The Unapologetic Capitalist

Being your own boss sounds great when you are working in a large corporation or are in school, but it comes with unique and sometimes Herculean challenges. Being your own boss also means that it all comes down to you. You may feel like you ‘get’ to make the final decisions, but you are the one who has to bear the burden of the outcomes. You may think you have those who work ‘for’ you, but in reality, you have people whose livelihoods now depend on you. Gerald Lucas is the founder and CEO of Performance Property LLC. He is an internationally recognized real estate expert, best-selling author, coach and professional speaker and he will share his experience and insight on being an entrepreneur and being your own boss.

* Why do you want to be your own boss?

* What goes into the decision of becoming and being your own boss?

* Do you understand the different gears of leadership and management

* Do you understand the need to build productive team chemistry?

* Gerald Lucas: entrepreneur, an internationally recognized real estate expert, best-selling author, coach and professional speaker.

* Gerald is the founder and CEO of Performance Property LLC.

* Gerald is an internationally recognized real estate expert, best-selling author, coach and professional speaker

* Gerald’s books include Shortsale Specifics & Dare to Succeed co-authored with Chicken Soup for the Soul author Jack Canfield

* URL: http://www.performanceproperty.com/

* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/performanceproperty

* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PerformancePropertyLLC

 

An All Star team isn’t necessarily the OPTIMAL team. Team chemistry matters and optimally allocating your resources to germinate good leaders and managers within your company is paramount for success. There is some logic (though often short-sighted) in plucking single players out of another environment and putting them with other “All Star” individuals of excellent talent on to your team. You can even convince yourself that you’ve put together the ‘best team’ possible. However, what is best for the whole venture doesn’t mean maximizing every single piece. You have to be prudent about where you are investing your money and resources. You can very well be dooming your team and/or venture by assembling “All Stars” instead of building a long term value generating team. A team that has cultivated productive chemistry over time will beat out a more talented team of individual ‘All Stars’ every time.

* Understand that one of the greatest drivers of success in any field is chemistry…chemistry that leads to long term value

* Review of the different gears of leadership versus management

* Work with company culture to drive and shape a chemistry that best generates long term value of your venture

* Discuss how extending that chemistry and culture to those you work with outside of your organization…your vendors, distributors, manufacturers, etc. is critical for success.

* Learn from those who have hired an individual for headlines or because they are of some singular talent or maybe a one hit wonder: Those were choices were not long term value generating choices for the venture, they were self serving short term plays that have foreseeably lead to failures.

* Optimize resource allocation:

* Invest time, money and resources in what matters most to building value in your venture

* Develop and deliver your core product

* Create and support a LOYAL, repeat customer base

* Find the right people to internally to generate valuable chemistry and emulate that externally

* Find the resources and partners that you can leverage to bolster your own team’s chemistry to grow the long term value in your venture

* Cultivate All Stars within your own organization

There are times to lead and times to manage. It is important to know the difference between leadership and management. Leaders and managers are distinctly different roles. Many companies err because they don’t understand the difference between a leader and manager. Leaders fail when they manage instead of lead, and managers fail when they lead in situations that demand management. Whether you are a leader or a manager, there is no substitute for experience. Companies both early stage and Fortune 100 have crashed down in flames because they failed at knowing who should be the leader and how projects should be managed. Leaders and managers are distinctly different roles. Great leaders are benevolent dictators. http://unapologeticcapitalist.com/benevolentdictator/ Managers supporting this leader should be a competent lieutenant to implement the vision as it best serves the long term value of the venture.

Leaders and managers are different people…though managers can grow into leaders.

Effective Leaders:

* Are stewards of the vision of the venture

* Have a primary focus of maintaining the optimal path toward the long term value of the venture

* Have significant experience. There is NO substitute for experience

* Inexperience and immaturity lends to disproportionate focus on granular level tasks and issues. Value is diminished from the venture.

* Wrong leaders can be experienced in another company during another marketplace, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into success in another venture in another time and marketplace.

Effective Managers: Experience is Also Without Substitute

* Are focused on risk mitigation and milestone accomplishment.

* Have a primary focus on implementing the tactics that serve the vision that the leader has well articulated as it best serves the long-term value of the venture.

Good Leaders & Managers Have These Things in Common:

* They recognize the difference between needs and wants for themselves and those who work with and for them…and always prioritize the needs over wants

* They know the difference between liking those who work with them and for them versus being liked by those same people…and they don’t prioritize being liked.

* Leaders and managers must be aligned

* Leaders and managers must have a symbiotic relationship

Be a benevolent dictator http://unapologeticcapitalist.com/benevolentdictator/

* The managers under this benevolent dictator should be a competent lieutenant to implement the rule of the leader as it best serves the long term value of the venture

 

Building market share and engaging in your marketplace is pivotal for long term success in your business. One of the most effective and valuable ways to build market share is attending conferences and trade shows where your market share is captive and IN PERSON. Don’t think you can hide behind your electronics just be active in your social media to establish relationships to build meaningful market share. You need to get your brand and yourself out there in the real world to be competitive and win new business and gain lasting market share. There are good resources and some really bad ones. Building market share can be expensive, but with diligence, you can mitigate the bad experiences and best leverage the good ones to build market share that creates real value in your venture.

