Are You an Entrepreneur? 4 Questions Will Help You Find Out.

Everywhere you look, young, modern thought-leaders are cashing-in on the entrepreneurial lifestyle. They've got the flashy headlines, the lucrative funding -- even their own exclusive dating websites. Society is worshipping at the altar of venture capitalism and extolling open-concept office spaces. And "entrepreneur” has become a trendy buzzword.But the problem is, once everyone embraces that buzzword, once everyone becomes an entrepreneur, will that once distinguished title lose its meaning?

Who qualifies?
The biggest thing that separates entrepreneurs from everyone else is that they tend to build new ideas in relatively unchartered territories, in order to target a big exit.

Looking deeper, you can drill down to three other main differences between entrepreneurs and mainstream small business owners:

Funding: Entrepreneurs tend to take on outside capital to grow their businesses. This may be in the form of VC funding, crowd-funding, microloans or angel investors.

Strategy: A major staple of entrepreneurship is having an exit strategy for your business. Entrepreneurs usually aren’t in it for the long haul. They’re trendsetters who cash-in on innovation, then move on to the next big thing.

Tech: Entrepreneurs tend to have inherently strong tech backbones. They’re always searching for tech tools to make their ideas run more efficiently and lucratively.

These differences are far from comprehensive and still leave a lot of gray area in this discussion. If you’re still unsure whether you’re an entrepreneur, let’s delve even deeper.

Still unclear? Ask yourself these questions.
The following four questions should help you sort this debate once and for all:

1. Are you a risk-taker?
One of the most distinguishing qualities of entrepreneurs is their tolerance to risk. Where other people see volatile, scary situations, entrepreneurs see opportunities and possibilities. Their clear-eyed vision of the future allows them to take what appear to be crazy risks without batting an eyelash.

2. How do you feel about personal development?
Entrepreneurs are highly focused on learning everything they can about their industries. They’re always “on,” consuming information and learning, just for the sake of learning.

3. What happens when someone tells you “no”?
“No” doesn’t always mean “no” for entrepreneurs. To them, “no” means they need to more expertly hone their pitch and try again. This tireless, persistent approach of entrepreneurs is what brings them a network of doggedly supportive connections and billions of dollars in funding every year

4. How do you spend your downtime?
If you’re an entrepreneur, this is actually a trick question because you don’t have any downtime. There’s no such thing as "work-life balance"; everything bleeds together because your entire life revolves around both your business and your industry.

The buzzword pendulum always swings back the other way, however. At some point soon, the term “entrepreneur” will become stigmatized, and a new word will emerge to take its place. But what a pity that will be for the hard-working wunderkinds who have based their entire professional pursuits around achieving “entrepreneurial status.”

14 Inspirational Movie Quotes for Entrepreneurs

If you are thinking about joining a startup or creating your own business, here are 14 quotes that will surely transfer from the silver screen to the startup stage.

Lights, camera, STARTUP!

1. "Find a truly original idea. It is the only way I will ever distinguish myself. It is the only way I will ever matter." -- John Nash in A Beautiful Mind

If you are going to build a company, set out to do something nobody else has done before. If you are working to solve real pain for real people, you will truly distinguish yourself from the competition.

2. "Do, or do not. There is no try.”
-- Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back

Either you will or you won’t. You are not in a position to try. Your employees, customers, partners and shareholders need you to do a lot more than try. You will succeed or fail based on how well you are able to execute your vision -- and that requires a lot of “do”.

3. “Don’t tell me I can’t do it; don’t tell me it can't be done!"
-- Howard Hughes in The Aviator

Along the way you are going to hear from a lot of naysayers. People who are skeptical or don’t have the fortitude to do what you are trying to do. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Don’t let the insecurities of others hold you back.

4. “This sh*t’s chess, it ain’t checkers!”
-- Alonzo Harris in Training Day

One of two chess related quotes on this list, and that is because chess is grounded in your ability to execute on a well-thought strategy. You are in a battle of strategy when you begin your company. Is your strategy going to play better than others? Do you have the right pieces in the right places at the right time on the board? If you understand the game you are playing and how you win, you will be around to play a lot longer than your competition.

