Standing out in the entrepreneurial world is a task that requires dedication, we will always have competition and new ventures emerging day by day.You must make clear the objectives and competitive advantages of your product to stand out and awake the interest of everyone.Startup competitions should be part of all startup's strategy.

How to make the best pitch for your startup

Participating improves your pitching skills, in addition to putting the spotlight of investors on your product, having potential clients inside and recruiting talent interested in collaborating with your company.In addition to having the opportunity to discover new markets and open horizons, it is important to consider the experience and coaching that you receive prior to each.

The pitch

In some events, you are assigned a trainer, and it is essential to follow their recommendations to be able to correctly express the value of your project in two or three minutes.Preparation becomes relevant, as you own the product, you can omit appealing information.

Follow recommendations

Having preparation with an external party is the most recommendable, they give you a different perspective and areas of opportunity for your product. The way an external third party receives it is the way the jury and the public will receive it.

Any help has to be taken

Over the past year and so far this year, we have had some events such as the Pitch Competition at Web Summit (Lisboa, PT); Inventures Pitch Competition (Alberta, CAN), Pitch Competition in Latinas In Tech Summit , Women STEMpreneurs Competition, Web Summit and more, in all of them we have been selected and the HR-Tech industry has done very well. And raises the interest of many companies and investors, even having some already closed for our next capital raising. We are very grateful for the invitation and the opportunity to participate in each competition.

<a href="https://www.gethitch.ai/">Hitch</a>’s main challenge in this type of initiative is facing unknown markets without having any idea what solution they are looking for. It is not about selling something that does not exist, the objective is to find in those two/three minutes a feed with the audience that is attractive to them and convince them that you have the right solution for the moment they live.Knowing the universe of your industry is fundamental, it gives you a long-term perspective and allows you to think about a future in an expansion in different latitudes.

Know your industry

Preparation is the cornerstone of startup contests, if you arrive with confidence in your product and practice with externals, it will always give you good results.

Prepare

The most important thing is to convey to your team, the people that build the product, the impact that they can have, it is a recognition of everyone’s effort and what they build day by day.Sales and customers are not everything, the most valuable thing is the satisfaction of the team and the validation of active or potential users.

Your team is your priority

Conveying why your product is important in less than 3 minutes is a heavy task, but with preparation and some help it becomes lighter.

Grow a startup and stand out, learn incredibly valuable tips from a CEO who has gone through tons of pitch competitions earning a spot on the industry

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

startup

Startups

humanresources

Human Resources

What it takes to grow a startup

<ul><li>Strategic, financial, operational, conceptual, personal, and emotional: It doesn’t matter the nature of the problem we face—if we can imagine it, we can draw it.</li><li>By drawing it we will see otherwise invisible aspects, and potential solutions will emerge.</li><li>Drawing our problem is always worth a try: Even in the worst case—if no solution becomes visible—we’ll still end up with an infinitely clearer view of our situation. </li></ul>

Solve Any Problem with Pictures

There are three kinds of visual thinkers:<ol><li>The black pen : People who can’t wait to start drawing.</li><li>The highlighters : Those who are happy to add to someone else’s work.</li><li>The red pen : Those who question it all—right up to the moment they pick up the red pen and redraw it all. </li></ol>

Black Pen, Yellow Pen, Red Pen: 

1. Collect everything we can to look at—the more the better.2. Have a place where we can lay out everything and really look at it all, side by side. 3. Always define a basic coordinate system to give us clear orientation and position.4. Find ways to cut ruthlessly from everything our eyes bring in—we need to practice visual triage.

THE FOUR STEPS OF VISUAL THINKING

<ul><li>The garage sale principle: Everything looks different when we can see it all at once. </li><li>Regardless of how well organized all the stuff in our garage may be, laying everything out on tables in the light of day yields a completely new perspective on it all. The same is true for data.</li></ul>

The Garage Sale Principle: How Do We Even Know What We’ve Got? 

1. Who and what ?2. How much ?3. When ? 4. Where ?5. How ?6. Why ? The 6 W’s are used as coordinates for almost every descriptive picture we’re likely to face.

