Entrepreneurship Training
& Mentorship
Entrepreneurship Training
& Mentorship
Leadership
The Art & Science of Influence.
Leadership is an indispensable component of Entrepreneurship. By taking ownership and solving problems in your market, for your employees, vendors, and your community, you are exhibiting leadership. To support your ongoing development, we've gathered the most recognized leadership programs of our region, and added one of our own making.
Click "Apply" for an overview of each program and, if you so wish, submit an application to participate in one of our Leadership opportunities.
Below you'll find incredible resources detailing each Leadership program, including our very own Value & Profit Building Mentorship Program, where we help you engineer the profit centers of your business, and develop value-building systems that grow your bottom line!
Value & Profit Builder Self-Study Program
Getting a handle on the 8 Pillars of Entrepreneurship & the 8 Key Drivers of Business Value
As an Entrepreneur, you're likely to take on lots of risk. Not just financial risk, but also time risk. Making great decisions requires a set of tools that helps you navigate problems, weigh options, and select the right actions. We consider the 8 Pillars of Entrepreneurship and the 8 Key Drivers of Business Value to be an essential part of your toolkit. If owning and operating a business is the path you've chosen, we invite you to adopt these 16 elements in preparation for your journey.
8
Pillars of
Entrepreneurship
A pillar is a firm upright support for a superstructure. While the superstructure is your business, the pillars, i.e. the mental models you use to navigate decisions, problems, risk and opportunities, create the upright support.
Below you'll find definitions and descriptions of each Pillar. To learn more about our Self-Study program for Entrepreneurs, click on the "Learn More" button.
Mindset: A mental attitude or inclination. When it comes to attitude, which is a position assumed for a specific purpose, how you approach your decisions has significant impact on their overall quality.
If you're highly stressed out, sleep-deprived, malnurished, and isolated, what's the quality of your decisions going to be?
Taking a moment to intentionally decide what set of attitudes you're going to generate before you address a situation that may have irreversible consequences, is part of good decision hygiene.
Model: A type or design of something -- i.e. a structure, imitation or emulation of a process, etc.
Much of what we're aiming to accomplish in our businesses is not new. Others in our same industry sector, perhaps even in other countries, have successfully overcome the challenges we currently face to some degree or another. As entrepreneurs, we tend to overlook this rule because we're innovators. We like to challenge the status quo and re-invent things. This is one of our best qualities. Being able to evaluate current models of success can enhance our efforts, especially to avoid mistakes that tend to cripple ventures.
Lack of exposure to some of these pre-existing models, can create blindspots that are difficult to bounce back from. Find someone in your sector that you're not in direct competition with and pay attention to what they do, you'll be better off.
Tools: Something such as an instrument or apparatus used in performing an operation. When we were primary school, one of the earliest lessons we learned was to have all of our most important tools ready in advance. This was organization 101. We had our #2 pencils, erasers, black, blue, and red pens, notebooks, scratch paper, etc. When it comes to operating your Startup, the same ritual will serve you in the same way.
Evaluate what tools you can't afford to go without, which often, during these early stages, are a lot less in number than we think. If you tend to get excited at the prospect of tech tools and all the "advantages" you'd have in using them (beware of marketing agendas here), curb your enthusiasm with opposing opinions. Protecting your margins can be the difference between reaching year 2 or 3, and not. On the other hand, you may need to work harder to develop your proficiency using a handful of tech tools that contribute to significant outputs.
Take inventory of the tools you can't live without and master them before moving on to the "like-to-haves."
Strategy: The art and science of devising careful plans towards a goal. Investing time, energy and effort in a great strategy is often underestimated. Well-intentioned small business owners, when answering the question of how they're different, often yields answers like "customer service," "integrity," "veteran-owned." Although these are all FANTASTIC qualities, they aren't the difference-makers when it comes to strategy.
A well-executed strategy reveals the qualities that will help you build more market share, solving a unique problem that only you are qualified to provide.
Dig into what truly makes you different, with a bias for proprietary unique mechanisms, and you'll sharpen your strategy to the point that you're difficult to compete with.
Execution: The act, mode, or result of performance. Mood follows action. Course correcting while you're taking imperfect action has the added benefit of helping you get closer to your destination. Contemplation in isolation, trying to get everything perfect before you put your product or service out there is a death-spiral for your business.
When you determine actions are inconsequential and reversible, take action as often and as quickly as possible. When grading problems that have high consequences and are irreversible, which, by the way, tend to be fewer, is when you should invest more time and energy in deliberating. One of the most powerful movements in the business world has been the idea of running "sprints" during project management cycles, where you get incomplete versions of your product or service out to the public as quickly as possible to let the market help you refine them.
Don't delay. Get your product in the hands of your ideal customers as quickly as you're able, no matter how imperfect it appears to you. Are you on the right track to a solution that's needed in the market place, or are you coddling ideas that sound good in your head?