5. “The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room.”
--  Frank Lucas in American Gangster

You will find out soon that talk is cheap and actions are what you should value. The person who is loudest, the person who tries to “own the room” and generally just loves to hear themselves talk, often is the one who produces the least amount of value. Look for and build around the people who stay focused solving problems with others (vs. just talking about them).

6. “Just keep swimming.”
-- Dory in Finding Nemo

You will have good days and you will have bad days. Some days, you just need to keep swimming. Even if you are swimming against the currents, and it feels like you are not making progress, you are in fact moving forward.

7. “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
-- Don Corleone in The Godfather

You are going to be doing a lot of negotiating. You will be securing new partnerships and working to recruit top talent. What can you offer that nobody else can offer? If you are selling 

8. “If you build it, he will come.”
-- The Voice in Field of Dreams

If you build something truly great, you will find that your customers will not only use your products, they will rave about it to others. That is why you need to focus so much on what you are building and the value you provide. Once you can provide long-term value you will be able to scale your business in a very robust and meaningful way.

9. “The key to this business is personal relationships.”
-- Dickie Fox in Jerry McGuire

From customers to partners to employees, many times success comes down to one thing: the people. To build a great company you need to find great people. If you don’t nail that you are going to be fighting an uphill battle.

10. “Life’s this game of inches. So is football. Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small -- I mean one-half a step too late, or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One-half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it.”
-- Tony D'Amato in Any Given Sunday

On any given day, the success of a startup hinges on so many different factors, with the margin for error being incredibly small. You need to understand the decisions that will make our break your business so you can put yourself in a position to execute them with precision and focus. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted.

11. “Even a good decision if made for the wrong reasons can be a bad decision”
-- Governor Swann in Pirates of Caribbean

The decision-making process of a startup is one of the most important parts of the culture. How do you make decisions? What are your principles? Are you making decisions that yield short-term gain but create long-term pain? If you are not making decisions for the right reasons, then you may find that decision will create more trouble later on.

12. “Don’t move until you see it.”
-- Bruce Pandolfini in Searching for Bobby Fischer

Patience is not always an easy trait to maintain. Sometimes you need to be opportunistic and strike at a moment’s notice. But you also need to have the patience to see the pieces come together. Look beyond the existing move, so you can see the ones that come after it.

13. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I must leave now. Mr. Corleone insists on hearing bad news as soon as possible.”
-- Tom Hagen in The Godfather

At Porch one of the values we admire most is transparency. The runway to success is too short to waste time not sharing everything people need to run the business. If you miss on a key performance indicator or you get critical product feedback from a customer that could improve your business, don’t hide it or sweep it under the rug. Embrace it, acknowledge it and grow from it.

14. “We’re going to change the game."
-- Billy Beane in Moneyball

At a startup one of the greatest feelings you will have is knowing your product, service or business is going to change the world. As noted in the first quote, if you are solving real pain for real people, you have the chance to create something long lasting and durable that will literally change how people live their lives.

4 Leadership Moves to Help Your Team's Millennials Succeed

I’m a millennial myself, who also happens to lead a company. So I'm in a good position to attest to the following four major adjustments you need to make:

1. Let them work remotely.
Allowing millennials the option to work from home not only feeds their desire for autonomy, but also makes modern business sense. A recent study found that call-center workers were 13.5 percent more productive when working from home. This group also took fewer sick days, quit at half the rate of their office-based peers and reported higher levels of job satisfaction.

Most of my team members work primarily from home and only visit the office for occasional meetings and check-ins. This has proven to be a productive practice for us, and technology makes it easy.

2. Don’t micromanage.
Millennials are a particularly confident group. While all new employees require some mentoring and teaching, millennials prefer the freedom to spur their own growth and familiarity with their positions.

