10 Traits of Super Successful Entrepreneurs; Most Powerful Women; Income Inequality; How to Win

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

You Are What You Publish -- have you set a goal, coming back from vacation, to start producing more content (customers would rather be educated than sold)? Looking to produce a weekly CEO blog? An excellent (and affordable) ghost writer has come available - more below, but first...

How To Win -- as part of Mark Cuban, successful serial entrepreneur, agreeing to keynote our upcoming Growth Summit, we're sending GPro and book club members a copy of his book How to Win At the Sport of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. Enjoy - it's a fun and insightful read (Cuban gets content marketing). Then see you in Dallas.

What separates successful business owners from less successful ones? Speaking of great entrepreneurs, this Gallup article references the psychology of highly talented entrepreneurs that drive bigger, more valuable businesses. The 10 talents of successful entrepreneurs (with links to more details), based on a study of 2500, are:

• Business Focus: You make decisions based on observed or anticipated effect on profit.
• Confidence: You accurately know yourself and understand others.
• Creative Thinker: You exhibit creativity in taking an existing idea or product and turning it into something better.
• Delegator: You recognize that you cannot do everything and are willing to contemplate a shift in style and control.
• Determination: You persevere through difficult, even seemingly insurmountable, obstacles.
• Independent: You are prepared to do whatever needs to be done to build a successful venture.
• Knowledge-Seeker: You constantly search for information that is relevant to growing your business.
• Promoter: You are the best spokesperson for the business.
• Relationship-Builder: You have high social awareness and an ability to build relationships that are beneficial for the firm's survival and growth.
• Risk-Taker: You instinctively know how to manage high-risk situations.

Here's the Gallup article that includes a link to the innate traits.

Most Powerful Women -- yesterday Fortune published their Most Powerful Women in business list. This year there is a record 27 CEOs on the list, overseeing a total of $1 trillion in stock market value. Notes Editor Alan Murray, "the top three:

1. Mary Barra, number two last year, led General Motors through its recall crisis.
    
2. Indra Nooyi, number three last year, heads Pepsi and was ahead of the pack in recognizing shifting views about healthy food.
    
3. Ginni Rometty, who led the list last year, is in the midst of a bold restructuring of IBM, but its steady slide in sales has taken a toll on her ranking."

Take a look at the list of 50, plus one additional #51 bonus choice - might surprise you - she's just 25 year old.

Income Inequality a Challenge for All Businesses -- billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones has decided to speak out about the increasing income gap plaguing countries like the US. Notes Jones in this Fortune article:

This kind of gap between the wealthiest and the poorest will get closed. History shows it usually ends in one of three ways--either higher taxes, revolution, or war. None of those are on my bucket list.

This is THE campaign issue for 2016 in the US with immigration being seen as simply exacerbating the problem. To address the problem of a disappearing middle class, Jones is launching Just Capital and a Just 1000 list to recognize companies that focus on the triple bottom line - social, environmental, and financial. Notes Fortune:

But different perspectives won't alter his adamant belief that the system has gotten out of balance. "There's such an emphasis on making money that we've really taken the humanity out of business," he says. "And part of the reason is that we're not having the right value debate both in society and in our corporate boardrooms."

From my perspective, it's why Brian Dumaine, the Fortune writer who penned this article, and I chose Henry Ford's decision to double wages as the "greatest business decision of all time" (in our book by the same name) - a single decision that propelled Ford into a multi-decade lead and changed the course of the US for generations. Take 3 minutes to read through the article with a surprising book recommendation at the end - I just downloaded it onto my Kindle.

Gazelles Case Study -- and congrats to brothers Rob and Sam Paddock, founders of GetSmarter, for their Entrepreneur magazine cover story in South Africa entitled "Zero to R128 Million Online Trainer Success" (that converts to US$9.4 million). There is an entire sidebar on how they are using the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 to sustain 100% growth per year for the last 4 years as they pursue their BHAG of "improving 1 million lives through education." Here is a link to their short blog highlighting the story.

CEO Blog Ghost Writer? -- reach out to Adriana Gardella at [email protected] - an excellent writer. She has roughly 10 hours/week to support a CEO/company in producing weekly content. Typical rate is $125/hour or by the word (I'm not getting a commission). As marketing guru David Meerman Scott has suggested over and over, if you want to boost marketing, hire a journalist!  


COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

TECHNOLOGY:

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page - Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progress on their priorities - alongside how these Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com- on your computer and on your phone.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.