* Good decision making means being prepared

* Good leadership means taking responsibility but being open to learning from your decisions regardless of how they turn out

* Good leaders don’t need to lead by fear or impatience…that’s for the unprepared trying to distract you from the fact that they fundamentally suck as leaders

* Good business etiquette matters so get over yourself and be better

* Good business means cutting the fat rebuilding market share with a more nimble approach

* Effective market share can be earned after you’ve cut the fat to build upon the muscle you’ve got left

* Being leaner likely means wearing a lot more hats and rolling up your sleeves and involving yourself in a lot more tactics of the company

* Being productive means ensuring you don’t get caught in the minutia and getting lead astray from the optimal path toward long term value

* Good market share involves actively engaging in the marketplace

* Attending some conferences, trade shows, participate in some panel discussions builds market share

* Getting market share must be done by get your brand and yourself out there in the real world to be competitive and win new business

* Being smart means recognizing the good resources and the bad ones

* Using your dollars wisely by being prepared so you can mitigate the bad experiences and best leverage the good ones.

Terminating a relationship of any kind really sucks. There’s just no getting around that. However, so often we find ourselves in situation where we need to cut the fat in our organizations. Sometimes we need to get rid of a toxin. So whether you are cutting the fat or creating addition by subtraction, there are many times when you will have to terminate relationships in your company. You may do it in the form of a layoff, a firing for cause, or a resignation. Ideally you will be able to open the barn door and your ‘horse’ will know it is best to trot on out to greener pastures. This can be accomplished with patience, diligence and good preparation. This is the most you can do to mitigate (not alleviate) the chances for a poor outcome that will cost the company value. Remember, you want to create long-term value for your venture. You need to cut the fat while ensuring you don’t harm any of the muscle. Make sure you aren’t sending value out the door with those you need to escort to the door.

* 3 Red Flags of a Bad Leader

* Takes too long getting back to someone

* Is late to meetings and appointments

* Name drops

* Implementing a Layoff (revisit show 13 http://unapologeticcapitalist.com/13)

* Ensure you’ve educated your folks along the way to ensure they are marketable

* Be appropriately generous to encourage loyalty

* Be up front so that you can be supportive of a potential transition

* Retain necessary intellectual capital and relationships so value doesn’t go out the door

* Be transparent

* Offer tangible support

* Get exit in writing

* Make all efforts to maintain a good relationship

* Dealing with Dinosaurs

* Be thoughtful

* Be supportive

* Be deferential

* Terminating for cause

* Remember that it is ALWAYS best to suck the oxygen out of a fire rather than throw kerosene on it

* Intervene early

* Give an opportunity to turn the bus around

* Have a process with tangible steps and milestones

Learn the three key venture capital investment fallacies and how to avoid them so that you can be successful in fund raising for your venture. Understand the venture capital investor perspective and priorities so you can get in front of the right investor at the right time with the right opportunity.

So what do venture capital investors want? Fundamentally they want to make money. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will always have that priority. Venture capital investors will tell you that their priority is on ROI. However, this is a long term goal, and most folks are more short sighted than that. Ultimately, investors want to keep their jobs, and they want to be RIGHT. Venture capital investors are in a business of ‘what have you done for me lately.’ Someone could’ve made and won some huge bets, but at some point, no one is going to care that you hit a home run a few years ago.

Venture capital investors can be very insecure.  Either they have had some hits, but they are worried they will never have another one. Or, they fear that they will be exposed for the fact that they just got lucky once or twice and don’t actually have any discernable asset management skills. Newer investors want to be seen as ‘bold’ and make their mark to cover up their limited experience. And, some of the stalwarts of the industry fear that they simply aren’t relevant anymore (review show 12 unapologeticcapitalist.com/12.)

There are some great and even exceptional venture capital investors out there, but the industry has become very crowded.  So finding an excellent and well matched one is like having found an All-Star player 7 rounds into the draft. However, you can engage in a far more productive dialogue, begin to establish meaningful relationships, and raise valuable venture capital if you can understand their perspective.

 

Venture capital investing and entrepreneurship one of the riskiest business paths to take. The great irony is that most of the folks involved in venture capital investing are perversely risk adverse. When raising money from venture capital investors, it helps to know what the view is like from their side of the table and what ultimately drives their decision making process.

Raising money takes time, but sometimes you need to see results NOW. But you still need to raise money the right way for the right reasons. Some companies have the luxury to wait out a rough market or a long funding road, but the ‘wait and see’ folks aren’t the innovators and aren’t the long-term winners. This episode discusses viable options for raising money in the near term that still builds long term value.

Making money means taking risks. Venture capital is some of the riskiest dollars to invest, yet venture capitalists are some of the most risk averse people on the planet. Most of us fear losing our jobs or fear being wrong, and sadly too many find comfort in dangerous group think so that if they are wrong, they can point to all the other people who were also wrong. However, fear based or passion driven decisions rarely work out well. Through understanding how the world of venture capital, private equity and hedge funds work, this episode discusses making decisions based on sound business and preparation so you can the risks worth taking with your eyes wide open.

Making money depends on getting your product sold to the RIGHT customer at the RIGHT price at the RIGHT time. Business development means developing a pipeline of business so that you can ultimately sell to them. Many business development and sales people think they are good at their jobs, but the proof is found in actual and profitable transactions. Building the most valuable, long-term customer base that generates tangible revenues takes time, persistence, and availability at the right time with the right product at the right price.