Trying to Build Your Brand? Don’t get stuck with flicked customers. Fickle-ed  means they will leave for a $1 discount, 2 for 1 promotion , or something a little prettier.

The best customers are out there….you just need to lead them to areas where your brand shines….its the path to loyalty. This process is what I call the loyalty continuum. Each step along the way is an opportunity to drive real brand momentum–maybe its an trial offer or the kind of actions or behavior that uncovers the best repeat customers or prospects.

Loyalty is the ultimate goal of marketers and it should be on the minds of anyone managing brand or new venture. It is often said that 80% of your company’s profits will likely come from the top 20% of your customer base. Another name for the top of that 20% is loyalists. Loyalists talk up their brand, actively engage in promotions or brand activities and rarely switch or  move even if discounts or incentives are offered. They give back in the form of spending more of their share of wallet and through referrals. In higher education, loyalists are the alums that go to homecoming and give back year after year. They go to the reunions and keep up with their former classmates even when it is years after they graduate.

Moving prospects from unaware to awareness is an advertising and social media challenge. In marketing Monmouth College, direct mail to prospects is the traditional route for generating awareness among graduating high school seniors, but today most research on college is done online by the prospects themselves and most importantly, their parents.

Once a college prospect is aware of your brand, you should consider the best strategies and tactics for getting into their consideration frame. The consideration frame is the “short list” of colleges the prospect wants to consider. Another way to describe consideration frame are the the finalists in their wish list.

The next step is generating trial. Trial is most often a virtual tour, visit with an admissions rep or  faculty member on the phone. The campus visit is the preeminent step in trying your school out to see if it “feels right” or “fits”. At this point you will begin to see real benefits from your marketing intiatives. Before you achieve true loyalty you need prospects to establish certain behaviors or pattern of brand perference. Many loyalty programs are built on the premise that the repeat/frequency phase is the most important link to loyalty because its establishes paterns of behavior (plus the financial payback begins from all of your marketing investments).

Repeat/frequency behaviors might mean coming up with an anti-melt strategy if you are an institution of higher learning. The ultimate objective is loyalty and word-of -mouth advertising and social media “pin-action” . Using the example of marketing Monmouth College, loyalty usually results in a current student or alum recommending Monmouth College to a friend or associate.

Brands should plan promotions and incentives for each step in the continuum so that a fresh supply of new prospects is maturing into loyalists one step at a time. It takes effort to manage these activities and measurement devices to monitor the development of prospects along the continuum. My job at Monmouth was to take what we had spent in the past and maximize  the impact. How a CMO handles these challenges varies dramatically by college. Each university must distinguish its unique benefits, programs or faculty to get attention. In higher education it a common practice to copy oneself after an aspirational peer.  In Clay Christenson’s new book on innovation in Higher Education, he is highly critical of any college that copies the Harvard model since Harvard developed into an institution with few market constraints. Harvard, with its multi-million dollar endowments in virtually every major school has few financial limitations. For the rest of us, we face the reality that our institution could be marginalized or completely destroyed (or squeezed) by pressure to follow the Harvards from above and the online/for-profit colleges or community colleges below.

In higher education, a proven marketing principle is that a high perceived value translates into brand preference and goodwill. The brand value equation provides a meaningful model that helps us understand how to build that goodwill. Ultimately the marketing plan, resources available, execution and learning from results determine the success of your marketing program. Marketing criteria and milestones established in the college’s business plan will become your recipe for brand momentum and success.

Prior to beginning any marketing plan I recommended that the institution conduct professional quality research on the key stakeholders and prospects (and their parents!) that look at your college but decide to go eleswhere.

The problem most institutions face is that marketing themselves is inherently repugnant to academics. For academics, marketing and advertising smacks as manipulation and “spin”.

Even the task of market planning requires colleges to do something that is not natural; to look at the mirror and admit your flaws or accentuate your strengths. Traditional universities were not designed to brand distinctively or address metrics of quality as benefits. Most want to be like Harvard, Stanford or Carlton. Christensen would say these institutions are trying to follow the Harvard model. He believes that trying to be all things to all people in higher education is often a way to unwisely invest in “me-too” strategies which are often misguided.

But starting a distinctive marketing program is not easy. Simply promoting a quality program in business or prominant faculty is like telling prospects you offer a “quality educational experience”—everyone says the same thing. Large universities offer wonderful facilities and sports programs, but do not successfully educate students around their individual and distinct needs.

