Weekly Roundup: 4 Must-See YouTube Videos for Entrepreneurs (June 19, 2015)
In this week’s roundup of essential videos for entrepreneurs and small-business owners, the big question is, how do you keep your team motivated? Brian Tracy and Gary Vaynerchuk both tackle the question, delivering very different answers. Also: Evan Carmichael offers some tips staying personally motivated (and avoiding procrastination) and Stanford professor Paul Oyer gives an eye-opening half-hour lecture on finding success in the digital marketplace.
Q&A: How Do You Motivate Your Team?
Brian Tracy is the first to tackle this week’s big question: How do you motivate your team? Tracy says the number one rule is picking the right people in the first place. He cites author Jim Collins, who says in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t that the starting point of building a successful company is “getting the right people on the bus, getting the wrong people off the bus, and then getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.” Tracy’s supplementary tips include “have clear goals and objectives” and “have clear deadlines.”
Tommy Lasorda Asks: How Do You Keep Your People Motivated?
Gary Vaynerchuk, meanwhile, has a different, more personal, answer about motivating his team. “What’s important for me to motivate is to do a great job listening to what makes them tick,” Vaynerchuk says. He adds: “I love to talk, but the amount of listening that I’m actually doing always surprises people.”
How to Avoid Procrastination
When you’re your own boss, as most entrepreneurs are, staying motivated can be tough. This can lead to procrastination. Evan Carmichael offers three tips for staying motivated and avoiding procrastination—the number one being “Have goals that excite you.” He references Tony Robbins who said, “People aren’t lazy, they just have goals that are impotent.”
Paul Oyer: Finding Success in the Digital Marketplace
In this 32-minute video from Stanford Graduate School of Business, economist and professor Paul Oyer discusses why some online markets have excelled and others have not. Plus, he predicts which industries might explode next.
READ MORE FROM AMERICAN COMMERCIAL CAPITAL
The Underrated Power of Profit
Cash flow gets the cautionary tales. Every owner who has scrambled to make payroll learns to respect liquidity, and they are right to. But beneath the cash flow conversation sits a deeper question—one that determines whether a business is worth running at all: is it actually making money?
Profit is the engine. Cash flow is the fuel line. You can keep a clean, well-managed fuel line delivering steadily…
How Does Factoring Work for Service-Based Businesses?
If you run a service business, you might wonder whether factoring is really for you — it’s often described with examples about shipping goods or delivering products. The good news: factoring works very well for service-based businesses. What you’re factoring is the invoice, and a service invoice is just as fundable as a product invoice, as long as the work is done and billed to a business customer.
What Questions Should I Ask a Factoring Company?
Walking into the conversation with the right questions puts you in control and quickly separates the straight-shooters from the slippery ones. Here’s a practical checklist to bring with you. A good factor will answer all of these clearly and without hedging.
On cost and fees What is your factoring fee, and exactly how is it structured — flat, or does it increase the longer an invoice is unpaid? What…