Cash: Liquid money. If the pandemic taught us anything, it was the power of cash in a crisis. As one of the only true metrics of progress in your business, free cash, which is what you actually have in the bank, is more powerful than we often realize. We're usually facing vanity metrics like Facebook likes, "friends" on LinkedIn, illiquid assets, etc.
Cash is your friend, or as the business leader, Keith Cunningham refers to it as "oxygen" for your business.
Keep cash on-hand. That's what you'll need to sustain operations as you battle your way into sustainability and growth, and which will help you navigate a crisis well.
Community: A unified body of individuals with common interests and purpose. As you aim towards maximizing your ability to produce results in your business, create accountability cycles with people that have similar goals and ambitions as you. Creating accountability, as a social mechanism, is one of the best things you can do.
A mentor or coach could be the best facilitator for this role.
Join groups or masterminds that practice principles of accountability, and you'll go further faster.
Environment: The circumstances, conditions, or objects by which one is surrounded. Besides cycles of accountability, it's hard to imagine a more powerful force on your psyche than the environment you create for yourself as you're running your business. If you're not surrounding yourself with things that remind you of your goals, your ambitions, and WHY you're doing it all, you're more likely to get sunk by noise, inputs that don't serve you.
As a risk taker, protecting your confidence, and aggressively defending your energy to make high-quality decisions, solving problems for your team and your customers, are essential components of your sanity. A variety of environments can activate all of the 8 Pillars of Entrepreneurship. Invest time in crafting them.
8
Key Drivers
OF BUSINESS VALUE
Resiliency Factors The Make The Difference
The following 8 Key Drivers to build value in your business can help you create more enjoyment from running it, improve overall profit, and or prepare for when you eventually decide to sell to a strategic buyer. We provide a brief description of each driver. If you want to learn more about our Self-Study Program, click the "Learn More!" button.
Financial Performance
Your history of producing revenue and profit combined with the professionalism of your record keeping.
Consider your future streams of profits and how they fit into your version of freedom.
Growth Potential
Your likelihood to grow your business in the future and at what rate.
Selling too many different things without considering their impact on your business growth and scalability rates.
Switzerland Structure
How dependent your business is on any one employee, customer or supplier.
Consider the repercutions if/when they stop working with you.
Valuation Teeter Totter
Whether your business is a cash suck or a cash spigot.
If your business requires lots of working capital to operate, the less value it brings to you as the owner and the businesses' overall value.
Recurring Revenue
The proportion and quality of automatic, annuity-based revenue you
collect each month.
Avoid one-off sales that bring no future value to your customers.
Monopoly Control
How well differentiated your business is from competitors in your
industry.
What do your customers care most about that really makes you different? Why do they come back?
Customer Satisfaction
The likelihood that your customers will re-purchase and also refer you.
As measured by the number of actual referrals you get, not just how likeable you are.
Hub & Spoke
How your business would perform if you were unexpectedly unable to
work for a period of three months.
The more your business is exclusively reliant on you as the owner, the less likely you are to be able to transfer that value and free up your time.
Frequently Asked Qestions
We routinely receive incoming questions about our various service offerings. Here are a few of the most common inquiries we receive.
What if I don't have enough funds to get into the Leadership Program I want?
We take great care in evaluating the applications that come in so we can refer you to the resources that support your goals. So it may take a couple weeks at times for us to notify you as we coordinate with the respective constituency. But rest assured, we're processing things as quickly as we can, so if you don't hear from us right away, don't fret. We'll send you an email to the address you provided when you submit your application. Be sure it's a strong email you check frequently!
How much does the Value Builder Self-Study program cost?
Our local business and entrepreneurship support services are tiered, so it all depends on what your needs are. To identify the program that's right for you, be sure to click the "Learn More!" buttons above, or submit your inquiry to speterson@seago.org
How do you decide on who gets into the Value & Profit Builder Mentorship Program?
We've created an application process that helps us discern important factors we believe go into someone's level of success in the program. Qualities such as whether you're currently accustomed to investing in your own education and growth, the amount of time you're committed to dedicating to such growth efforts, and how much revenue your business currently generates, all help us in our selection process. We do as much as we can to accommodate extenuating circumstances. However, we also strive to maintain high standards closely associated with motivation, stick-to-it-iveness, and personalized solutions. Click here to review the Value & Profit Builder Mentorship Application.
I tried downloading the Rainmaker's Dilemma and never received it in my email. Can you send me a link?
Occasionally we find people submitting an alternate email when attempting to download the guide. Be sure to submit your strongest email and check the spam or junk folder of that email. You can get access to the Rainmaker's Dilemma here.
If I join the program and it turns out it's not for me, do I get my money back?
We have a guaranteed satisfaction policy with our local business and entrepreneurship support services. If, after going through the application process, the Vision Quest Triage Call, and gaining access to our virtual program, you still aren't satisfied with our services, submit an email request speterson@seago.org to discuss your refund options.