If your goal is to attract prospects to your college you need to explain the value proposition. The value proposition is the value of the college program degree less the cost to get that diploma. If graduates consistently land their desired jobs and get into prestigious graduate schools you will not need to convince prospects to take a closer look at your school. The evidence and word of mouth will help the programs sell themselves. Today, parents and prospects look around a colleges web site, its program offerings , and decide if it is worth of consideration even before they speak to an admissions rep or faculty member. It is our job to convince them to visit campus (trial). If the prospects live far from the college, your job will be tougher. No matter what their incoming academic achievements, you will need to convince them that they will be a better off, gain more internship/ job prospects, get smarter, and be more capable of handling leadership opportunities when they graduate–otherwise or you will fail in your efforts to generate more word of mouth, social media, and most importantly, campus visits.

In our case,  we are a small college so we had an advantage of taking time to learn as much as we could about each individual prospect and their parents. We customized our approach and campus tour to their specific interests and our strengths. Asking larger, more selective universities to customize their admissions process, let alone marketing something distinctive and memorable is challenging. We do it everyday because we have to.

Becoming a “great college” for Monmouth was a long-term objective that involved getting everyone to believe our central message. Our focus on business and science in the context of liberal arts was unique so we created a campaign to reinforce our strong position in both disciplines . We backed up that commitment by raising money and building a $40 Million Dollar Center that combines the study of science and business. We interviewed close to 100 alumni working in both those areas and focused our promotion efforts on those that were successful in combing both.

Focusing on both alumni and student success represented a seismic shift in how Monmouth and higher education, broadly speaking, will measure high quality programs. Its a move away from the traditional focus on US News rankings or following the great research and knowledge creation universities such as Harvard. Our focus on teaching, active learning and smaller classes moves the Monmouth brand benefits towards an expertise in active learning and knowledge proliferation.

So at the end of the day, the success of your college is still depended on making new prospects aware of your brand, and getting them to seriously consider a visit. The loyalty contiuum works for all companies and non-profits too-everyone needs new customers.

But to be truly successful you will need to move prospects down that continuum to the place where all of that marketing investment pays off– loyalty.

The simple answer is maybe. Being a successful manager is not enough. Even possessing specialized knowledge or skills is only part of the “DNA” of successful entrepreneurs. Your talents, persuasive abilities, and drive will be evident to those with whom you work. Ask others what they think, but be careful about naysayers. I was told no one could sell enough basketball apparel to create a successful business. I was told “basketball apparel was too small of a niche”. My brother and I went on to successfully launch Above the Rim and sell it to Reebok.

The potential success of your future venture depends on how well the entrepreneur can leverage her assets. The more advantages and skills you amass the better.

Many people describe an “x-factor” for putting forth the courage and drive necessary to launch a new business. Entrepreneurs I’ve met claim you either have that “x-factor” that makes you a great entrepreneur or you don’t. Many of those same people believe that entrepreneurs are born to start companies. If you don’t have the “x-factor” these people would discourage you from ever starting your own company.

Does that really mean the rest of us are meant to follow others our entire career? I counsel recent grads to find jobs with large and small companies in the industry they want to eventually be in as an entrepreneur so they can learn from other’s mistakes.  Below are some facts I gathered from cognitive theory about how are brain’s learn:

Learning to be an  entrepreneur isn’t easy. Some say it is impossible. But most students are more successful learning entrepreneurism when they immerse themselves in actual new company experiences so they can feel the complex, interactive experiences that are both rich and real for entrepreneurs. That doesn’t mean to be an entrepreneur you need to do 10 different internships with start-ups–there are other less time-consuming ways to become “immersed”.

• A proven method entrepreneurs used to refine their own skills was successfully completing assignments where the outcomes were unknown and success unsure. Risk isn’t something you can read about to understand –you must experience it first-hand.
• One exercise my students are required to do is go out and meet real entrepreneurs. Ideally they don’t just listen to a speech in my class.They go out and engage with small business leaders or founders to help them create and execute events.
• Another good opportunity for students to hone their entrepreneurial skills is starting or leading clubs or organizations.

An experience I recommend is participating in study abroad. A great metaphor for learning the skills of an entrepreneur is  immersing oneself in a foreign culture and learning a second language. Entrepreneurs that can immerse themselves in a new market and learn to first survive will eventually thrive. As they are successful in their study abroad experiences they can model that adaptive behavior and persuade others to join them in their entrepreneurial ventures.

As an instructor of entrepreneurism, I want to help would be entrepreneurs to use all of the skills at their disposal. I recommend would-be entrepreneurs learn basic economics, management, marketing, and finance as part of a critical foundation. If you can’t master the fundamentals, it is hard to persuade others you can lead .

