The Inspirational Entrepreneur

Posted on August 31, 2025 by anentrepreneurswords

“. . . we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.” Winston Churchill uttered these words during World War II and led Great Britain through one of its darkest periods in history.

“. . . I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King made this proclamation at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, witnessed by 250,000 civil rights supporters.

Have you ever heard of Patrick Henry Hughes? He is an amazing story. Born without eyes and a congenital birth defect that prevented him from straightening his arms and legs, Patrick became an accomplished vocalist as well as playing the piano and trumpet. He even became a member of the University of Louisville Marching and Pep Bands, and a UP Premiere movie, “I Am Potential,” is based upon his life and success.

What is the common theme for these three individuals? Inarguably each is an inspiration. Churchill inspired his countrymen to stand strong during the difficult days when Britain was under siege. King inspired millions seeking equality in their everyday lives. Patrick Henry Hughes as served as an inspiration for everyone who has encountered a challenge – and haven’t we all?

As entrepreneurs we want to be inspirational leaders. We want to lead inspirational organizations. We want our mission and vision to be inspirational. But sometimes the notion of inspiration can be confusing and even elusive. Exactly how do we inspire? I have looked high and low and there is no handbook. There are as many definitions as there are inspirational quotes – the quantities are massive. Here is an equation that I have developed over the years that I believe stimulates inspiration.

Passion + Authenticity + Conviction = Inspiration

This formula can be measured by the likes of Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Patrick Henry Hughes. Is there any question that each had incredible passion for their cause? And is there any doubt as to their authenticity? Think about it. How could anyone play-act the power and impact that each had on society? Finally, they never wavered. They never quit. They stood by their beliefs no matter what. When we genuinely have a deep and lasting positive passion; demonstrate it in authentic ways, and are steadfast in maintaining this passion, we cannot help but inspire others. People are not inspired by wishy-washy. People are not inspired by fake. And people are not inspired by quitters.

Inspirational intelligence exists in great leaders. By emulating the inspirational formula, Passion + Authenticity + Conviction, we too can motivate others to join with us in doing great things.

This blog is being written in tandem with my book, “An Entrepreneur’s Words to Live By,” available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle (My Book), as well as being available in all of the other major eBook formats.

The Communicative Entrepreneur

Posted on August 24, 2025 by anentrepreneurswords

In today’s business world there is a constant drumbeat for clear communications. And without a doubt, we will find a lack of clear communication at the root of many of the issues that we have with each other. OK, I get it. We need to communicate clearly. But here is something you will not hear as often. There is also a need to simplify our communications. Sometimes we may think we are communicating clearly when in fact the message we are conveying is so convoluted and complicated that our audience gets lost.

I am involved with a venture capital business that screens large numbers of start-up companies in the biotech space as we look for potential investments. One company stands out from the rest – not because of the product it was developing, but because its pitch was so impossible to understand. We have some technical people on our board as well as advisors with whom we work, and no one understood what the pitch was all about. This company used highly technical terminology and language that no one ever hears in day-to-day conversation. I suppose that it is possible that the product could have been an amazing breakthrough in its field. But we will never know because we declined to invest for the simple reason that we could not understand the pitch. Here is an excerpt from the pitch summary.

(XYZ) technology allows RNA to be manufactured using well proven large scale fermentation processes. Prior to (XYZ) manufacturing innovations these large-scale fermentation processes were not viable because of the ubiquitous and unavoidable presence of RNAses (enzymes that break down RNA) in the fermentation process environment. (XYZ) technology sequesters, inside a protein capsid, the RNA as it is produced thus protecting it from RNAse degradation. This protein capsid protects the RNA allowing subsequent isolation and puriﬁcation. There is also a high level of interest in using the protein encapsidated RNA as a delivery mechanism.

The preceding is an extreme illustration of overly complicated communications. But there are countless examples that occur daily to a lesser degree. I used to moderate panel discussions at several apartment industry conferences each year. We talked about many aspects of the business including debt, equity, construction, and operations. Often, we have audience members who are new to the industry. While the subject matter can be complex at times, the bigger problem is all the acronyms that are the plague on our house.

