Executive and Team Coaching, Leadership Coaching, Mentoring - Strategic Planning - Board Service

State of Affairs and Investors

 Personal Growth  Comments Off
Sep 172009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

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Understanding where the other person is coming from radically increases the probability that you will understand what they are trying to say to you.

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I recently met with a young entrepreneur – let’s call him X – well, to be technically accurate, a wannabe entrepreneur – he had never successfully built a business before. The meeting was a chance one at a networking event but my reputation for helping build business had preceded me. Continue reading “State of Affairs and Investors” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 10:21 AM

Non-Cumulative Relationships

 Personal Growth  4 Responses »
Jul 202009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

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To accumulate means that now there is more than before and then there will be more than now. It is a simple idea – then why do some people have so much trouble applying it to their lives?

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Some years back I had a coaching engagement with a senior consultant. This person had risen to near the top of his profession and was, by most indicators, a thought leader in his field. After an increasingly successful career spanning almost twenty years, he began to wonder ‘what’s it all about’? Continue reading “Non-Cumulative Relationships” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 9:33 AM

Thoughts on Excuses

 Personal Growth  Comments Off
Jul 112009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

One of my favorite sayings is ‘to excuse yourself is to excuse yourself. I recently intervened with a management team that had really messed things up – and that saying kept running through my head. They were masters of the excuse. There was a reason why or why not for everything. However, none of these reasons involved anything approaching personal responsibility for outcomes. What astonished me was how natural all this excusing seemed to come to them. The team had truly created a culture of excuses where a culture of achievement was called for. Now, at the end of the investor funding, they had run out of relevance. Their excuses meant absolutely noting to anyone. Continue reading “Thoughts on Excuses” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 8:08 PM

Running Your Own Shop

 Personal Growth  Comments Off
Apr 252009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

 

It is a decision that seems to get made all by itself. Before you know it, you are the founder of a start-up. Then the challenges begin to appear and the real implications of your decision start to sink in. 

 

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I recently had two conversations with decidedly different people who had the same perspective on business – most notably, their businesses. When something like that occurs, I tend to stop – light up a good cigar – and settle down for a think. Most often, the results of the effort are at least therapeutic – and sometimes enlightening. Well this time the results were somewhere in the middle – sorry to you folks who were anticipating enlightenment! Continue reading “Running Your Own Shop” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 10:51 AM

Assumption is the Mother of All … – Lessons for Young Wannabees

 Executive Coaching, Personal Growth  1 Response »
Feb 232009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

Nothing is truly new under the sun and that applies to entrepreneurs as well as any others. They make the same mistakes as their predecessors. That doesn’t make them wrong or inept – just human.

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One common rationale for unproductive boards is “we have a board because our lawyer told us we need one.” Management moves to transfer accumulated liabilities to the board in an attempt to escape their own fate as failed management. The resulting lawsuits were not pretty. You can finish the title of this article any way you learned it. The way I learned it cannot be repeated here. The message, however, is one that every entrepreneur and start-up team needs to learn and, in my experience, almost none of them do learn. The postmortems that I have done on dead and dying start-ups show a clear pattern of mistakes and oversights which lead to the eventual demise of the company – and dissipation of the resourced and energy of the founders. At the center of most of these patters is the same mistake – made by team after team repeatedly. Continue reading “Assumption is the Mother of All … – Lessons for Young Wannabees” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 11:27 AM

Good Reasons Not To – Lessons for Young Wannabees

 Personal Growth  3 Responses »
Feb 122009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

 

Sometimes it is better to decide not to do something. Starting a business is one of those times. It is easy to get into that swamp and very hard to extricate yourself. Thinking carefully before you jump in can pay big dividends. 

 

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At times, I lecture to a class of undergraduates or MBA students. Mostly the courses center on entrepreneurial activities or some other aspect of business. A professor who is helping his students come to terms with what being in business really means generally invites me. I am able to speak from experience – having started and built six businesses – and I have learned that much of what I have learned as an entrepreneur was not well covered during my time in business school. Here are some examples of what I tell the students: Continue reading “Good Reasons Not To – Lessons for Young Wannabees” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 10:34 PM

Change Aversion – Coming to Terms

 Personal Growth  Comments Off
Jan 142009
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

Change is the one unavoidable aspect of living. Time and our lot as humans see to that. A good way to see personal growth is as the process of responding positively to that change. We all know that the idea of change can be unsettling. Many people see it as stepping from the known to the unknown. However, the only way that you can see it this way is to ignore that change is an unavoidable part of your every day. You are changing all the time. Continue reading “Change Aversion – Coming to Terms” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 10:40 AM

Seven Tips for Personal Success

 Personal Growth  Comments Off
Nov 212008
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

Here is a page out of my life coaching engagements. One of the first places we start is the relationship that a person has with himself or herself. It is high impact work – although it sometimes produces discomfort – that may take several months to complete. Nevertheless, in the end, it is one of the most effective ways to change the direction of a person’s life. Continue reading “Seven Tips for Personal Success” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 11:29 AM

Three Tips for Business Success

 Personal Growth  1 Response »
Nov 192008
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

I enjoy my life coaching engagements because often they result in life-changing realizations. Many of my clients have had the experience of the light finally going on. Some of these epiphanies have involved a realization of the work that they should be doing or the kind of company that they should be running. I have helped clients who started out in the ‘tech’ space end up running companies as diverse as wine tourism, international charities and jewelry design and manufacture. The common theme is that they all left lives that they had fallen into for live that they choose – lives that matched their temperament, skills and passions. Continue reading “Three Tips for Business Success” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 10:53 AM

Balancing Work and Life

 Executive Coaching, Personal Growth  Comments Off
Sep 292008
 

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

Today, many of us we feeling that our lives are horribly out of balance. We are aware that our work-life balance is out of sync but we do not always recognize what we can do about it. It is important to reset the balance, otherwise pressure will build and we can become stressed and then other problems will subsequently develop in our personal lives. Continue reading “Balancing Work and Life” »

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 Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II at 2:10 PM
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