Help them do this: Empower your millennials by trusting them to try new things and explore new ideas without being micromanaged each step of the way. I have experienced mostly positive results when allowing my young employees to tackle challenging situations on their own. Afterward, we meet and talk about what worked, what didn’t and how they can improve in the future.

3. Allow for flexibility.
One of millenials' defining characteristics is their preference for purposeful work over plump paychecks. When you place millennials in roles that fit them perfectly, they’ll be loyal to your company, remain highly engaged and work their tails off.

But, in return, they want to be treated as human beings who have outside interests. They want the flexibility to pursue their hobbies, hit the gym or pick up their kids from daycare. While they desire jobs worthy of their sweat and creativity, they also want the flexibility and freedom to pursue outside hobbies and interests.

4. Don’t let them get bored.
Boredom is a feeling that absolutely cripples millennials. They’re used to having constant, unlimited access to many sources of entertainment, and they’ll quickly quit any job that leaves them bored eight or more hours a day. A recent report out of Canada found that 29 percent of people who quit their jobs did so because they were bored and unhappy -- the second most common reason cited in the survey.

To escape this fate, make sure you create a fun and engaging work environment that still encourages productivity and profitability.

The days of lifelong employment at one company are over. Millennials are more than willing to job-hop until they find the right fit. Avoid the headache of filling open positions and adjust to their quirks -- no matter how unconventional they may be.

A Commencement Address for Entrepreneurs, Leaders and Marketers

I am not a trained marketer. Yet I've been the chief marketer and run major teams for major brands. At my last in-house role, I took a company from 45 million to 100 million users, and was on the executive team during its acquisition for nearly half a billion dollars.

As a result, I recently had the honor of being asked to give the commencement address at my alma mater. As I was thinking about the advice I would give to my younger self, I couldn’t help but think of the career advice I give over and over again to early-career leaders, entrepreneurs and executives, in marketing and otherwise.

I thought I’d share.

What makes me great as a marketer is that I am fixated on being a great leader. I used to be a Lone Ranger type. As I matured, I realized that as a marketing leader -- as a business leader, period -- you can’t do anything big without an on-fire, whip-smart team. So I study, then practice and practice and practice, everything about leading and inspiring brilliant people. I study and practice creating conditions conducive to their brains doing their best work, and creating cultures that attract the geniuses I work with. I urge you to do the same. And to read "Boundaries for Leaders."

Do not become one of those bitter marketers or “creatives” constantly railing against data and metrics. Don't fight the waves. Learn to surf. Beautiful, sensual, emotional stories without outcomes and data? That's called art. I love art. But that's not marketing.

Learn about business. Study Lean Methodology and apply it to your content and marketing programs. Read "The Lean Startup." Get very conversant in data -- especially content performance data. Cut through the noise and figure out what few data points really matter in understanding how your programs are moving the business.

Learn how to interpret them to get insight into what makes your Customers do what they do. Then constantly tweak and align your marketing to your Customers and what they want. Not what they should want, or what you want them to want. What they actually want to have happen in their real lives. Seriously, read "The Lean Startup."

Exercise Buddhist detachment from your content, your programs, even tough work relationships. Do more of what works, what inspires, what transforms. When it's not working, fix it fast or stop doing it. Acknowledge, commemorate and keep it moving. Get those resources back and reinvest them into the programs, campaigns or people that bear fruit.

Learn how to make business cases. If you can't ever get the resources to do what you need to do, you will get frustrated and bitter and you won't get the results you want. I was a consultant for much of my career, and the skill of making the business case for everything I propose to do helped become a clear, thoughtful thinker and strategist. This served me exceedingly well as an executive and in my in-house roles. Learning how to sell in your work and how to get is a necessary part of being a great marketer. Read "The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals."

Learn about humanity. Behavior change. Why people do what they do. Study behavioral economics. Neuroplasticity. How people get stuck. How they get unstuck. How they stay unstuck. Read "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business."  Read "Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength." Read "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."

