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Ryan Petersen's Blog

Mike Michalowicz, CEO of Obsidian Launch, an incubator for young entrepreneurs, gave a talk this week about what it takes for entrepreneurs to succeed. Refreshingly, his talk was not about how to finance your venture, or the management and operational skills you'll require. Rather, Michalowicz focused on the entrepreneurial mindset, and how to get yourself to overcome limiting beliefs. Both his message and his delivery style both carried strong echoes of Tony Robbins, a man who's books have had a profound impact on my life.

Mike Michalowicz claims to read a book every two days, which would make him the only person I've met in a long time who reads more books than me. CNBC has posted Mike's list of "Top Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read," which I've cut and pasted below. Also, here's a video of Mike on CNBC courtesy of Google Video.

If you're looking for a coach in getting your new business started, Mike and Obsidian Launch might be just what you need.




From CNBC,

The Starfish and the Spider - By: Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom – This book clearly identifies the changing pattern in successful business launch and management strategies. They show how to build a dynamic powerful business, and it is easier and less conventional than you think.
Small Giants – By: Bo Burlingham – The title says it all, small business is the new big business.
The E-myth Revisited - By: Michael Gerber - The new entrepreneur's bible!
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits - By: Verne Harnish - Strategies for rapid growth.
Get The Edge - By: Anthony Robbins - You gotta have the right mindset to succeed. Read this!
The 4-Hour Workweek - By: Timothy Ferriss - Takes the E-Myth and applies tips & tricks.
Automatic Millionaire - By: David Bach - In short a "401K" for all parts of life.
Raising the Bar - By: Gary Erickson - A grassroots entrepreneur story through and through.
Purple Cow - By: Seth Godin - This book is remarkable! You'll get the joke when you read it.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad - By: Robert Kiyosaki - Make money, don't blow it.Motivational!
The Art of the Start - By: Guy Kawasaki - Key insights to starting a company.
Made to Stick - By Chip & Dan Heath - Marketing your company the right way.
Good to Great - By Jim Collins - The modern classic entrepreneurs book. A mandatory read.
How to Win Friends and Influence People - By: Dale Carnegie - Written years ago, but even more relevant today.

Labels: books, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship

Columbia Professor Michael Feiner has a great post about managing e-mail overload. His advice is solid, although a bit more conservative than the innovative "batching" solution put forth by Tim Ferriss, author of the Four-Hour Workweek.

Feiner's top five tips:

1. Set some ground rules to help employees decide which conversations should be handled via email and which should be handled face-to-face or phone-to-phone.

2. Restrict your email to a certain number per day per person.

3. Don't use email for those occasions when you're trying to motivate, inspire, galvanize or energize.

4. Ask an admin to vet emails and try to handle the less important ones themselves, passing on the most important ones to you.

5. If the matter being discussed is urgent, put "urgent" on it -- and if this is a crisis, and you really need an answer immediately, put that in the subject line. Sometimes people cheat with this, but even if people are playing it straight 70 percent of the time, this will very often get you to the most critical emails during the day, and the others you can defer.

Labels: Columbia Business School, e-mail

Della Bradshaw's second article about my trip to Nigeria just came out in today's Financial Times.

I've also got a new post on the Columbia Business School blog out today.

Labels: Africa, Columbia Business School, Nigeria

Over the past decade, leading African business schools have adopted the traditional case method. But how much can students really learn from these cases when they are about American companies that routinely leave Africa out of their operating plans altogether?

So during winter break, I was one of 30 CBS students who traveled to Africa to write case studies about successful entrepreneurial businesses on the continent. (See previous posts here and here.)

Our goal was to develop a world-class business school case study about Computer Warehouse Group (CWG). This project presented the opportunity to dispel the myth that there are no sophisticated businesses on the African continent--or worse, that businesses there can only get ahead through corruption.

We knew only that the firm had experienced explosive growth over the past few years, achieving some $100 million in revenues in 2007. We knew the firm was an early reseller for Dell, and that it was an important partner for a variety of blue chip Silicon Valley firms, including Cisco, Sun Microsystems and Oracle. We understood CWG's strategy to position the firm as a strategic partner capable of delivering turn-key IT solutions for big companies, and we knew that a well-known global private equity fund had made an offer to purchase a minority stake in the company.

And until we got to Lagos, we didn't have any sense of this company's culture. Was it a one-man show, heavily dependent on its charismatic founder, Austin Okere? Or did it have people and processes in place to ensure continued growth into the future? Did employees at the bottom live the values expressed by those at the top? Or was it more of a show to impress customers, potential investors or other stakeholders?

To answer these questions about the company's culture, we interviewed dozens of employees, from the most senior management to the most junior customer service and sales teams.

As it turned out, we couldn't have picked a better company to lay these stereotypes to rest. The company has thrived in difficult circumstances because of an entrepreneurial culture that embodies the work ethic, personal responsibility and integrity of its founder. The firm has distinguished itself from the competition by consistently delivering on promises to customers and is one of Nigeria's 50 fastest growing companies.

A rep from Cisco told us that the firm is "probably the most entrepreneurial company in Nigeria, certainly in the most entrepreneurial in IT sector." The founder of the competing firm, who has since sold his business to a larger international player, expressed similar respect for his former rivals.

Labels: Africa, Columbia Business School, entrepreneurship, Nigeria

There is nothing more dangerous in an organization than to be right. The minute you're right, you don't have to change. -- Irving Borwick, Systems Thinking Consultant

Labels: complex adaptive systems, organizations