How to cope with a control-freak boss
Controlling bosses can make the workplace a living hell, but winning their trust is essential to improving office relations.
So says Kaley Klemp, an executive coach and co-author of “The Drama-Free Office: A Guide to Healthy Collaboration with Your Team, Coworkers, and Boss”.
“Trust is a big, big deal,” said Klemp, who wrote the book with her fellow coach and dad, Jim Warner. “Controllers are looking for those who are on their side.”
With “National Boss Day” right around the corner on Oct. 17, Klemp said now’s a good time to think about how to smooth things over with an unruly micromanager before a bad situation gets worse.
According to Klemp’s statistics, some 46 percent of employees work for or have worked for an unreasonable boss at some point in their careers.
Once underlings demonstrate support and willingness to go the distance for a micromanaging boss, that person is more apt to be receptive to the worker’s needs, said Klemp, noting that controllers typically reward loyalty.
Beyond developing a good rapport, those under the grips of a controller would do well to ask for clear-cut goals and expectations, she said. That way the employee can deliver results that will make the boss look better.
10 reasons not to seek investors for your startup
– Tim Berry is the president and founder of Palo Alto Software. This post originally appeared on his blog, “Planning, Startups, Stories”. The views expressed are his own. –
Sure, maybe you need the money. Maybe that’s what your business plan says. But seriously: Do you really want to have investors involved in your dream startup?
I’ve said it before: bootstrapping is underrated. I get frequent emails from people asking how they can get investment for their new startup, and I’ve admitted to being a member of an angel investor group. But let’s not forget, while we’re thinking about it, these 10 good reasons not to seek investors for your startup.
1. It’s almost impossible to get investment for your very first startup. If you don’t have startup experience, get somebody on your team who does. Chris Dixon said it best: either you’ve started a company or you haven’t. And if you haven’t, and nobody in your team has either, that makes it very hard.
2. You are selling ownership. Investors write checks to own a serious portion of your business. I admit that’s patently obvious, but you should see the emails I get in which people think of investors as if they were some sort of public agency. Once you get investment, you don’t own your entire company.
3. Investors are bosses. You are not your own person when you have investors; you’re part of a team. You can’t decide everything by yourself. Politics matter. Investor relations matter. If you screw up, you do it in front of other people, and it hurts those people.
4. Valuation is critical to them and you. Simply put, valuation means the price. If you want to give only 10 percent of your company to investors who pay $100,000, you’re saying your company is worth $1 million. And so on. Simple math, but wow, not so simple negotiation.
Creditors’ rights: 5 tips on how to collect debts
– Stephanie Rabiner is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. –
If you’re in the type of business that extends credit to customers, then you’re officially in the business of collecting debts.
Unfortunately, collecting debts can oftentimes be difficult, time-consuming, and fruitless — not to mention a drain on your financial resources.
However, by following these tips on how to collect debts, you may be able to make the process easier and a lot less painful.
1. Be reasonably persistent and polite. Though you may want to yell at a debtor and talk to them on a daily basis, neither of these is a very good idea. Maintaining a professional demeanor will keep you out of threat territory, and calling a debtor no more than once every few days will allay any concerns of illegal harassment.
2. Put an end to excuses. It’s your job to answer every excuse with an alternative option. If a debtor says the check is ready to be mailed, offer to pick it up. If they say they need to get to the bank, offer to take them.
3. Use credit scores as leverage. As a creditor, one of your biggest assets is the ability to put a black mark on a debtor’s credit report. As leverage, warn that you will respond to an unpaid debt with a report to the big credit agencies. This may get a debtor moving.
10 marketing lessons for early stage tech startups
– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –
I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.” We need to learn from doing, by trial and error.
If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory. The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.).
1. Where Stealth is Good – There’s a lot of discussions on the Web about whether startups should be stealthy before they launch or not. The truth is there isn’t a “right” answer for your company. You need some guidelines to make decisions. My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. Stealth does not mean constipated, paranoid and totally untrusting of others. It does mean not telling more people your future plans than is necessary. It means avoiding drinking too much at cocktail parties with other tech people and bragging about your plans. It means not over-sharing your deal with VCs or other investors.
The truth is that we work in a very small, tight-knit industry and news and plans spread fast. In the early days you don’t really want three extra teams hearing your ideas and gearing up to compete before you feel you’ve got a solid head start. Most people totally advise against stealth. They think that only by being open and testing your ideas in an open marketplace can you be successful. Be careful about this advice.