Become an expert on story and narrative. Literally study it, don't just use the word "story" all the time. Understand character, plot, conflict, climax. Take James Patterson's MasterClass on Writing. Read "The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories."

Don't fixate on the channel. It's not about Instagram or Snapchat. Getting to product-market fit, getting people to care about what you do, that’s never about the channel. And, in fact, there will always be a new channel. If you understand human motivation, story and business strategy, you will be able to create products and content people care about, regardless of what the new digital channel of the day is.

Prioritize ruthlessly. Almost no one can work on three, really big, important priorities at a time. Feeling overwhelmed or frustrated is almost always a signal to revisit and double-down on prioritization. This mostly means making hard decisions that you can’t do awesome things you would love to do, because that would distract or take resources away from The Actual Most Important Thing.

Don't work on products or for companies that you don't find interesting. And really, by that I mean work only for companies you believe are out to solve real, human-scale problems that would make the world work better for your customers, even if the product itself isn't quite there yet or if you aren't personally the target audience for the product. If I don't leave the first meeting with a company talking to my friends about how intriguing the product or the vision or the people are, I generally don't work on it.

Don't work for people you don't find inspiring or don't think you can learn from. You don't necessarily have to like them. But you should believe working with them will expand your capacity for greatness and your skills.

On the other hand, don’t overrule gut misgivings about hiring people, either. You should be excited about learning from those who report to you, too. And don’t expect others to work with you unless you will help them grow, too.

Make it your goal to leave the people in your wake -- your employees, teammates, peers, bosses and especially your customers, better off than than they were when they came into contact with you. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. It can be as small as saying something encouraging at every opportunity. (Without blowing smoke.)

Study integrity. Decide to do whatever it takes to be a whole person with the capacity to face  and handle the real facts of every situation. Read Henry Cloud’s "Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality."

If you work in marketing or product, understand your brief as a starting point in the conversation about what you should be working on. Don’t just accept a brief that doesn’t make sense (or isn’t appropriately resourced) from the start. In particular, push back if what you’ve been asked to do is not the thing that will actually solve the business issue. Don’t just push back, though, propose what will solve the issue and be able to explain your thinking as to why -- even if it’s never been done before.

Develop the practice of being still and thoughtful every day, for a moment. If you can journal or walk every day, that’s even better. Allow yourself to listen to that still, small voice that comes up all the time -- the more you honor it, the more it will whisper creativity, energy, wisdom and clear direction your way.

Occasionally, in times of transition, it will also whisper “I’m scared” or “I don’t know how to do this next thing” or “Wow I feel like an imposter in this situation.” Build the habit of interpreting that as a signal that you’re on the right track.

3 Secrets to Finding High-Growth Consumer Groups

Every marketer is looking to capture the interest and spending dollars of the consumers who promise the highest and longest term growth. What characteristics define such consumers? To begin, their incomes are steadily growing, their population sizes must be rising and the amount that they spend on an annual basis must be increasing. Groups that possess these three combined traits should be marketers’ main focus as they look to develop long-term relationships with their customers and position themselves as industry leaders.

But who are these people? To begin, they can be defined as the “New Mainstream,” or population segments that are changing the way we see our nation. The New Mainstream contributed to 89 percent of the country’s population growth between 2000 and 2016 and not only includes multicultural groups, as many believe; it also includes LGBT community members and millennials. Asian, Black, Pacific Islander and Hispanic consumers account for over 36 percent of the 2016 U.S. population -- a 4.5 percent increase since the 2010 Census.

So how do we reach these groups? They keys is looking where no one else is, going deeper than your competitors are into data and finding the differences between consumer groups. With these strategies in place, marketers are able to find and keep high growth consumers.

Look where no one else is looking.
Many marketers focus their efforts on groups that make up their largest consumer base -- the problem is that the largest group (White non-Hispanics) are growing the slowest. Whereas White non-Hispanics grew by 10 percent since 1990, Hispanics have doubled in size since then and are now 60 million in population. The expectation is that within each of the next five years, there will be an average of 1.6 million new Hispanics in the United States each year, with the average Hispanic household spending an average of $2.17 million in their lifetime. This is certainly an area that marketers should focus their efforts on.