• I am amazed how many college business professors claim to be good at teaching entrepreneurism and they have not started a successful company or even consulted or know those that do. Imagine going to music lessons from someone that can’t play an instrument or sing!
• To be a successful entrepreneur emotional intelligence is critical. Often entrepreneurs make many decisions every hour, what to prioritize, who to sell to, what to buy, who to hire, how to best model behavior, what to market, where to market, etc. They must do all of this simultaneously–thus taking advantage of the brain’s unique ability to parallel process.

My students must have a personally meaningful challenge or value the skills of an entrepreneur to be able to apply them in practice. That is why that instead of lecturing, I bring 22 entrepreneurs to them or we conduct field visits to see entrepreneurs in action.

In an earlier post I discussed the critical skill of handling or dealing with ambiguity. Such challenges stimulate a student’s mind to the desired state of alertness. Add the financial risk (that an entrepreneur faces everyday) to the mix and you can imagine that each student’s ability to handle stress differs dramatically. That is why I say you cannot always tell who will be the successful entrepreneur.

In order for my students to gain insight about a problem or opportunity related to a start-up venture, we must create a laboratory to practice these skills. In my entrepreneurism lab, there is an intensive analysis of the different ways to approach problems, feedback from peers and the instructor, and instruction about learning the best approach or model to attack the overall market or gain business traction.

This is what I call the “active processing of entrepreneurial experiences”. It creates the ideal petrie dish for creating new entrepreneurs. I have been fortunate to have helped over one hundred former students start or get involved with a new venture.

Yet I continue to ask questions such as: Can entrepreneurism can be taught?

Did that particular student or entrepreneur have the “x-factor”? Or did they just discover a passion for a particular aspect of a business and go with that?

After 11 years as a full-time teaching and entrepreneurial coach, I still cannot answer the fundamental question: Are entrepreneurial skills inborn or nurtured?

I have seen all types of business leaders and I know entrepreneurial success comes faster when “born” entrepreneurs with the X-factor are nurtured by those of us who have been “around the block”. Note to any entrepreneur-don’t try to do this alone.

My ramblings in this blog have at least four purposes:

1. Learn what real entrepreneurs think and do every week to build their businesses.
2. Discover common ground
3. Find out how to better manage your own business or career by learning about the success and failures of today’s entrepreneurs
4. Learn what it takes to be successful as a entrepreneur.

I heard a great question from Jay Matson, President of Seminary Street Ventures in Illinois. He said “Can you really teach this entrepreneur stuff?”. It is a really good question. See my earlier post on Twitter http://t.co/yhNd05m8.

Because it is not easy to teach, I don’t focus on what academics call entrepreneurial theory. I ask all of you–real small business owners and entrepreneurs to teach all of us by asking some important questions and makings some key observations.

Why study Entrepreneurs?  They are an interesting lot that drive a huge part of any job creation in a community. Plus I was raised by two entrepreneurial parents and it is “in my blood”. Today, I lead business courses and do consulting with small businesses, start-ups, and family owned businesses in transition. In August, I will begin my deep dive into Jacksonville by hosting 20+ guest speakers over the four months of the 2012 fall term. Look out for more postings and a schedule of future speakers as I transition to the Deanship at the Davis School of Business at Jacksonville University in Florida www.ju.edu

Some believe you can postpone and ultimately avoid many difficult decisions. My experience is not making a decision is a decision in itself. But decisions matter and anyone worth listening to will advise you to learn from other’s mistakes. When starting a company, I advise would-be entrepreneurs to go to work for a company in the industry you want to start a business in–and learn from their successes and mistakes before starting your own.

Every college student knows the pattern…..good or bad—one decision leads to another and you are down a road you never thought you would travel. Maybe it was a romantic relationship, the particular college you attended, or the purchase of a pet/companion. You met people, learned things, spent time and resources on things you never planned. With a pet, you met other pet owners and joined a network. You became part of the pet fraternity. You went to pet friendly parks you never knew before. I know people that started smoking because someone they thought was “cool” smoked cigarettes. These new smokers are forced to join with other fellow smokers in special rooms or remote locations such as behind the high school bleachers–separated from main body of students. They associated with other smokers by necessity. Have you made a decision to accept an offer that led you down a strange of mysterious path?

If you work in business development you are charged with doing deals, creating alliances or even an acquisition that benefits your employer. Many of my classmates from Thunderbird and former students work in this area. As a business practitioner and coach, I am particularly interested in their experiences. I enjoy hearing success stories but I want to celebrate with my friends and former students. However, I have learned more from how companies failed because all of us we learn so much from failed experiments, products, or companies. I am fascinated with corresponding decision trees and the outcomes based on the failed company’s original objectives or goals. External influences are powerful and when the wind blows it easy to pull up the anchor and go with the flow. I made bad decisions when it appeared to be right because “it felt right” at the time. Maybe you can think of a similar experience.