Also be careful about VCs. Most ones that I know have very high ethical standards, so I’m not concerned about that. But once a VC has heard your idea he can’t “un-think” it. And these ideas have ways of seeping into board discussions with portfolio companies as in, “have you ever thought about trying A, B or C?” It’s mostly unintentional, but tacit knowledge about ideas spreads quickly amongst the chattering elite.
I actually like finding entrepreneurs who are more circumspect, less braggadocios and generally more planned about their actions.
Great article; the only thing I would add is the luck – or lack thereof – in finding the right funders when the time is right. When my company was in need of funding (still early-stage) we found a facilitator (eSolve Capital; http://esocap.com) that were able to provide us with excellent conditions
From a notebook to launching a startup
– Shane Mac is the co-founder of online job recruitment startup Hello There. He is also the director of marketing at Zaarly and formerly spearheaded marketing at Gist (acquired by RIM). This is an edited version of the original article that appeared on Quick Sprout. The views expressed are his own. –
About a year ago, I sat in a coffee shop pitching a new idea to one of the founders of Startup Weekend, Clint Nelson. Never would I have predicted that this one meeting would have such an impact on the next year of my life.
The entire concept was all on one page of my notebook: sketches, pricing models, tag lines and even people I should sell it to. I’ve put every idea from notes, books, speeches, and product sketches in an indexed notebook since I read a post by Tim Ferriss two years ago.
This is my best effort to share what it takes to get a (bootstrapped) startup off the ground, while also having a fulltime job. We launched three months ago, and I’m ecstatic. Here are the ups, downs, the good and the bad:
The 10 things we learned
1. What you think people should pay for, may be what they think should be free.
When I had the idea for Hello There (that’s the name), I was obsessed with video and the ability to display more effectively who you actually are.
10 things every entrepreneur needs to try
– Neil Patel is a serial entrepreneur who blogs about business at Quick Sprout and is the co-founder of KISSmetrics. This article originally appeared here. The views expressed are his own. –
Being an entrepreneur obviously isn’t easy, which is why most people shy away from trying to be one. Before you throw out the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, make sure you check out the following free services and programs:
Microsoft Biz Spark
Whether you love or hate Microsoft, as an entrepreneur, you’ll need their software. For example, I always find myself using Excel, Word and PowerPoint. There really isn’t a day that goes by in which I’m not using one of those applications.
In the beginning, you may not buy all of the Microsoft products you need as money will probably be a bit tight, but luckily for you, Microsoft gives all entrepreneurs their software for free through their BizSpark program. There aren’t any strings attached and they literally just hand you all the software you need for free. They even let you use their cloud program, Azure, for free for 750 hours.
The best part about BizSpark is that once you get your startup launched, through their media relationships with sites like Mashable and Techmeme, they’ll help you get your business out to millions of people at no cost.
TechStars
Thanks for sharing. This was a great post about entrepreneurs. Looking forward to reading your blog in the future.
3 ways to help your startup succeed
– Stephanie Rabiner is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. –
The number of startups has been steadily increasing, with 2010 boasting a 15-year high with 565,000 new startups each month.
Experts pin the growth on unemployment and dissatisfaction, but, according to CNN Money, experts also caution that starting a business out of desperation is not the right path to startup success.
Even if a lack of contentment is behind your startup, that doesn’t mean you can’t be successful in your venture. Here are a few tips to make this happen.
1. Be clear about your goals. Startup success stories are often borne out of clearly articulated goals. Not only does an affirmative goal help you pitch your idea to investors, it will help you make tough decisions that stay true to your intentions and keep you on the right path.
2. Build customer relationships. Horrible customer service can ruin an amazing product. Startup success requires that you understand your customers’ needs and that you be available should anything go wrong. A customer who feels taken care of is more likely to recommend your product, pushing you on the path towards startup success.
3. Get help. You may be fine without employees, but just like the rest of us, you don’t know everything there is to know about running a business. In fact, most startup success stories involve people who only knew their product and nothing else.
Business tips from “The Demon” Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons – rocker, reality TV star and self-styled marketing genius – may be the shrewdest businessman to have donned face makeup and six-inch heels.
