EntreLeadership

EntreLeadership provides you with a path to becoming a great leader in your company by identifying the necessary management and entrepreneurial skills.

If you want to be a successful startup founder, you’ve got to be hard-working and passionate. It takes a lot of risk-taking to make a new company work, and that may require some innovation as well. Conversely, leadership principles are also a necessity to make it when you’re in the trenches of growing in a young business. Discipline and humility are key components, as is the ability to keep calm in the many tough times in the beginning. Leaders need to motivate teams and take charge of the company’s culture.

Although these two ideals of a leader and an entrepreneur seem opposing, both are vital to have when starting a new business. A company’s culture is born of the qualities if it’s leader. I remember one team I worked on had a visionary leader who took charge of the culture, instead of letting team-members control it. With experience starting and building successful companies, and the kindness of a leader, he was the perfect embodiment of an EntreLeader. I learned a lot of great principles from him that still guide my own business journey today.

Contrast this leader with a younger Dave Ramsey, who one time made his team stay outside on a cold day. He wanted to teach them that tardiness would “leave them out in the cold.” Ramsey had a habit of overreacting to little problems, like his staff being late to work. His decision left his employees as cold-hearted toward him as they were cold from standing outside, and his business suffered. Thankfully, he learned from the experience and improved.

In 1994 Dave Ramsey began teaching people how to avoid becoming bankrupt. The name of his class was “Life After Debt” and Ramsey ran ads on the radio, offering the first session for no charge. Unfortunately, a meager six people showed up for his class. After some analysis, Ramsey learned that his class wasn’t solving a problem that his audience really needed help with. Rather, people wanted to learn financial security. After a rebrand of the class to “Financial Peace University,” and improving what it was offering, Ramsey made it work. Today, millions of people have learned from his course. Just like Ramsey, your initial try for marketing your product probably won’t work. But it’s not all wasted because you’ll learn valuable lessons that you can use to adjust and become better. A great sales strategy involves helping your audience have positive experiences. To achieve marketing success, care about what your people want and give useful tips about how what you’re selling can give them that.…