One of my students traveled on a travel study course with me in Tokyo, Japan. He chose to go into a club in Roppongi that claimed in broken English to offer $50 massages. Unfortunately for my student he broke the rule of going somewhere alone and going somewhere he was told to avoid. $250 later (on his Visa card) he lamented his decision and the financial fallout. I tried to get a refund but when a 21 year old signs a Visa credit slip and agrees to the purchase it is hard get back to the original position. The $250 was lost forever.

In marketing, companies often co-op with another non-competitive company targeting similar customers to combine resources or cross-promote some offer. Unless both companies are perfectly suited for each other what appears to be a great synergy can easily drag one partner down. I experienced this with Above the Rim. When one footwear company chooses to sell through discounters or through outlet stores the “in-line” distribution suffers. JC Penny is attempting (Have you seen the show Ellen recently?) to rebrand itself after years of training its customers to buy during its all-to-frequent sales. Penny’s fell into the coupon habit and it led to a dependency I call retail “drug use”. The thrill of the first few experiences with the “sale” drug created a dependency metaphorically similar to the spike in top-line sales the retailers must have experienced when dropping high-value coupons. You can’t easily retrain your customers to buy at full-price (in line retail) when you hooked them on the “high” of buying at a deep discount or with coupons. Their road back for JC Penny will be an expensive one.

Individually, the outcome of our cumulative decisions form patterns, habits, and establish our ethical foundations. Today, students are taught as much by the media or their peers about ethics. Many believe they can get away with their bad decisions if they have the right friends, support groups, or financial resources. But bad decisions by companies or individuals deplete precious resources and create a negative “ripple” effect. Sometimes you lose something you can never get back.

It is hard to admit you made bad decisions, but being honest with your co-workers and the customer is always the best policy. People and consumers want to give you the benefit of doubt until you cross them twice. My advice is to learn from your mistakes and find a “true north” religiously or philosophically that guides your day-today decisions. Put down an anchor and stand firm. When tempted to cross the line consult someone stronger than yourself. Maybe that is your mentor, pastor, coach or parent. Stand up for those in your company that do the right thing even when the external forces are blowing you backwards. Better yet, be the mentor, coach, teacher, or parent worthy of that sacred trust.

At yesterday’s commencement address at Monmouth, keynote speaker Dr. Ambrose quoted a Wall Street Journal article about the lack of excitement employers have for today’s business graduates. According to the article, business graduates cannot do the critical thinking, writing, and cross discipline communication that companies need to be more productive and successful. Managers must be able to bring together engineers, scientists, creative people, and production personnel and help people efficiently and effectively work together.

With mounting evidence that business educators are losing touch with the needs of today’s companies, I have embarked on a new challenge to head up a business school at Jacksonville University in Florida.

After 11 successful years at Monmouth guiding business students to be more productive and relevant, my students, friends, and associates asked the following questions:

What first attracted me to the Dean’s position at Jacksonville’s Davis College of Business (DCOB)?

JU is at the tipping point with its business program and needs leadership to take the team to next level. It is also great opportunity to grow the JU brand and expand the international reach of the DCOB. Twenty years ago, the DCOB leadership developed an excellent Flex/Evening MBA program and attracted some of Jacksonville’s best and brightest aspiring business leaders. The main challenge is to remain attractive and relevant to the rising generation of managers and entrepreneurs. With a talented group of faculty and staff, JU business graduates will excel beyond our competition in critical thinking, writing, and cross discipline communication that companies need to be more productive and successful.

What do you mean by attractive and relevant?

Attractive and relevant means adapting JU’s program to the needs and aspirations of today’s business leaders. It is not enough to prepare students for their next job. We know what management consultants, auditors, real estate developers, or loan officers do today because they are our alumni and speakers in the classroom. The challenge is to provide a program of study and coaching that is relevant enough to help our candidates qualify for the next promotion and prepare the graduate for a lifetime of success.

Everyday we use Google for information searches and Microsoft Office for many business oriented applications or tasks. What happens when the accounting software changes or the current tax code goes away? Which employees can adapt to these changes and make lemonade from the lemons? Graduates that can do the critical thinking, writing, and cross discipline communication.

We have to teach the best ways to utilize spreadsheets or manage investor expectations while preparing our graduates to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities unknown to all of us today. If you would have asked someone if Apple would be the dominant music company ten years ago, everyone would have laughed. No one is laughing today. With i-phones, i-pads, Apple TV, and i-tunes representing a huge percentage of royalties to music artists, Apple is on the verge of becoming what Hollywood was to entertainment in the 40’s and 50’s.