That being said, every good marketer knows they should target the Hispanic buyer, but many are not certain where that priority should be. Instead of looking at static or historical figures, business strategists should look at who will represent the bulk of the growth going forward. To differentiate yourself and capture a new share of the market before your competitors do, look toward emerging markets sooner rather than later.

Today, the LGBT community is growing particularly fast; for counties with 100,000 or greater total population, the community ranges from 1.3 percent to 9.1 percent of the county’s 18+ population. In 2013, this group’s buying power was estimated to be $830 billion. This is $40 billion more since it was estimated to be $790 billion in 2012. The LGBT community is a group that marketers are hesitant to target, at the risk of offending both community members and non-community members. In today’s day and age, the risk is often worth the reward. Marketers must be willing to target groups with direct, personal and sincere campaigns to earn their trust and dollars.   

Go deeper than your competitors are going.
It’s one thing to have big data -- it’s entirely different to have in-depth data that provides you with the most specific insights available. For example, Asian households spend an average of $2.56 million during their lifetimes. This is a valuable indicator of Asian buying power, but it’s without context and does not point marketers in the right direction. To go one step further, what if they knew that Asians spend three times more on education than the average American household? Or that when at the grocery store, Hispanics spend more on beef and poultry than any other food? Or that, whereas 67 percent of the Hispanics in the country are Mexican, Caribbean and South American groups form the dominant Hispanic groups in most Eastern cities. And while the majority of Asians in the U.S. are Chinese, there are dense pockets of Vietnamese and Filipinos in several cities?

These sort of deep insights allow marketers to cater their campaigns to specific groups. Imagine that you work in the marketing department of a national grocer. If you have deep insights about Hispanic grocery spending, this allows you to design your marketing campaigns so that they advertise the right grocery products to the right consumers. This leads to higher profits, and longer, deeper relationships with consumers who feel understood by your brand. This is much more effective than total market advertising because it connects with consumers in a way that resonates with them and pushes them to become loyal to a brand.

Find the differences between consumers.
Some marketers may say that they choose to go out with a total market approach because it is inclusive; however, total market may not sufficiently differentiate between consumers. Instead, it often assumes that all consumers are more or less the same and treats them equally. Total market can be ambiguous and some assert that marketing to all consumers in one way is better than diversifying your message to better reach your unique consumers. While at first total market sounds inclusive, it can compromise important nuances that can mean the difference between engaging and alienating key consumer groups.; after all, consider all of the marketing technology companies that are developing technologies to help brands better target consumers. They are gathering data every way they can to more clearly define their buyer personas. Given how much time and money is being spent to optimize this technology, why would brands then want to go out with generic marketing campaigns?

These people don’t want to be generalized; today’s multiculturals, and millennial multiculturals in particular, are blending their new American heritages with their cultural traditions. They want their cultures to be recognized and their differences to be respected. Marketers have the tools to do this, so there is no reason why they should not use their resources to their advantage.

Finding the fastest growing consumer segments shouldn’t be a secret. New mainstream consumers are powerful, connected and loyal lifetime consumers. They want to see themselves represented by the brands that they know and to feel respected by the marketing campaigns targeted at them. Marketers must acknowledge these feelings and understand that not all consumers are identical. They should use the actionable insights that differentiate consumers to develop targeted marketing strategies -- find them in your customer and prospect files and around your store trade area. By doing this, they will not only find high growth consumers, but develop long-term relationships with them and ensure their company’s growth in the near and long-term.

8 Questions for Assessing Your Website

Whether you’ve just completed your first website, or you’re trying to re-assess an existing site to see where it can be improved, it’s important that the questions you ask are both representative of your brand as well as results-driven. Here are the top eight questions -- with action steps -- for assessing your business’s website, all with an eye lent towards leveraging your brand and gaining more clients.