Breakdown Any Complex Problem Into 6 Questions(6W)

The SQVID is just a series of five questions that we walk our initial idea through in order to bring it to visual clarity and to refine its focus.<ul><li>QUESTION 1: SIMPLE OR ELABORATE? </li><li>QUESTION 2: QUALITY OR QUANTITY? </li><li>QUESTION 3: VISION OR EXECUTION?</li><li>QUESTION 4: INDIVIDUAL OR A COMPARISON?</li><li>QUESTION 5: THE WAY THINGS ARE VERSUS THE WAY THEY COULD BE ( D (Delta) is for Change )</li></ul>

THE SQVID 

<ol><li>a PORTRAIT for a “who” or “what” problem;</li><li> a CHART for a “how much” problem;</li><li> a MAP for a “where” problem;</li><li> a TIMELINE for a “when” problem;</li><li>a FLOWCHART for a “how” problem; or</li><li> a MULTIPLE-VARIABLE PLOT for a “why” problem.</li></ol>From just these six, we have the backbone framework for any problem-solving picture.

What We Show And What We See

It has several different blades to help visually solve almost any kind of problem.<ol><li> First are our three basic visual thinking tools: our eyes, our mind’s eye, and our hand-eye coordination.</li><li>Next, Four steps : look, see, imagine, and show.</li><li>Then we have the SQVID, the five questions that help us open our mind’s eye.(👆)</li><li>Last come the six ways we see: who/what, how much, where, when, how, and why.</li></ol>

The Swiss Army Knife Of Problem Solving

<ol><li>First take a pen and a paper (/napkin), draw a circle and label it with me or health or business or whatever.</li><li>Then, ask the 6 questions (6W) in proper order for your problem then draw with imagination 💭 and label it . Once you finish all 6 questions , you get clarity about your problem or maybe solution .</li><li>Then use SQVID questions to your problem, you will get solution or get a crystal clear view of the problem.</li></ol>Go through all the pictures , you will get it.

Actionable Steps

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”The point of a good picture isn’t to eliminate words; it’s to replace as many as possible so that the words we do use are the important ones. So as you work through your picture, make a point of describing—even if it’s only to yourself—what the pieces mean and why you’re drawing them.

Doodle Aloud—and Erase Even Louder

<ul><li>The human brain is a remarkable problem-solving device: More often than not, we already know the solution to our problem—usually because we’ve seen it somewhere before—but it’s locked away just out of grasp.</li><li>When we see our problem mapped out in front of us pictorially, the solution often jumps right off the page. Don’t worry about what your picture looks like; concentrate on what it shows. </li></ul>

Talking In Pictures

The Back of the Napkin proves that thinking with pictures can help anyone discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve our ability to share our insights. This book will help readers literally see the world in a new way.

An expanded guide to enhancing analytical skills by building up one's intrinsic abilities is a primer for business leaders on how to develop ideas and enable faster results using to-the-point visual methods. Original.

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

problemsolving

Problem Solving

books

Books

The acclaimed bestseller about visual problem solving-now bigger and better "There is no more powerful way to prove that we know something well than to draw a simple picture of it. And there is no more powerful way to see hidden solutions than to pick up a pen and draw out the pieces of our problem." So writes Dan Roam in The Back of the Napkin, the international bestseller that proves that a simple drawing on a humble napkin can be more powerful than the slickest PowerPoint presentation. Drawing on twenty years of experience and the latest discoveries in vision science, Roam teaches readers how to clarify any problem or sell any idea using a simple set of tools. He reveals that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can't draw. And he shows how thinking with pictures can help you discover and develop new ideas, solve problems in unexpected ways, and dramatically improve your ability to share your insights. Take Herb Kelleher and Rollin King, who figured out how to beat the traditional hub-and-spoke airlines with a bar napkin and a pen. Three dots to represent Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Three arrows to show direct flights. Problem solved, and the picture made it easy to sell Southwest Airlines to investors and customers. Now with more color, bigger pictures, and additional content, this new edition does an even better job of helping you literally see the world in a new way. Join the teachers, project managers, doctors, engineers, assembly-line workers, pilots, football coaches, marine drill instructors, financial analysts, students, parents, and lawyers who have discovered the power of solving problems with pictures.

Dan Roam

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition)

Don’t start by talking about anything to do with you or your business.Instead, name the undeniable shift in the world that creates both (a) a huge opportunity and (b) an incredible sense of urgency for your prospect. Now you’ve instantly got them intrigued.

#1. Name a Big, Relevant Change in the World

Now it’s time to demonstrate how the change you’ve mentioned from Step #1 will create winners and losers.To do this, you have to show that:<ul><li>Adapting to the change will result in the prospect being a winner - e.g. long-term growth and success</li><li>Failing to do so will result in the prospect being a loser - e.g. stagnating growth or going out of business</li></ul>Make it clear that winners adopt the services your business provides.