The DCOB program must be compelling intellectually, socially (enjoyable and rewarding from the networking perspective), and provide a substantial return on the candidate’s investment. By substantial, I mean an ROI that is ten to twenty times more than the original investment. That roughly $20-50,000 more annually for the average graduate over 40 years compared to those that do not graduate from a university. It could mean an incremental $2,000,000 in income plus so much more in terms of “connecting knowledge from seemingly unconnected topics and news events”.

What is the expected ROI on a MBA degree from the DCOB?

I am not sure yet but those investing in the Master’s program will gain incrementally in comparison to the figures I discussed for bachelors degree graduates. We are confident JU has a solid MBA curriculum and faculty team. But we cannot be satisfied in good or very good.

My job will be to make sure the perceived and real value of the JU MBA degree grows and its reputation is enhanced. The most important factor in enhancing our reputation will be our graduate’s successes. But it is not easily measured. Another way to measure the quality of the business program is to look at the qualifications of individual faculty and the DCOB curriculum. One concrete way any prospect can compare one business program to another is to seek a school that has been carefully screened and audited by a trusted source.  It’s why accreditation matters, because every business school claims their program and graduates they are equal to or better than the best programs.

At DCOB we maintain the highest accreditation with most authoritative source in business education, the Association of American Colleges & Schools of Business (AACSB).  AACSB is the gold standard in a business education. To obtain the accreditation, the school must meet stringent standards such as best practices in teaching, research, and career preparation. It is expensive to maintain a topflight program, JU has made that investment but the majority of business programs including famous schools such as the University of Phoenix or other business programs have not. Only 15% of American business programs are AACSB accredited and less than 15% of business graduates come from AACSB accredited schools .  Therefore the DCOB is in an elite group and deserves your careful consideration.

Given the investment in time, effort, and tuition required to complete a Masters or even your undergraduate business degree, the return on investment (ROI) must be both immediate and long-lasting. Even with financial aid, that’s a $50-100,000 question that every prospect asks. It has to make sense financially. That requires a robust curriculum with faculty trainers that offer both depth and breadth.  It also requires programs that work with current career aspirations so that you can continue in your current position if you so choose.

How do we do more? There are so many examples but its one thing to obtain the skills that are immediately valuable for say an accounting graduate to begin conducting internal audits of financial performance, yet another to make value judgments in the area of business ethics. As an auditor, you need to have both skills and the problem solving skills to get others to consider and eventually follow your lead.

As business educators, we never lose sight of the life-long dividends a quality business program provides. Events in the world can change our perspective. With business ethics I believe there are some absolutes, but the rules determine the outcomes.

What makes being the Dean at the Davis School such a great challenge?

Business education is a mature product and with so many competitive evening and online programs there are few barriers in the way of any college starting a business program. It appears to happen every day. Despite the growing number of competitors, the DCOB will become the best program in the region as we can meet the challenge of continuous improvement and innovation. I personally need to get out into the business community and learn more about the current problems and challenges facing businesses today.

At JU, we must adapt our product and curriculum as necessary to meet the needs of employers and the communities we serve.

Change is necessary and it requires a champion. My plan is support those champions and fight against the nay sayers—those that say we shouldn’t try to change or incremental improvement is not worth the effort. I do not want to change for change sake –improvement is a matter of survival. We can’t afford to focus on our traditional competitors in Central and Northern Florida or even those in the South East region. It’s an international market and we are just as likely to lose an international business student to University of South Carolina as Fudan University in Shanghai. In business, we must have a great answer for the classic question, “why should I care?” and “how are you better than _____?” As Dean, I must have a great answer for those questions.  All I could tell you now are the proper ingredients are in place at JU. Prior deans took bold steps. The first was hiring excellent young faculty, starting the process towards AACSB accreditation, while maintaining a quorum of the best senior faculty.Good examples of the outstanding faculty are  Dr. Matrecia James in Management or the more senior leadership from Professor Sepehri in International Business or Dr. Boylan in Finance & Accounting. They have not only succeeded in driving student engagement and success, they built outstanding programs. Check out their profiles at www.ju.edu

What is my definition of success? At DCOB, we want our brand to mean something special. It should translate to “seeking to obtain the gold seal” of business confidence for anyone with high aspirations. If you are willing to pursue advanced study or advance yourself within your profession, we want to meet you. Our curriculum will emphasize learning beyond the classroom. DCOB fosters leadership skills, practical experience and social responsibility. A dedicated faculty and staff will provide unparalleled personal and career guidance, while an active alumni community supports our students through scholarships, internships and career networking opportunities. What drives them to success-their high aspirations. Their passion and smarts propel them towards a rewarding career. It is our desire to do more than survive–we want our graduates to prosper and thrive. Our aspirations are the most powerful motivators towards success.