It does not matter whether the communication is written or verbal, we must redouble our efforts to simplify, simplify, simplify. When we write like we speak, we tend to accomplish this objective. And if we think before we speak, it is likely our communication will be understood. Guarding against ego-creep is also in our best interest. We have all seen the pontificators who like to show everyone how smart they are by spouting a bunch of intellectual-sounding mumbo jumbo. Staying humble and being respectful of the audience’s desire to understand what we are communicating should be our guiding principle.

A man or woman of few(er) words conquers rambling purveyors of verbosity every time. Striving for clarity and simplicity in our communications will ensure that we are persuasive and convincing.

The Anti-Gotcha Entrepreneur

Posted on August 17, 2025 by anentrepreneurswords

Several years ago, I purchased a couple of new beds for our home at a national mattress store. One was a fancy model that is adjustable, vibrates and has other bells and whistles. I would normally pay for such a purchase outright, but the mattress store was offering free financing for a year. I thought, “what the heck, why not?” So, I paid the monthly principal amounts over the course of 12 months like clockwork. Toward the end of this one-year period I started looking for a payoff balance to show up on the monthly statement, but it never did. Then I received a statement showing a large amount of “deferred interest” that when calculated produced an exceptionally high interest rate.

In looking back at the previous month’s statement (four pages of legal-size paper), I found a single sentence in small print advising me to look elsewhere in the statement for an acceleration amount. I finally found the payoff figure – again in small print. Unfortunately, I missed the deadline by ten days and now owed over $3,000 in interest charges. I called the national bank that had purchased the paper from the mattress company and pointed out what my intentions had been from the outset and that the small print notice was deceptive and easily overlooked. I spoke with a supervisor and then a manager who ultimately cut my interest cost by 75%. I still contend that the interest should have been fully waived.

The national bank involved in this incident was clearly playing a “gotcha game.” There is no doubt in my mind that they intentionally used fine print and required the customer to hunt through the bill to find the amount owed. This is despicable behavior and does nothing to help the cause of entrepreneurship. I am not a fan of a lot of government regulation, but it is situations like this that trigger calls for more regulation in the first place.

As entrepreneurs we should look at our business practices to see if we too are playing the “gotcha game.” Are the documents we use with our customers very clear, relative to what is owed as well as the terms and conditions for payment? Or are we using fine print, misdirection, and incomprehensible language to obfuscate and confuse the customer? And if we are doing this, what is our end game . . . to shake down the customer for extra dollars?

Companies that are winning in today’s environment are focused on culture, product, and the customer. Profitability at any cost is not part of this calculus. Businesses that gouge their customers like the national bank with which I dealt, will ultimately suffer through new regulatory initiatives and/or customer abandonment. We entrepreneurs have a golden opportunity to identify competition that is perpetrating such behavior and differentiate ourselves in striking fashion. With the right messaging, winning customers from the bad actors should be relatively easy.

The integrity we maintain with our customers is one of the most valuable assets we possess. Playing the “gotcha game” can quickly turn that asset into a liability.

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The Dumpster Fire Entrepreneur

Posted on August 10, 2025 by anentrepreneurswords

Dumpster fires are tricky devils. They usually start out as nothing. Just a bunch of trash sitting in a big metal bin . . . and then someone flicks a cigarette butt or empties hot coals from a grill and the smoldering starts. Who knows what is really inside the container? It could be aerosol cans, used motor oil, acetone, automotive batteries, paint thinner and a host of other accelerants. After smoldering for a while, the fire gets hotter and hotter until it becomes a raging inferno. If the dumpster is too close to a building, the entire structure could ignite and burn to the ground. Discovered early enough, a simple fire extinguisher could put out the blaze in a matter of seconds. But once it is out of control the fire department may have a battle on its hands for hours.

