Season 8 Episodes 25 to 28. Who you are shapes, how you grow!​ Jeremy Gray – Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems

Jeremy Gray – Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems
IBGR. Network. The World of Business at Your Fingertips

Season 8 Episodes 25 to 28. Who you are shapes, how you grow!
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Based on a book, Built for Growth written by Chris Kuenne, a former startup CEO, who now teaches entrepreneurship at Princeton. And John Danner, another entrepreneur turned researcher. He’s now a senior fellow at the Institute for Business Innovation at Berkeley.

Episode 25 Who shapes how.

• Successful businesses are based on growth. Five growth dynamics can transform business value.
  • The scale dynamic
  • The solution dynamic
  • The team dynamic
  • The customer dynamic
  • The sponsor dynamic
• Your personality is the leading driver of how you will grow your business.
• The interplay between these dynamics and your personality is where value is created, transformed or destroyed.
• The book identifies four personality types. The Driver, The Explorer, The Crusader, The Captain
• Regardless of your personality type you can be a successful entrepreneur
• Different personalities grow businesses in different ways.
• You likely have some aspects of all four personalities but one will dominate. Your anchor point.
• Howard Stevenson described Entrepreneurship as the pursuit of opportunities beyond the resources you control such as
  • Money
  • Access to customers
  • Suitable Talent
• But the one resource under your control and you can bring to the entrepreneurship game is who you are. And then will guide how you make your decisions.
• It will drive your choice about strategy, people, products, how your business looks.
• “Know thyself” Socrates said. By knowing yourself you can understand your strengths and weaknesses.
• Knowing your weakness should be considered in choosing the people you hire and your choice of investor. 
• Want to know which type you are? To learn Ctrl +Click here. 

Tags: How to grow a business, achieve business success, employee individualism, self-assessment, motivation, the successful entrepreneur, business common mistakes small business start-up; avoid these common mistakes;  IBGR.network, Jeremy Gray, Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems

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Episode 26 The Driver, The Explorer, The Crusader, The Captain
The Driver is product focused.    

• Identifies his own self with the products success
  
• The archetypical driver, the driver’s driver Steve Jobs. Obsessed on product design.
  
  • Capable of seeing how a market was developing and identify product solutions that the market would want, even before the market knew it wanted them,
    
  • iPod, not only revolutionary but beautiful as well.
    
• Does not need to be tech solution
  
  • Steve Brightman developed a great business installing coin operated washing machines and dryer in apartment buildings in New York City.
    
• “Your greatest strength begets your greatest weakness.” Shakespeare
  
  • Drivers can be so product focused that their love of product takes it far beyond commercial usefulness.
    
  • Drivers can be difficult. Steve Jobs was famously impatient, petulant, and tough with the people around him. But his treatment of people, though not laudable, emanated from his passion for perfection. To learn more about Steve Jobs management style Ctrl+Click Here  
    

The Explorer is focused on the problem or puzzle.

• Tend to be systems thinkers
  
• Attracted to complexity
  
• Fascinated by problems that others have not yet been able to find a solution.
  
  • How to connect with friends at college was the problem facing Mark Zuckerberg
    
  • How to use the internet to sell cars as the question the founders of dealer.com were asking.
    
• Their weakness is that they can lose interest once the problem has been solved. 
  
  • Because they are analytical they can see their employees as inputs rather than human beings
    

The Crusader thinks about the mission and a business builds up around the mission.

• Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of Ben and Jerry ice cream founded their business in a disused gas station in Burlington Vermont.
  
  • To engage their customers they used to show free movies and hand out free ice creams.
    
  • Although a high end product they cultivated a down to earth image
    
  • For years the kept the top salary to 5x the lowest salary.
    
• Their mission to bring intensely flavored ice cream to their customers shaped the way they grew their business.
  

To learn more about Ben and Jerry’s path to growth Ctrl+Click here

• The weaknesses of the crusader is the very passion that drove them can lead to hiring errors. They attract and hire people who are similarly motivated by the sense of purpose. Rather than assessing their competence. 
  
• Angelo Pizzagalli owner of the largest construction companies, also in Vermont  put it like this “we hired people we wanted to have breakfast with”
  

The Captain is focused on the team.

• They see themselves as managing through we rather than me.
  
• They like to have other people’s ideas on strategies on decisions that build the business rather than impose them on others
  
• Does not mean they are indecisive or do not have a clear vision on where they want to go
  
  • When Jack Ma had the idea for Alibaba he gather 17 friends in his apartment to get their thoughts on his idea.
    