Despite these aspirations and yearnings to prosper and make a difference, recent graduates face great challenges/barriers similar to entrepreneurs including high unemployment and taxes, commercial restraints by government, and limited time and capital. If it was easy to win at business, you wouldn’t need us. But with the help of great teachers and mentors at DCOB your odds for success will improve dramatically.

Entrepreneurs can learn a lot from John Wooden, the best basketball coach of all-time who lead UCLA to 10 NCAA championships. Here are a few of the gems:

1. Wooden said “It is very easy to get comfortable in a position of leadership (or power). Your players (or employees) make you believe you have all of the answers because you enjoyed some success. People start telling you are the smartest one around. But if you begin to believe them, you become the idiot. You stop learning from your competitors. When you ignore those around you who are creating innovative new strategies and techniques, you are ripe for defeat or a major setback. Don’t believe the positive press.
2. One of the main reasons it is so hard to stay on top is maintaining a competitive  “edge”. If there is one key to gaining that edge or success it is experience. Most entrepreneurs do not possess much experience unless they already paid their dues working for someone else. Some entrepreneurs failed or succeeded as the #2 in a similar business previously. Watch out for those guys or someone with a lot of experience in your industry.
3. Once you’re #1 for a sustained period of time, it is easy to believe your own press and adoring fans. Look at Tiger Woods. He was on top of the world until he lost his edge. Every music artist or performer realizes how hard it is to repeat the #1 song or repeat as champions. At UCLA we realized we had to work even harder the second time to the point where we could achieve similar results. Why? Each subsequent success takes an even greater effort than the first.
4. Avoid the temptation of believing your past entrepreneurial achievements signal future success. As a leader you must never be satisfied or content that you know everything about your business, customers or employees. No two customers or employees are the same. Each individual under your management is unique and requires practice, empathy, and understanding. This is particularly true about customers. No success with one large customer makes up for lack of understanding in other segments critical to your venture’s success. Be careful to not let one representative customer guide how you will serve all others. Everyone wants to be treated as unique and valuable.
5. Wooden said “There is no one formula for getting your company/team to play well together”. It is science and art at the same time—and art is difficult to pull off, let alone be great at the science. It is so rare to be perennially successful because it takes sacrifice and dedication. Knowing Wooden won 10 NCAA championships and 88 straight games as UCLA’s head coach,  he might know something about keeping a competitive edge and managing for success.

Many entreprepreneurs fall victim to what I call “the perfection trap”. What is the perfection trap? Working really hard and spending all of your resources in rehashing or reformulating a product that is 95% market ready. My advice to most entrepreneurs is to launch the product before you spend months trying to get it perfect.

Then, after the product launches, you will have actual customer feedback to efficiently fix the bugs or problems. Another alternative is testing your new product during an in market test. Call it a “beta” product or product 1.0 but don’t get trapped in seeking perfection; never able to satisfy your customers basic needs. The “getting everything perfect problem” varies by industry but my experience in academia has taught me that what we think is perfect isn’t usually as close as we think. What our client thinks is perfect is not easily discernible without an experiment or test market.

Why can’t we just ask our client what she wants? Because she will “not know it until she sees it” or may not know what she really wants until she has to open her wallet and choose it over everything else she desperately needs to buy. There is no replacement for a test run with real customers that have to spend their own money on your product. You can’t control most external factors or trends that will impact the success of your product either, so let go–incremental improvement is more proven to drive entrepreneurial success than “hitting a home run on your first at bat”.

When I was doing marketing consulting I worked for a venture that suffered from the perfection trap. The CEO thought his tireless demands for perfection would create the perfect teen spending card based on the Visa platform. Despite some good technology and marketing we experienced a failure to launch.

Let me try an illustrate my point outside the realm of business. My daughter told me about a friend who has frequent headaches. She manages her pain using powerful drugs. The problem is the drug’s side-effects can be as damaging as the headache pain. This is analogous to getting it perfect. She feels perfectly well when on the drugs but comes down hard after its effect wears off. Most importantly, to achieve perfection she sacrifices her sensitivity to the outside world. Feeling a little ache or pain or even a headache periodically keeps you away from the debilitating side-effects of drug use. You feel the outside world rather than constantly balancing the facade you call perfection. It hurts to hear you did not “get it perfect” or even close to right, but that customer feedback is the key to continuous improvement and future product success.