#2. Show There’ll Be Winners and Losers

Keep resisting the urge to start talking about the details of your service.Instead, present a high-level vision of the successful end state that your service will help the prospect achieve - e.g. ‘The Promised Land’.The Promised Land should be highly desirable and also incredibly difficult for the prospect to achieve without outside help - your help.

#3. Tease the Promised Land

Now, it’s finally time to introduce your product or service.When you introduce your product or service, position its capabilities as a set of “magic gifts” that will help your prospect reach The Promised Land.Make it clear that it will be very difficult - maybe even impossible - to reach The Promised Land without these “magic gifts” (your product or service).

#4. Introduce Features as “Magic Gifts” for Overcoming Obstacles

Now it’s time to hit them with your best customer success story / case study / client testimonial.The customer success story should highlight the many obstacles you helped them to overcome, and the stormy waters you helped them to navigate to successfully reach The Promised Land.Keep it short and punchy.

#5. Present Evidence that You Can Make the Story Come True

Of course, successful sales rarely happen solely as the result of a great deck.To stand an even greater chance of success, try and get the entire company aligned to, engaged with, and supportive of your new sales narrative.Congratulations - you have just achieved sales nirvana.

Bonus Tip!

These tips can help us all win at sales - something which is essential to every business.

A few months ago, my friend Tim took a new sales job at a Series C tech company that had raised over $60 million from A-list investors. He’s one of the best salespeople I know, but soon after…

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

The 5 Elements of a Brilliant Sales Narrative

One of the common trappings of success is overproducing.Companies make money and rapidly expand their product line. Authors become popular and churn out books at a faster clip.Scale can empower, but it can also dilute. Something is lost when quantity is valued over quality.You have to maintain your standards even when all the forces around you seem to be calling for growth. Push back against more, more, more and remain committed to better, better, better.

Scale can empower, but it can also dilute.

strategy

Strategy

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

3-2-1 Thursday: A Common Trapping Of Success

Startups are literally a journey into the unknown and entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with taking on ambiguity, uncertainty and multiple challenges.Unfortunately, on average, 9 out of 10 startups will go out of business, and the remaining that are able to survive and succeed are the ones that capture the qualities outlined below. These qualities are generally deeply ingrained in the character of successful entrepreneurs

Top 11 Reasons Startups Succeed

A well-defined vision is a skill or gift that every company leader needs in order to cross the finish line. It will be the major force behind an entrepreneur’s success and will serve as a compass in tough times. A startup needs to envision how to monetize from the very beginning. The first dollar counts, especially for potential investors.

Vision

Getting things done in a quick manner is one of the many reasons why startups are able to reach their goals and milestones. It makes a difference when a startup is able to launch on time or when it moves much faster than competitors. Successful startups never delay the process of getting things done, and work as much as needed until something is complete. The most productive people are the ones who make the most of their time. Regarding speed, having knowledgable people in-house really makes a difference. Faster you make the mistakes, faster you learn from them, improve and, be better.

Speed

A successful startup is efficient in managing its finances and able to operate very lean. Every angle should have its own budget assigned and unnecessary expenses should be avoided. It is important to know what the company needs in order to accomplish milestones and budget accordingly. When resources are limited, and time is of the essence, companies need to master the skill of doing more with less.

Budget Masters

Networking is another reason for startup success. A founding team that knows powerful and influential people in the business is completely priceless and can open the doors to partnerships and to find angel investors<a href="https://rockthepost.com/find-angel-investors"> </a>in a minute. Great startups have an outstanding CEO who is able to work his or her way into any organization. On the other hand, startup leaders need to inspire people and give them reason to follow them through the uncertain journey, often where team members are required to make many sacrifices such as work/life balance, salary cuts, limited or no health insurance and so forth.

Social Skills

Discipline starts with self-control and is a product of a strong self-imposed personal standard. Without discipline, startups fail to succeed in business even if situated in the best economy. Self-discipline leads to positive work ethic, and work ethic leads to getting things done effectively and efficiently. It is critical to have all the team members aligned and working together to get to the finish line.

