people actually take that leap? How many people actually say “I want to make this business venture my primary source of income” and actually do it? Not nearly as many.

Often entrepreneurship feels like “flying by the seat of your pants.” It is a constant battle to prioritize tasks on a daily basis, sort through the junk and decide what it is that I can do today to move my business forward. It feels like performing open-heart surgery while reading the instruction manual and for some there is the lingering question: “What if I fail?” Entrepreneurs are concerned with personal satisfaction but also with the financial consequences of failure as well as having to explain themselves to family and friends.

While failure may be enough motivation in and of itself, perhaps it is also the greatest tutor for success. The question “What is failure?” is often more important because maybe failure is a path to success. What if we could create a culture that accepts failure as a stepping stone to future rewards? Is that not what venture capitalists do? Venture capitalists are sometimes looking for a return on investment of three to ten times – a calculation which takes into account that a number of their investments will fail.

Entrepreneurs need to assess what the word “failure” means. Failure on a new business venture could mean not reaching sales goals, not achieving the impact that a team was looking for, or complete business closure. For new entrepreneurs, if the business is structured correctly, failure could be and should be a prelude to success. Perhaps the idea was a good one but the entrepreneur did not have the experience required to “bring it to life”.

I was recently reading a blog on social entrepreneurship and came across a few lessons from an entrepreneur’s “failure”:

1) Life is suffering, pain is optional.

Life and business is a constant struggle whether it be for sales, for development, for managing people but stand back and look at your business. Is this not why you wanted to do it in the first place? You are or are close to running your own business. The process of running your own business is not always fun, but it does not have to be painful!

2) It is okay to fail, forgiving yourself is the tough part – do it and get on with your life!

3) Sprinter Ben Johnson once said, “One can go from hero to zero in 9.62 seconds.”

Be aware of this, work hard, do your best, make mistakes, then fix them and have fun!

4) If you’re not failing at least some of the time, you’re probably not challenging yourself enough!

So is this what failure is? A lesson? An inevitability for new entrepreneurs? Not entirely.

Maybe one of the greatest observations about failure that I have read is from social entrepreneur Michael Cant:

Failure comes when we let “the practical” infect “the vision”. It is only when we let all the things that have to get done, all the problems that we have to fix, and all the day-to-day non-business pressures we all deal with overwhelm our passion and belief in our dreams. The ventures that succeed are those that are able to separate and protect the day-to-day practicalities from the end-game of succeeding in delivering the vision. Those that fail suffer from a loss of control of the many things that at the end of the mission are considered noise on the journey.

Failure in its typical sense can only set in when our vision, our hopes and dreams get crushed by the day-to-day grind. Maybe your new business is encountering a ton of problems, maybe your friends are tempting you to come out on a Thursday night when you know you have to complete a project – let me repeat: the ventures that succeed are those that are able to protect the day-to-day practicalities from the end-game of succeeding in delivering the vision. If you have a vision, a dream for your (new) company go for it with everything you’ve got. Hold back absolutely nothing so that if, in the end, it does not work out, you can look back on it and say “You know what, I did absolutely everything I could to make that work.” Then, forgive yourself and move on!

In reading about author/entrepreneur Timothy Ferriss’ ‘Low Information Diet’ he says that you need to either use the information that you read right away or you will forget it.  I found that I was taking in a lot of great info on a daily basis but not retaining a ton, so I bought a small 9 x 7″ notebook, and I decided that I would use the notebook to write down cool thoughts/lessons learned and read it over every so often.

I find that as I read articles/blogs, what I’m reading is often not immediately relevant, but may come into play down the road – could be a day, a week, or a year but eventually it will be meaningful.  Start keeping track of the quotes, comments or ideas that really strike a chord with you – you never know when they might be of use to you (or others)!

It plagued me.

The problem was that my answer was never just one thing. One teacher asked me the dreaded question and my answer went something like this: “I want to have my own company, teach people, be an author, help people, etc etc.” I remember her telling me I should pick one thing on that list that I like more than the other things. I tried so hard to narrow down the list but fast forward 13 years and I still don’t have just one thing I want to be. As a twentysomething the question has morphed into the classic cocktail question, “What do you do?” This turns out to be a long and rather interesting conversation.

There was a period in my life when I was envious of the people who love something so much that they want to do that one thing for the rest of their lives. And chances are they will do that one thing very well and be some sort of expert in their field. I’m very passionate about entrepreneurship and I love having my own business. I definitely want to start more businesses throughout my life but I wouldn’t want all those businesses to be in one field. I want to try different things. Many people tell me that’s just because I haven’t found the one thing I truly love to do yet. I don’t think that’s true.

Society puts a lot of pressure on us to find that one “career.” Then I look at surveys like the one conducted by careerbuilder.com which shows that only 39% of American workers under the age of 25 are satisfied with their jobs and I feel like I’m on the right track because I love waking up and getting to work. It has taken me a long time but I’m finally comfortable with the fact that I’m probably never going to only want to do one thing.

I think we put too much pressure on kids to find a precise answer to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” No wonder there are an alarming number of young people working at jobs they just aren’t passionate about. Right now I’m teaching a high school entrepreneurship course and a lot of the students aren’t quite sure what they want to do following high school. Some of them have started small businesses already or are launching a small business in the summer and many of them feel discouraged by not knowing exactly what they want to be doing in 5 years.

My message is this: Don’t feel bad if you don’t have a single answer to the question or if you can’t answer the question at all. It has been thirteen years since a teacher asked me to name one thing I wanted to do for the rest of my life and I still wouldn’t be able to give her an answer today.

There was a time when we thought we could handle doing taxes ourselves. After all, we’ve taken a few courses on taxation and accounting throughout our business degrees. The thing is that taxes change each year when the government sets a new budget and old accounting classes just don’t cut it. There are always new little loopholes and things you can -and should- claim to get the most out of your tax return as a business.

Last year we did our own taxes. We didn’t do a terrible job but the opportunity cost was not getting the refund we should have and DIY taxes is more time consuming. This year we hired an accountant. She cost more than anticipated but made up for it by saving us a lot of time and money. Good accountants will pay for themselves.

To find a good accountant ask around for referrals from people. Interview your top choices. Even if you have a referral you should interview potential accountants because you have to be able to work well with your accountant and trust him/her. It’s your money they are dealing with!

This is a great concept and something that entrepreneurs should apply to their lives.  Never-ending improvement is the definition of growth – both personally and professionally.  Try to improve yourself year over year, month over month, and each and every day.  What are you doing now that will make you better than who you were yesterday?

Take a few minutes today and tackle this list:
1. Next year at this time, I’ll be known for (one more thing).

2. My current project is challenging me in the following (two ways).

3. New things I’ve learned in the last 90 days include (two items).

4. My important additions to my Rolodex in the last 90 days include (one or two names).

5. My resume is different from last year’s at this time (in one or two ways).

Each year look to draft a personal annual report to show yourself how you have noticeably improved from last year.  Aim big, try new things – life is lived out on the wire, the rest is just waiting.