Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Too Much Agreement Harms New Ventures: Create Constructive Dissonance with The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind

Good morning, Billion Dollar Business Creators!

Are you feeling motivated this morning?
I certainly hope so. I know that I am!

The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master
Mind put out a press release this morning
that I thought you might find helpful.

Here it is:


Entrepreneur Lesson:

Start Up Entrepreneurs Learn that Too Much Agreement Can be Dangerous to New Ventures



The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind will hold a tele-conference at 2 p.m. tomorrow for members of the media to describe this new approach to entrepreneurship.

Because they had one language, the people who lived at Babel were able to cooperate in building a tower that they hoped would reach into heaven. God didn't want them to build such a tower so he introduced new languages and scattered the people across the face of the earth. God wanted to save the people from being able to cooperate with one another to do anything they could imagine, knowing this would lead to harm. Likewise, today's entrepreneurs find that disagreement can serve them better than agreement. From well argued disagreements can be created new insights, ways to avoid major mistakes and better methods of operation.

Weston, MA (PRWEB) January 31, 2006 -- Entrepreneur start ups seeking great success are seeking out disagreement with their plans from other entrepreneurs around the world by joining The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind, http://billiondollarbusiness.blogspot.com/, to avoid a foolish commitment to bad ideas.

Many entrepreneurs have been misled by the agreement they hear from employees and suppliers. Thinking the entrepreneur is a hopeless egomaniac, employees and vendors may politely go along with a bad plan . . . as long as they get paid to agree. Yet entrepreneurs would be better off seeking out people who disagree and will explain their reasons. Such constructive debate is often hard to find within a new venture.

Studies of entrepreneurial failure repeatedly show that entrepreneurs often make the following mistakes:
1. Believe they have a superior offering when they don't. Do you remember the DeLorean automobile?
2. Pursue a market that's indifferent to their new offering. When will people be ready for the Segway?
3. Producing an offering that's more expensive when people want something less expensive. How well will new 40,000 square foot mansions sell if heating and air conditioning prices triple?
4. Stick with one method of providing benefits for too long.
The Osborne 1 was the first portable computer, but you might have developed a hernia carrying it. Waiting too long to develop a lighter version put Osborne out of business.
5. Throwing money at the problem rather than brains. Thousands of internet start-ups spent a fortune on content and television advertising just before they went out of business.
6. Relying on inexperienced people to play key roles. Many key people heading Boston Chicken before it crashed and burned had no restaurant operating experience.
7. Assume they have all the bases covered when they don't know what they don't know. That's the story of every glossy magazine that folded after a few issues.

Do you think these people were hearing strong arguments for other courses? Probably not. Even if they were hearing those arguments, the response from the failed entrepreneurs may well have been, "It's my way or the highway."

How can start up entrepreneurs avoid these and other common pitfalls: Have lots of people you respect who know what they are doing check your thinking before you act. Add some turmoil to be sure you're on the road to creating something worthwhile.

To enable such effective cooperation, alert entrepreneurs have formed The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind, a group of entrepreneurs who pledge to build billion dollar businesses by focusing on the key tasks for start up success and helping one another to accomplish those tasks . . . while avoiding catastrophic mistakes.

By combining their efforts and funds, each entrepreneur will receive the development support they need for a few thousand dollars rather than the hundreds of thousands that others spend. By checking their ideas with the group on a regular basis, entrepreneurs will also have the benefit of accessing dozens of outside experts who can help them. Many of these entrepreneurs will form alliances with one another to reduce development, marketing and operational costs further. The group prohibits competitors from joining in order to foster a free exchange of ideas and support.

Members have used research on major entrepreneurial successes to select these 7 key tasks to work on in The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind:
― Creating a major new market or expanding an old one by 20 times
― Reducing the costs of customers and beneficiaries to use the start up’s offerings to a small fraction of current levels
― Adding customers 20 times faster than competitors at low cost
― Improving the start up’s business model at least every four years
― Employing a business model that doesn’t require much external equity capital
― Building a management team deep in innovation, operations, finance and marketing
― Searching to find out what they didn’t know that they didn’t know.

This new organization begins operating on February 1, 2006. Charter memberships are available before then.

This focus reminds many entrepreneurs of God's action at Babel: Make communication more challenging to encourage better results.

Donald Mitchell noted: "Entrepreneurs often fail because they dream about the fruits of success rather than looking for what could go wrong. Like the emperor who had no clothes, many entrepreneurs are bare of decent business ideas . . . and don't know it. As long as they have money, someone will praise their business ideas. Someone needs to keep their feet on the ground and away from dangerous temptations. They are more likely to listen to a fellow entrepreneur than they are to someone in their own management team or a family member. With a little tough love to keep them out of mischief, entrepreneurs can accomplish more for themselves and those they serve. Without that tough love, and an entrepreneur can become a modern day equivalent of Nero . . . fiddling around while the new venture crashes and burns."

The Billionaire Entrepreneurs’ Master Mind, http://billiondollarbusiness.blogspot.com/, a global learning organization that helps entrepreneurs create billion dollar businesses from start ups is headed by Donald Mitchell (co-author of The 2,000 Percent Solution http://www.2000percentsolution.com/, The 2,000 Percent Solution Workbook http://2000percentsolutions.blogspot.com/, The Ultimate Competitive Advantage and The Irresistible Growth Enterprise http://www.irresistibleforces.com/).

A media tele-conference will be held at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday, February 1, 2006. Please dial 1-712-580-7706 (passcode 16474222#) to join this tele-conference.

# # #


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learn, and I'll do my best to help in future blog
entries.

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May God bless you.

Donald W. Mitchell
Chairman, Mitchell and Company

Copyright 2006 Donald W. Mitchell