Discipline

Strong determination is always necessary for success to take place. A successful startup emphasizes the significance of determination when building a business and never quits, especially when the road gets bumpy and scary. There are many challenges that will arise and the startup team needs determination to overcome these challenges.Just like the book from Jim Collins “Good To Great”, if the right people are seated in the right seats of the bus, the startup will eventually find its direction towards success. Determination and persistence is a key component to making this fact happen.

Determination

The best startups are always willing to adapt to new technologies. Adapting to change can lead to major breakthroughs. During the early years, the startup will need to iterate the product plenty of times until they are able to find the secret sauce and get it right.

Ability to Adapt to Changes

Cash flow is the blood line of any business. This means that businesses can be ruined with inadequate capital. Successful startups are the ones that have sufficient capital to run their business operations. The primary duty of a startup CEO is to be able to do startup fundraising. A good way to raise money online is platforms like 1000 Angels, as it allows the startup to raise funds, in some cases, in just 60 days from accredited investors. This eliminates the need of doing an 8 month road show which is tiring and ultimately very unproductive for the business itself.

Fundraising Skills

Every business’s success revolves around taking risks. Successful startups are prepared to take risks. As they say, the most profitable investments usually require high amounts of risk. However, such decisions need to have a solid due diligence in order to avoid as much as possible the downfall in the event things don't turn out as they were expected, which is often the case.

Unwavering Belief 

Startup life can be rough, between the mountain of things to do and limited staff and resources, the company's success hinges on the team's productivity and effectiveness to do more with less. I was once told by a savvy and very successful business man that having things to do will never be an issue, but carefully picking what to focus on and what to prioritize will be your business challenge.

Master of Time Management

Lastly, having an idea is just the beginning and really, execution is 98% in determining each business' success. For this part, the experience of the team is critical as their backgrounds will help towards making more good decisions than bad ones.

Execution

Startups are literally a journey into the unknown and entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with taking on ambiguity, uncertainty and multiple challenges. Unfortunately, on average, 9 out of 10 startups will go out of business, and the remaining that are able to survive and succeed are the ones that capture the qualities [...]

Imagine a market universe composed of two sorts of oceans: red oceans and blue oceans. In the red oceans, companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Blue oceans, in contrast, are defined by untapped market space, demand creation, and the opportunity for highly profitable growth. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set.

Red Vs Blue Oceans

<ul><li>It is called value innovation because instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.</li><li>Value innovation places equal emphasis on value and innovation. </li></ul>

Value Innovation: The Cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy 

“A focus on the competition often anchors companies in the red ocean, and puts the competitors, rather than the customer, at the core of strategy.”

<ol><li>Eliminate</li><li>Reduce</li><li>Raise</li><li>Create </li></ol><ul><li>To value-innovate, the company must decide which factors to eliminate and reduce and not only those to raise and create-to construct a divergent value curve. </li><li>By focusing on the key factors that lead buyers to trade across alternative industries and eliminating or reducing everything else, you can create a blue ocean of new market space. </li></ul>

The Four Actions Framework For Creating Blue Ocean

<ul><li>An effective blue ocean strategy has three complementary qualities: focus, divergence, and a compelling tagline. </li><li>Compelling Tagline: A good tagline must not only deliver a clear message but also advertise an offering truthfully, or else customers will lose trust and interest. </li></ul>Examples:<ol><li>MasterCard: “There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy. For Everything Else, There’s MasterCard.”</li><li>BMW: “The Ultimate Driving Machine”</li><li>M&Ms: “Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hands.”</li></ol>

Three Characteristics of a Good Strategy 

<ul><li>When a company’s value curve lacks focus, its cost structure will tend to be high and its business model complex in implementation and execution.</li><li>When it lacks divergence, a company’s strategy is a me-too, with no reason to stand apart in the marketplace.</li><li>When it lacks a compelling tagline that speaks to buyers, it is likely to be internally driven or a classic example of innovation for innovation’s sake with no great commercial potential (i.e value).</li></ul>

Focus,Divergence And Compelling Tagline

<ol><li>Emotionally oriented industries offer many extras that add price without enhancing functionality. Stripping away those extras may create a fundamentally simpler, lower-priced, lower-cost business model that customers would welcome.(Emotional to Functional)</li><li>Conversely, functionally oriented industries can often infuse commodity products with new life by adding a dose of emotion and, in so doing, can stimulate new demand.(Functional to Emotional) </li></ol>

Look Across Functional or Emotional Appeal to Buyers 

To form the basis of a blue ocean strategy,<ol><li>The strategy must be decisive to your business,</li><li>They must be irreversible,</li><li>They must have a clear trajectory.</li></ol>