There is an obvious parallel between dumpster fires and the minor irritating problems that entrepreneurs encounter every day. We all experience situations that we tend to ignore. Perhaps there is a petty conflict between two members of our team. Maybe it is a nagging customer service issue or a piece of equipment in the plant that is not functioning properly. We know the problem is there, but we simply choose not to address it wishing and hoping that it will just go away. After all, we have bigger crises to deal with. Right?

But we all know what eventually happens. The conflict between team members blows up big time and someone quits or is fired. Other team members are dragged into the drama which impacts productivity and damages our culture. The customer service issue results in the loss of a customer and perhaps a nasty post in the social media world hurting our brand in a much broader way. Now we are in damage control mode involving multiple members of our team who are trying to restore our reputation. And that piece of equipment in the plant that was not functioning properly? It finally breaks completely, shutting down the entire production line in the process. Oh, and one of our team members was injured when the machine finally died.

Each of these situations began as a small smoldering dumpster fire. Immediate attention (the fire extinguisher) would have resulted in a solution that put out the fire. The wider range of consequences of inaction would have been avoided. This leads us to conclude that we need to look for small problems every day and intentionally take the necessary steps to fix them. I know that I have small festering issues that need my attention. But sometimes I just do not want to face them right now. So, I give myself a 24-hour pass and make sure they pop up the next day on my task list. I have learned that it takes discipline to handle the small stuff or else I will eventually have to spend a whole lot more time and money untangling things later. I have found that the 24-hour pass approach works well for me. And I may even find myself thinking about what the solution will be before the end of my self-imposed deadline. Unfortunately, there is no other trick to it other than “just do it.”

Small seemingly inconsequential problems can explode into dumpster fires that consume our lives. It is better to take small incremental steps to solve the problems as they arise and then we will not have to call the fire department because our house is burning down.

The Mistake-Admitting Entrepreneur

Posted on August 3, 2025 by anentrepreneurswords

Crows are remarkably intelligent and can live 20 years. They typically have a wingspan of more than three feet and weigh nearly three pounds. A crow can fly up to 60 miles per hour and have been found as high as 14,000 feet in mountain ranges. Being smart, fast, and able to fly to great heights makes them particularly hard to catch. A few years ago, I had to catch one so I could eat it . . . metaphorically speaking of course.

To be a successful entrepreneur we must have an acquired taste for crow. We have all heard the saying “to eat crow” which connotes humiliation and having to admit the making of a mistake. Sometimes our ego gets in the way, and we do everything we can to avoid admitting that we made a mistake. We may point the finger at others. Or we may try and cover up the mistake hoping that its results will somehow vanish into thin air. I can tell you that all these tendencies are mistakes.

One of our companies is involved in acquiring apartment properties across the country. We sold two such assets within a much shorter holding period than we had initially projected because of an opportunity to generate substantial profits. Members of our team prepared a detailed spreadsheet that showed how the sale proceeds would be distributed. These were large and complicated transactions with several tranches of equity provided by different investors. I was pleased to call two such investors to deliver the good news that they would be receiving a significant multiple of their original investment. Needless to say, they were thrilled.

Within days, I received a call from my partner who oversees our apartment acquisition business unit. Apparently, there was a bust in the calculations and these two investors would be receiving less than what I had told them. They were still receiving a substantial gain on the sale, but not quite as much as the expectation I had set. The mistake was honest and unfortunate, but it still had to be acknowledged. Thus, I went about the task of eating crow.

I called both investors and said the following, “I’m sorry to tell you that the distribution figure I provided the other day was erroneous. We made a mistake in calculating the sale proceeds and your new amount is $X. Happily your profit is still much greater than we projected when you made your investment three-and-a-half years ago. I wanted to get back to you as soon as I learned of the error and I hope that you will still be interested in looking at future investments with us.”

Because we are a team, I did not point a finger at the person who was responsible for the calculation. Instead, I said that “we” made a mistake. I did not make up an excuse for what had happened. Simple but painful. The result was an expression of understanding on the part of both investors. I am sure they were disappointed but there were no angry words and in both cases an indication of interest in looking at the next deal.

Relationships are built on trust and can be strengthened in situations where things do not go as planned. But this happens only when honesty and transparency are the top priority.

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