Usually, entrepreneurs learn more from consumer or client feedback when the product has been “run through a few laps” by expert practitioners. In Japan, many companies are founded and launched based on an angel investor or corporate benefactors believing there is a market niche where no competitor is adding much value or they see companies in businesses they do not want to be in to satisfy customer demands. These business are ideal spinoffs for would be entrepreneurs who are “willing to make it pretty good for now, and better in the future.” Don’t spend thousands of dollars and three additional months getting some thing that is 95% there, perfect. You likely to find that your efforts stymied growth, deflated morale, and increased your risk because of the lack of in market data testing.

I have been consulting with graduating seniors at Monmouth College about how to best search for a job. At the same time I have a few friends that I would call “underemployed”. Finding that first job is usually the most difficult search you will ever undertake, but it is also unfortunate when someone with great skills cannot find a place where she would be valued and compensated well. This topic hits close to home since I was in a job search myself.

I recently accepted a new position in academia as the Dean of Business for Jacksonville University’s Davis School of Business (pictured below) http://dcob.ju.edu/ so the experience of searching for a job is fresh in my mind.

My success in helping others is based on the following 14 principles:

1. Invite contacts and friends to help you. Your network of references, friends, recruiters, and confidants are your most valuable asset.

2. Gain credibility with your current classmates or colleagues so that you will be seen as someone that your employer and faculty mentors would “hate to see go”.

3. In interviews, be prepared to tell stories of the challenges and lessons you learned that prepared you for the position you want. Show them you have had an increasing amount of responsibility and have been promoted.

4. Don’t plan to leave a job until you determine there is no way to move up or you have spent at least three years trying to make a difference.

5. Get the most/best education you can possibly afford and document the experiences on the job with an electronic portfolio. Lead with your education if you are new to the industry or lead with your experience when you have many successful years under your belt.

6. Return phone calls and emails promptly, but don’t be afraid to say no thank you.

7. Tell the company representative or recruiter what is important to you and ask for feedback on your initial letter of interest.

8. Ask anyone connected with the target organization for help and feedback in effectively competing for the position.

9. Study the target company and its key players, especially those that will decide the winning candidate. Be friendly and outgoing without appearing “fake”. Remember names of those you meet.

10. Listen more than you talk.

11. Don’t expect web sites like The Ladders, Green Ivy, Monster, or Career Builder to be much help. The industry specific verticals and word of mouth are likely to be the best leads.

12. Edit and refine your LinkedIn profile and be circumspect in your Facebook postings about the ups and downs in the job search. Ask for advice from the people who have the job you want.

13. Be patient. Don’t leave the day job until you have something solid lined up. Don’t burn bridges while giving notice.

14. Learn from Tim Tibow–be humble when accepting compliments and praise. Thank your teammates, mentor, and colleagues for helping you be successful

The simple answer is maybe. Being a successful manager is not enough. Even possessing specialized knowledge or skills is only part of the “DNA” of successful entrepreneurs. Your talents, persuasive abilities, and drive will be evident to those with whom you work. Ask others what they think, but be careful about naysayers. I was told no one could sell enough basketball apparel to create a successful business. I was told “basketball apparel was too small of a niche”. My brother and I went on to successfully launch Above the Rim and sell it to Reebok.

The potential success of your future venture depends on how well the entrepreneur can leverage her assets. The more advantages and skills you amass the better.

Many people describe an “x-factor” for putting forth the courage and drive necessary to launch a new business. Entrepreneurs I’ve met claim you either have that “x-factor” that makes you a great entrepreneur or you don’t. Many of those same people believe that entrepreneurs are born to start companies. If you don’t have the “x-factor” these people would discourage you from ever starting your own company.

Does that really mean the rest of us are meant to follow others our entire career? I counsel recent grads to find jobs with large and small companies in the industry they want to eventually be in as an entrepreneur so they can learn from other’s mistakes.  Below are some facts I gathered from cognitive theory about how are brain’s learn:

Learning to be an  entrepreneur isn’t easy. Some say it is impossible. But most students are more successful learning entrepreneurism when they immerse themselves in actual new company experiences so they can feel the complex, interactive experiences that are both rich and real for entrepreneurs. That doesn’t mean to be an entrepreneur you need to do 10 different internships with start-ups–there are other less time-consuming ways to become “immersed”.

• A proven method entrepreneurs used to refine their own skills was successfully completing assignments where the outcomes were unknown and success unsure. Risk isn’t something you can read about to understand –you must experience it first-hand.
• One exercise my students are required to do is go out and meet real entrepreneurs. Ideally they don’t just listen to a speech in my class.They go out and engage with small business leaders or founders to help them create and execute events.
• Another good opportunity for students to hone their entrepreneurial skills is starting or leading clubs or organizations.