Look Across Time 

<ul><li>First tier: “Soon-to-be” noncustomers who are on the edge of your market, waiting to jump ship.</li><li>Second tier: “Refusing” noncustomers who consciously choose against your market.</li><li>Third tier: “Unexplored” noncustomers who are in markets distant from yours. </li></ul>

The three tiers of Non-customers

<ul><li>The key question here is this: Is your offering priced to attract the mass of target buyers so that they have a compelling ability to pay for your offering? If it is not, they cannot buy it. Nor will the offering create irresistible market buzz. </li><li>To secure a strong revenue stream for your offering, you must set the right strategic price. </li><li>It is important to know from the start what price will quickly capture the mass of target buyers. </li></ul>

Right Strategic Price

By being both “free” and “premium,” companies are striving to be strategically priced to capture the target mass while earning profit for the premium features those users, having used the product or service, will feel compelled to buy and upgrade to.

FREEMIUM

<ul><li>Value innovation is achieved only when the system of the company’s utility, price, and cost activities is properly aligned.</li><li>Weak utility, price, and cost positions, plus average adoption ability, indicated that a strategy would be a flop. </li><li>Blue ocean strategy is not about being first to market. Rather it’s about being first to get it right by linking innovation to value.</li></ul>

Utility,Price And Cost positions

<ol><li>Cognitive: waking employees up to the need for a strategic shift.</li><li>Limited resources. The greater the shift in strategy, the greater it is assumed are the resources needed to execute it. But resources were being cut, and not raised.</li><li>Motivation. How do you motivate key players to move fast and tenaciously to carry out a break from the status quo? </li><li>Politics. </li></ol>

Overcoming Key Organizational Hurdles

<ol><li>Engagement: means involving individuals in the strategic decisions that affect them by asking for their input and allowing them to refute the merits of one another’s ideas and assumptions. </li><li>Explanation: means that everyone involved and affected should understand why final strategic decisions are made as they are.</li><li>Clarity of Expectation: requires that after a strategy is set, managers state clearly the new rules of the game. </li></ol>

The Three E Principles of Fair Process

<ol><li>Settlers are me-too businesses,</li><li>Migrators represent value improvements, and</li><li>Pioneers are a company’s value innovations. </li></ol><ul><li>Ask: How does your product or service offer a leap in productivity, simplicity, ease of use, convenience, fun, and/or environmental friendliness? </li><li>Three strategy propositions—value, profit, and people.</li></ul>

Settlers,Migrators And Pioneers

“Blue ocean strategy is not about finding a better or lower-cost solution to the existing problem of an industry. Instead, it is about redefining the problem itself.”

Argues against common competitive practices while outlining recommendations based on the creation of untapped market spaces with growth potential.

The global phenomenon that has sold 3.5 million copies, is published in a record-breaking 43 languages and is a bestseller across five continents—now updated and expanded with new content. This global bestseller, embraced by organizations and industries worldwide, challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success. Now updated with fresh content from the authors, Blue Ocean Strategy argues that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves (spanning more than 100 years across 30 industries), the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors but from creating “blue oceans”—untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any organization can use to create and capture their own blue oceans. This expanded edition includes: •	A new preface by the authors: Help! My Ocean Is Turning Red •	Updates on all cases and examples in the book, bringing their stories up to the present time •	Two new chapters and an expanded third one—Alignment, Renewal, and Red Ocean Traps—that address the most pressing questions readers have asked over the past 10 years A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this bestselling book charts a bold new path to winning the future. Consider this your guide to creating uncontested market space—and making the competition irrelevant. To learn more about the power of blue ocean strategy, visit blueoceanstrategy.com. There you’ll find all the resources you need—from ideas in practice and cases from government and private industry, to teaching materials, mobile apps, real-time updates, and tips and tools to help you make your blue ocean journey a success.

W. Chan Kim

Renee Mauborgne

Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition

We’re often told that success is in the eye of the beholder — that we need to define it for ourselves, on terms that are meaningful to us.I believe that’s true but that advice doesn’t tell us how to do it. Try as we might, many of our achievements wind up fitting a mold that suits somebody else — employers, parents, societal expectations — at least as much as, if not more than, it suits us personally. And we still find ourselves left unsatisfied or unhappy, wishing we had something more or something else, no matter how ‘successful’ we’ve been.

