Category: Blog

  • Top 5 Ways to Improve Success (as an Entrepreneur)

    I was starting to get fidgety in my seat in the café the other day as I listened to an entrepreneur I had been introduced to. Not because I saw many flaws in her business idea or what it was going to take her to launch it.  Nor was it because she was struggling to…

  • Stuck Launching Your Business?

    Stuck Launching Your Business?

    It isn’t often we get good news from Afghanistan.  So you can imagine my delight when reading a rare exception, as reported in this week’s New York Times. Meet Meena Rahmani, a 28-year-old Afghan woman who recently opened the country’s first bowling alley.  And while much of the country’s businesses are closing, Ms. Rahmani’s six-month-old…

  • The Importance of Accepting What is In Front of You

    The Importance of Accepting What is In Front of You

    It was on September 11th, 2005 that Army Sergeant So thought for sure he was going to die. For it was in the middle of the night while camping out with the 20-man infantry unit he was supporting in Eastern Afghanistan that they were ambushed. No sooner had the hailing bullets stopped when his commander…

  • What is Your Exit?

    What is Your Exit?

    It was only when I met Taj Chahal for coffee last week that I learned about his completely UnReasonable life as an entrepreneur. When he was 19 and his brother Gurbaksh was only 16, they started their first company from a shared bedroom in their family’s modest home in San Jose, CA during the Web 1.0…

  • Top Five Tips for Winning a Pitch Contest

    By last Friday afternoon I was getting giddy.  I had just spent the past three and a half days, working over July 4th, to review hundreds of business pitches from around the country. Earlier in the week I was asked to be a judge for a major contest that ended up going viral and the…

  • Your Customers Not Getting It?

    I was at the top of the world.  I just was written up in the New York Times front page of the Metro section (today’s NY/Region), was covered on dozens of TV programs, in newspapers and magazines around the world and had many more wanting to cover the business. I was 29 years old and…

  • Entrepreneurs Solving World’s Challenges

    Entrepreneurs Solving World’s Challenges

    The room was filled with a tension so thick that movement came in quakes. Ten companies were ready to stand: 13 modules complete, six weeks in the making, self-vetted and prepared with only five minutes to present. About 80 investors, lawyers and guests had come to listen to the final ten showcase their businesses at…

  • How’s YOUR Competition?

    My jaw dropped and my fear kicked into overdrive along with my embarrassment.   After all, something like that never happens to someone like me:  30+ years running businesses and teaching many others how. Yeah, right! Here I am in front of my team a few weeks ago with serious egg on my face. I was…

  • How Anger is Good For Business

    How Anger is Good For Business

    Tuesday I was walking around my ravished Brooklyn looking at what Hurricane Sandy had left behind. While my house was about 100feet from the mandatory evacuation zone, we were fortunate that the surge of water didn’t quite make it up to our house. Others nearby did not fare as well. Living near the Gowanus Canal,…

  • Why should you work with a business coach? 3 Ways to Achieve Results

    Why should you work with a business coach? 3 Ways to Achieve Results

    Over the past decade, I’ve coached over three thousand entrepreneurs in 13 countries. While most have seen great results, some have not worked well at all. This is mainly because not everyone should work with a coach, and some are just not coachable. Coaching works best for those who are committed to improve their “game”,…