An experience I recommend is participating in study abroad. A great metaphor for learning the skills of an entrepreneur is  immersing oneself in a foreign culture and learning a second language. Entrepreneurs that can immerse themselves in a new market and learn to first survive will eventually thrive. As they are successful in their study abroad experiences they can model that adaptive behavior and persuade others to join them in their entrepreneurial ventures.

As an instructor of entrepreneurism, I want to help would be entrepreneurs to use all of the skills at their disposal. I recommend would-be entrepreneurs learn basic economics, management, marketing, and finance as part of a critical foundation. If you can’t master the fundamentals, it is hard to persuade others you can lead .

• I am amazed how many college business professors claim to be good at teaching entrepreneurism and they have not started a successful company or even consulted or know those that do. Imagine going to music lessons from someone that can’t play an instrument or sing!
• To be a successful entrepreneur emotional intelligence is critical. Often entrepreneurs make many decisions every hour, what to prioritize, who to sell to, what to buy, who to hire, how to best model behavior, what to market, where to market, etc. They must do all of this simultaneously–thus taking advantage of the brain’s unique ability to parallel process.

My students must have a personally meaningful challenge or value the skills of an entrepreneur to be able to apply them in practice. That is why that instead of lecturing, I bring 22 entrepreneurs to them or we conduct field visits to see entrepreneurs in action.

In an earlier post I discussed the critical skill of handling or dealing with ambiguity. Such challenges stimulate a student’s mind to the desired state of alertness. Add the financial risk (that an entrepreneur faces everyday) to the mix and you can imagine that each student’s ability to handle stress differs dramatically. That is why I say you cannot always tell who will be the successful entrepreneur.

In order for my students to gain insight about a problem or opportunity related to a start-up venture, we must create a laboratory to practice these skills. In my entrepreneurism lab, there is an intensive analysis of the different ways to approach problems, feedback from peers and the instructor, and instruction about learning the best approach or model to attack the overall market or gain business traction.

This is what I call the “active processing of entrepreneurial experiences”. It creates the ideal petrie dish for creating new entrepreneurs. I have been fortunate to have helped over one hundred former students start or get involved with a new venture.

Yet I continue to ask questions such as: Can entrepreneurism can be taught?

Did that particular student or entrepreneur have the “x-factor”? Or did they just discover a passion for a particular aspect of a business and go with that?

After 11 years in full-time teaching roles I still cannot answer the fundamental question: Are entrepreneurs born or nurtured?

But I have seen both types and I know entrepreneurial success comes faster when “born” entrepreneurs are nurtured by those of us who have been “around the block”.

Why should you take the time learn about and from entrepreneurs Like Ted Hartridge? Because they have tried something risky that is usually worthwhile and interesting to learn. They can create opportunities from disruption or even tragedy.Ted speaks to the Midwest Entreprenuers class at 4pm today.

Entreprenuers are the engine that power our economy and create jobs. Josef Schumpeter and Fredrick Hayek are possibly the most famous economists to focus their research on the value of entrepreneurism. Schumpeter’s ideas on the indispensable nature of entrepreneurs are part of his “theory of creative destruction” (Schumpeter, 1939). Disputably both of these economists contributed two of the greatest economic theories related to entrepreneurism prior to World War II.

Schumpeter’s theory is summarized by the following statement:

Without entrepreneurs we would have no risk taking and little innovation. Without innovation and risk taking there would be no market winners or losers. There would be little to no competition, leading to less and less innovation. Risk taking activities allow the market to creatively destruct the less desirable products and services in favor of those that satisfy or delight their customers. Products that fall out of favor can then adapt to the challenges posed by more successful competitors or die off (Schumpeter, 1939).

Hayek contributed the theory that specialized and specific information on markets and buying behavior collected by entrepreneurs provide valuable intellectual capital that can be monetized. In the past, economists taught price theory based on the concept that markets can assume all actors/participants have perfect information (Hayek, 1944). However, specialized information in the hands of an entrepreneur has value and can be monetized.

Modern practitioners take a more holistic view of entreprenuerism. Anthony Soohoo, former Senior Vice President of Marketing at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), and founder of Rumpus, and a self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” claims that entrepreneurism is identifying a market niche or unmet demand and having the courage to risk your personal resources and/or career to create a new product or service to fill that void.

Some of the most important entreprenuerial activities today include:

1. risk taking to gain a competitive edge or profit
2. marshalling resources including financial, human, and technology
3. innovation (building a better mouse trap)
4. new product, process or market development
5. adapting to a significant change or disruptions in the market
6. exploiting opportunities for growth
7. establishing control systems

Any would be entreprenuer starts by staring at a blank page and dreaming big. That is exactly what Ted Hartridge did with Kalamazoo Plastics. Maybe you can too.