Success Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Sales success is about getting people to buy something you’ve created. Your book is a commercial hit! Everybody’s reading it, everybody’s talking about it, you’re on TV. You sell hundreds and then thousands and then millions of copies. Dump trucks beep while backing into your driveway before pouring out endless shiny coins as royalty payments. Sales success is about money. How much did you sell?

1. Sales Success

Social success means you’re widely recognized among your peers and people you respect. Critical success. Industry renown! To extend the book example, let’s say the New York Times reviews your latest novel and some writers you respect send you letters saying they thought the book was great (whether or not it’s a commercial hit).

2. Social Success

Self success is in your head. It’s invisible. Only you know if you have it, because it corresponds to internal measures you’ve established on your own. Self success means you’ve achieved what you wanted to achieve. For yourself. You’re proud and satisfied with your work.

3. Self Success

In order to be truly happy with your successes, you first need to decide what kind of success you want.Are you in marketing? Sales success means your product flew off the shelves and your numbers blew away forecasts. Social success means you were written up in prestigious magazines, nominated for an award, or shouted out by the CEO at the all-hands meeting. Self success? That’s the same: How do you feel about your accomplishments?

Success Is Not One-Dimensional

“How can I be successful?” It’s a question many of us ask ourselves and have trouble answering. Because what is success, anyway? 

The 3 S’s of Success — Neil Pasricha

Your personal brand needs to have a consistent voice with one core message. Look at Instagram’s own account: The social media platform shares stunning photos taken by its users. The theme? Unique stories that showcase the platform’s potential. It’s obvious after even five seconds of scrolling.The No. 1 mistake people make with personal branding efforts is failing to define their mission or theme; they don’t clearly answer the question, “What am I doing on this platform?”The No. 2 mistake is not sticking to that mission or theme.

Different Platforms, Different Voices

Still not sure what kind of content is right for your personal brand?Start by building a “fort” of topics:<ol><li>Family, </li><li>Occupation, </li><li>Recreation, </li><li>Thoughts.</li></ol>Align these four categories with specific social channels, and you’ll start your journey to a delightful personal brand loved by peers, colleagues, and customers alike.

4 Types of Content

Nobody wants to see a personal profile that’s just a company billboard—not you, not me, and not your stakeholders. A business-only social media presence will feel inauthentic to everyone involved. Show people you’re a real human. If you have hang-ups creating content, there’s an easy solution: Don’t try too hard. Capture what’s real. This requires a level of vulnerability. Just make sure you have boundaries in place.

1. Family

I use a framework of three content types when teaching people how to make professional posts about their industries, careers, or businesses: sunshine, science, and sales.Sunshine content shines a light on other people. Maybe that’s an appreciation post. Maybe you’re simply telling your followers what you’re grateful for.Science content is a look behind the scenes. How do you get it all done? How does your successful company stay running?Sales content is generally a call to action (CTA) for your audience members. Running a cool promotion? Let your followers know.

2. Occupation

Posting about your hobbies and the ways you de-stress is another way to attract followers. <ul><li>Love to run? Share some shots of the trail. </li><li>Are you a history buff? Post about the most recent book you’re reading. </li></ul>These posts allow members of your network to relate to you.A great personal brand feels like an organic extension of your life rather than part of a to-do list. Including hobbies in your content mix shouldn’t require a massive routine change. That’s important because you don’t have an hour to spend planning epic content. Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

3. Recreation

In all likelihood, you became a business leader because you have a cocktail of valuable (and interesting) experiences—in life, in your industry, in the world. People respect thought leaders with original, compelling insights.As you’re cranking through the day, don’t be afraid to share your work-related musings, best practices, successes, and failures. Social media is all about micro-moments, so don’t be afraid to “write tight” and post as a thought occurs to you.

4. Thoughts

So I guess that social media thing is more than just a fad, huh?

Stop using social media to post erratically with no mission or message in mind. Build an engaging personal brand easily (and effectively) with these 4 key tips.

4 Types of Content That Will Electrify Your Personal Brand

<ul>
<li>There is one skill that stands out as CEO is the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves.</li>
<li>First principle of the Bushido—the way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.</li>
</ul>

Follow Bushido — The Way Of The Warrior

<ul><li>Stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is.</li><li>Horowitz’s single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when he stopped being too positive.</li><li>An early lesson Ben learned was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.</li><li>If you want to be great, this is the challenge. If you don’t want to be great, then you never should have started a company.</li></ul>

CEOS SHOULD TELL IT LIKE IT IS

1. Trust. Without trust, communication breaks. More specifically: In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.2. The more brains working on the hard problems, the better.3. A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow.A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them.