• While Captains can be good improvisors, they may over delegate and lose close contact with the changes that are happening on the frontlines of their businesses.
  

All four personalities have their own path to building a successful business. Each has its own mixture of strengths and weaknesses. 

Tags: How to grow a business, achieve business success, employee individualism, self-assessment, motivation, the successful entrepreneur, business common mistakes small business start-up; avoid these common mistakes;  IBGR.network, Jeremy Gray, Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems

Episode 27 Cofounder Dynamics What works and what does not?
Choosing a co-founder. the potential and pitfalls. 

• Three issues to be addressed:
  
  • Choosing
    
  • Collaboration
    
  • Potential Conflicts
    
• How well do you know your potential co-founder?
  
  • Have you worked together in high stress situations?
    
• Pursuit of a common goal
  
• Share capabilities and values, your skills should be complementary rather than conflicting
  
• Your decison making prerogatives are clear.
  
• Are you and your co-founders equals? Do you have a shared understanding on these four areas:
  
  • Splitting the ownership pie
    
  • Decision making
    
  • Title
    
  • Responsibilities
    
• Dividing up the ownership pie
  
  • What is fair?
    
  • What motivates people?
    
  • Title
    
  • Being part of the team.
    
• 50:50 is not always appropriate
  
  • Vesting ownership – lasting value really matters
    
  • Can be most fragile over time. 
    
• Clone, compliments, opposites
  
• Clones tend to magnify the strengths and gaps of each type
  
• Complimentary pairings do well if they can agree who does what and when
  
• Opposites might get stuck in disagreement.
  
• Its all about decision making.
  
  • If you are a driver then a captain is likely to be the best fit
    
  • If an explorer, a crusader or captain may be your best choice
    
  • If you are a crusader, a captain or explorer would work well
    
  • If you are a captain, then consider an explorer or crusader.
    
• The co-what question?
  
• Conversation first, negotiation second.
  
  • Avoid adversarial discussions
    
  • What matters to you may not matter to your co-founder. Ask
    
    • What is your vision of where this company will go and by when? 
      
    • What is most important to you in that vision
      
      • Money public recognition, personal pride freedom
        
  • Which situations bring out our respective strengths? Which will expose our weaknesses?
    
  • How will we resolve differences?
    
• Memorialize the agreements.
  
• Guy Kawasaki – Telescope, Microscope Gyroscope. 
  

Tags: How to grow a business, achieve business success, employee individualism, self-assessment, motivation, the successful entrepreneur, business common mistakes small business start-up; avoid these common mistakes;  IBGR.network, Jeremy Gray, Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems

Episode 28 Be the best builder you can be.
Two approaches on how to improve your business building skills.

• The expert strategy – be the best you can be
  
  • Elevate and delegate
    
  • Identify your strengths within the growth dynamics
    
    • Sales, Solution, Team, Customer, and Sponsor
      
    • Rate and Rank
      
  • Delegate to others, areas where you are less skilled 
    
• The master builder strategy – learn from others, adopt their strength to yours. Starting at where you are weakest
  
  • Drivers are experts at product market fit. Sense an emerging need and translate into value for customers
    
  • Explorers good at identifying customer problems. Engineer better solutions
    
  • Crusaders empower teams with powerful mission Attract dedicate followers.
    
  • Captains durable cultures with strong execution focus.
    
• Expand your management skills – borrow and adapt. Hard to do.
  
  • Recognize that you need to move outside your comfort zone
    
  • Set your priorities Jack Ma – Customer first, Employees second and investors third
    

Dreamers and Schemers. Wantrepreneurs. 

• Why are there so many more dreamers than schemers?
  
• Perceived barriers to entry I would be an entrepreneur if only
  
• Any personality can be successful
  
• Build the business you want. 
  

Tags: How to grow a business, achieve business success, employee individualism, self-assessment, motivation, the successful entrepreneur, business common mistakes small business start-up; avoid these common mistakes;  IBGR.network, Jeremy Gray, Practical Solutions to Difficult Problems
I am committed to helping entrepreneurs succeed. I can bring the experience of 30+ years of experience at the C-Suite level in an MNC from Europe, North America, and Asia. Combine this with seven years of helping a diverse range of businesses and I can provide you with practical solutions to any difficult problems you may be facing. 
Please do not hesitate to contact me for chat via the following links:
mailto:jeremy@business-in-asia.org
Or schedule time via Calendly:
https://calendly.com/3-continents-consulting
My websites include:
https://business-in-asia.org/
https://thedentistscfo.com/
My LinkedIn URL
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-gray1

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