In the business world, as in music, Simmons boasts an impressive record. A classic immigrant rags-to-riches tale, he’s worked tirelessly over the last 36 years to turn the KISS brand into an empire. His former blood-spitting “Demon” alter ego now graces more than 2,500 different products such as ketchup, condoms, coffins and credit cards.
In addition to KISS album sales (over 100 million units sold), Simmons earns $100,000 per speaking engagement, and has more than half a dozen booked for 2011 already. Among his other non-musical ventures are estate planning (he is a co-founder of Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy), books, magazines and a handful of television projects.
Reuters sat down with him recently in Toronto just before his keynote speech at Canada’s Advertising Week 2011. Here are some tips from Simmons on how to excel in business.
Q: Beside yourself, who else has it right in business today?
A: If you take a look at Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim — they don’t use computers and they don’t text. They don’t even talk on the cell. Impersonal social networking is fine for information. But you’re not judged like that. You’re not going to get a job that way.
Q: When it comes to pitching business ventures or new ideas, what’s the best way of making your case?
Taking the entrepreneurial plunge
– Jeff Bussgang is a partner at Flybridge Capital Partners and the author of “Mastering the VC Game” and the blog “Seeing Both Sides“. The views expressed are his own. –
When to become an entrepreneur is a common quandary for many. For whatever reason, this issue has come up a great deal recently (recession-driven workforce dislocation?), so I thought I’d share a few thoughts that might help frame this critical decision.
I have concluded that being an entrepreneur is an irrational state of being. If human beings were purely rational, evaluative, value maximizing individuals (see Harvard Business School professor Michael Jensen’s paper on self-interest and human behavior), they would not start companies. If they sat down and did the expected value calculation by laying out the probability weighted outcomes of being an entrepreneur as compared to taking a safe job, it would not pencil out.
Yet, entrepreneurship is not simply a rational journey. It’s one that is defined by passion and personal satisfaction that transcends purely financial analysis. And, of course, there is always the hope for the big payout, no matter how long the odds.
Despite popular wisdom to the contrary, age is not a major factor in the decision to start a company. The Kauffman Foundation reports the median age of founders is 39 – right at the midpoint of a typical professional career – and 69 percent are 35 or older. Another study by Washington University professors of 86,000 science and engineering graduates showed that age was not a significant predictor of becoming an entrepreneur.
So when should you become an entrepreneur. Here are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself:
1. Do you have an idea that no one can talk you out of? When you bounce your start-up idea off your spouse, friends and trusted advisers, are they able to raise enough objections that you begin to doubt whether the idea has merit. Getting honest, objective advice can be hard because the people you are likely to go to care about you and may be afraid to tell you what they really think for fear of offending you. Thus, you need to get feedback from objective parties (e.g., advisers, experts, prospective angel or VC investors with whom you don’t have a deep personal relationship).
In my opinion, the notion of a great business built around a great idea may be a fallacy.
How a company approaches the process of idea generation determines its ultimate success and can significantly reduce the odds of failure. A closed feedback loop converting capital to ideas to profits back to ideas is imperative to gain the insights necessary to launch revolutionary products.
You do not need a great idea to start with; you only need a sufficient margin of (financial) safety and the ability to learn quickly from mistakes to guide you to fundamental insights and great products.
Building this structured idea generation process from day one is also essential to adapt to changing market trends throughout the company’s life.
Microsoft for example did not start with Windows, they started with a single programming language called Basic which was much less likely to fail. Multiple subsequent product iterations funded the huge undertaking that was Windows with sufficient margin of safety.
This article is absolute B.S. It does nothing other than to advise the employer subjected to a control freak to bend over, take it, and please, please, please. Control freaks need clear and reasonable boundaries. Knowing that employees won’t jump at every email, knowing that they won’t answer emails after a certain time or on a certain day, etc. Control freaks need to learn not to treat their employees like crap. The best way to deal with a control freak boss is to give a reasonable amount of your time and energies, agree with them, then do just the best you can. They usually end up doing the work anyway, so really, do the best you can, document, document, document, and if something goes wrong under their freaky directions then you have proof, I’m sorry, maybe I misunderstood but your email clearly says to… but don’t sweat it or stress about it. The rest of their staff tend to shut down, and so, you’ll just be surrounded by like minded people. But if you let them stress you out or work you to the bone, no, that’s not the best way to deal with a control freak.