Being Transparent About Company’s Problems

<ul><li>Training starts with a golden rule: Managers must lay off their own people. They cannot pass the task to HR or to a more sadistic peer.</li><li>Be present. Be visible. Be engaging. People want to see you. They want to see whether you care.</li><li>Talk to people. Help them carry their things to their cars. Let them know that you appreciate their efforts.</li><li>Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.</li></ul>

Be Present. Be Visible. Be Engaging.

<ul><li>The first step to properly firing an executive is figuring out why you hired the wrong person for your company.</li><li>There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?”</li></ul>

Only Fighting, No Running Away

Parcells: “Al, I am just not sure how we can win without so many of our best players. What should I do?”Davis: “Bill, nobody cares, just coach your team.” That might be the best CEO advice ever.<ul><li>TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE, THE PRODUCTS, AND THE PROFITS—IN THAT ORDER</li><li>When hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions (👇 ) and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.</li></ul>

NOBODY CARES

While hiring,”Look for intelligence and judgment and, most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego and the drive to get things done.”

<ul><li>In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. These things make their jobs both motivating and fulfilling.</li><li>In a poor organization, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not.</li></ul>

Good Organisation Vs Poor Organisation 

<ul><li>Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move.</li><li>Play long enough and you might get lucky. In the technology game, tomorrow looks nothing like today. If you survive long enough to see tomorrow, it may bring you the answer that seems so impossible today.</li></ul>

THIS IS NOT CHECKERS; THIS IS MOTHERFUCKIN’ CHESS 

Andy Grove said that : Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.Two primary reasons why people quit:<ol><li>They hated their manager; generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development, and feedback they were receiving.</li><li>They weren’t learning anything: The company wasn’t investing resources in helping employees develop new skills.</li></ol>Solution: An outstanding training program can address both issues head-on.

Importance Of Training 

<ul><li>Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product. Bad product managers have lots of excuses.</li><li>Good product managers define their job and their success. Bad product managers constantly want to be told what to do.</li><li>Good product managers anticipate the serious product flaws and build real solutions. Bad product managers put out fires all day.</li></ul>

Good Vs Bad Product Managers

<ul><li>Force them to create. Give them monthly, weekly, and even daily objectives to make sure that they produce immediately.</li><li>Every executive must understand the product, the technology, the customers, and the market.</li><li>Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand. Answer those questions in depth; start with first principles. </li></ul>

AGGRESSIVELY INTEGRATE THE CANDIDATE ONCE ON BOARD 

Two key techniques to be useful in minimizing politics.<ol><li>Hire people with the right kind of ambition.(What's right kind of ambition? Read next idea👇)</li><li>Build strict processes for potentially political issues and do not deviate.</li></ol>Certain activities attract political behavior includes:<ul><li>Performance evaluation and compensation</li><li>Organizational design and territory</li><li>Promotions</li></ul>

HOW TO MINIMIZE POLITICS

<ul><li>As defined by Andy Grove, the right kind of ambition is ambition for the company’s success with the executive’s own success only coming as a by-product of the company’s victory. </li><li>The wrong kind of ambition is ambition for the executive’s personal success regardless of the company’s outcome.</li></ul>

Right Vs Wrong Kind Of Ambition 

<ul><li>The Peter Principle is a concept in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate’s performance in their current role, rather than on abilities related to the intended role. Thus, “managers rise to the level of their incompetence.”</li><li>The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.</li></ul>Solution: The best way to mitigate both is with a properly constructed and highly disciplined promotion process.(More about it 👇)

THE DANGERS: THE PETER PRINCIPLE AND THE LAW OF CRAPPY PEOPLE

A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one…

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with lyrics from his favorite songs, telling it straight about everything from firing friends to poaching competitors, cultivating and sustaining a CEO mentality to knowing the right time to cash in. Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

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Read like a Pro.

What it takes to grow a startup

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition)

The 5 Elements of a Brilliant Sales Narrative

3-2-1 Thursday: A Common Trapping Of Success

Top 11 Reasons Startups Succeed

Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition

The 3 S’s of Success — Neil Pasricha

4 Types of Content That Will Electrify Your Personal Brand

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Achieve productivity

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.