1. Who am I really trying to reach?
There are any number of exercises you can use to define your answer, but I ask my one-on-one consulting clients to whittle it down to its simplest elements -- “I/we help people who struggle with [blank] to stop [blank] and start [blank].”

Action step -- Write out, longhand, what your business helps people with, making it as detailed as possible. Then bring it into one simple, straightforward sentence. Make sure that sentence is visible on your website.

2. Is it “me?"
I’m of the belief that a person’s website should be as visually representative of who they are the messaging. It’s like putting on the clothes that make you feel most like yourself. If all black and a moto jacket are how you like to roll, you’ll feel completely out of place in a dress. The same goes for websites. Does it feel like you, visually? Does it “sound” like you, when you write or create ongoing content?

Action step -- Make a list of ways that your website doesn’t feel like you, and create an action plan to start shifting things.

3. Does my "about" page talk about me-me-me or about how I help?
Focus on the latter, and tell people about how what you do translates to helping them as your clients/customers. Yes, people are interested on some level about you and your company’s values, but only because they’re trying to get a sense of what it would be like to work with you. “Is this business ‘my’ kind of business? Do they sound like someone I’d want to receive help from?” That’s what someone is unconsciously or consciously asking themselves when they read an about page.

Action step -- Rewrite your business about page from the perspective of how your underlying values will help people.

4. Is my "services" page streamlined?
For product-based sites, the product -- and its price -- needs to be simple to view and purchase. For client-based businesses, I suggest avoiding tiered packages. They provide an incentive for undercutting your own pricing, and that lends to a sense that your work isn’t as legitimate as is the work of those who stand behind one solid rate for what they do.

Action step-- For product-based businesses, find 10 people who are new to your product and ask them how easy it is to find the information they need online. For service-based businesses, see if you can easily fill in this sentence -- “I charge [blank] per [hour/session], and we work together for an initial commitment of [blank] weeks or months.” Overly-complicated tiered pricing structures won’t fit into that sentence.

5. Am I speaking to client/customer needs?
Sometimes businesses get stuck using industry jargon or flowery language, and that means more work for the client to decide if you’re right for them.

Action step -- Review your blog, services pages and newsletter opt-in incentives. Ask yourself if you are clearly identifying, in the client or customer’s words, what they struggle with or need help with.

6. Am I articulating the solutions that I provide?
A lot of businesses get so focused on putting up “Buy now” buttons that they forget to clearly communicate what the customer is specifically looking for -- a solution. If I have a sink of dirty dishes, my solution is having clean dishes in less time and with less stress. Speak to the solutions the customer desires, instead of inundating them with “Buy now” language.

Action step -- Review your website, keeping an eye out for where you can speak to the customer or client’s desired solutions.
7. Are there multiple ways for customers to engage?
If someone’s only option for engaging with your work is to hire you or buy something, you’re limiting their long-term interactions with your business. Give them reasons to hang out with you for awhile on social media, join your newsletter or otherwise engage with your brand.

Action step -- Create multiple points where people can sign up for your newsletter or engage with you on social media.

8. What’s your ongoing approach for engaging people?
You need a reason for people to regularly come back to your website. Many small business websites have blogs that just showcase their latest features. If someone is in the tech industry, this can be helpful. If I’m using your newsletter service, for instance, I like knowing that you rolled out a new feature that will help me. But for service-based industries, a blog post about new appointment availability isn’t as engaging.

Action step -- Create an ongoing approach for reaching your people, and particularly note how this approach will help your clientele with what they struggle with and offer them solutions.

There’s so much that goes into branding and reaching customers. These eight questions hit the big notes for how you can create a website experience that encourages people to get to know you or your company a little bit better. In the long-term, building that customer engagement is the key to regularly reaching your right people and growing what you do.

Comprehensive Starter Kit: 50 Free Resources to Help Grow Your Business

Whether you are just starting out or well on your way with an established company, every small business owner is always in need of tools or other resources