Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

Tim Stay posted about a remarkable phonemenon of youth leadership on LeaderNotes.  Both Seth Godin and Chartreuse thought enough of the post to reference it.  I think it is an incredible example of not-for-profit entrepreneurship.

Check it out.

Seth Godin posts today about what he calls a marketing concept.  The key lesson, I believe is apt for all entrepreneurs. 

Harry Acker, a billionaire entrepreneur who owns Sleepy's, a 400 store chain of mattress stores has a simple policy, according to Seth: 

If there's anything in the store, anything important, that's broken and not fixed within 72 hours (including policies, prices, inventory, whatever), his job is to pick up the phone and dial 300.

And Harry Acker, the owner, the billionaire, answers. "This is Harry." And you tell him and he fixes it.

That kind of responsibility is the hallmark of entrepreneurship.  Most entrepreneurs fail to scale that kind of commitment to a business's success.  It is inpsiring to consider that it can be done!

Seth posted a thank you to Tim Stay of Know More Media today for running free ads for his book across the network.

Tim Stay explains the motivation behind the free plugs here.

I appreciate the opportunity to blog for KMM--great organization!

Seth Godin loves to talk about small and great things that fix stupid problems--problems that result from nothing more than tradition and not enough people asking something like "does it have to be that way?"

Today, he posts about a new lens cap that is transparent instead of black and says "Take Off The Lens Cap."

I'd be more excited about this product if I thought I would be any more likely to remember to take the cap off.  Instead of taking black images, now I'll just have the words "Take Off the Lens Cap" written on every photo I take!

In any case, my cap's off to the entrepreneur!

Today, Seth blogs about grapple and I noticed that Tim blogs about weird.

The idea occurs to me that Seth's concept of standing out from the crowd, being unique, special and different could be described as being weird.  They are talking about the same thing.

Tim talks about how Dell Schanze, founder of failed Totally Awesome Computers, was too weird.

Seth says that no matter how purple the grape+apple=grapple curiosity is, it is still "awful."

How purple is too purple?  How purple isn't purple enough? 

What do you think?

I love reading Seth's blog.  His logo is apt.  Reading his blog is like getting into his head.

Today Seth is talking about the need for repetition.  From my standpoint as an investment banker, I have seen this over and over again.  People don't digest information in one gulp.

Here's the problem:  you've got ten minutes to explain your deal to a venture capitalist.  Before you can explain what makes you great, you have to explain what you do.  You make a gadget that ...  The problem is, if your audience doesn't get what you do, when you explain what makes you special, as in our our technology prevents..., it won't make any sense.

You have to find a polite and effective way to restate what you do in clear enough terms that your audience can understand.  Then, and only then, can you begin to tell them what makes you special!

Seth hit the nail on the head!

"What's your reason?"  Seth asks, after explaining that the reason so many things are done the way they are is determined by archaic patterns (my favorite being that the QWERTY keyboard pattern was driven by the need to put frequently used letters far apart so that the typewriter wouldn't jam so often--I'm old enough to remember jamming the typewriter).

I love the thought question, though.  What is my reason?

I blog because I have something to say.

I blog for Know More Media because KMM helps provide an audience.  (See my "if a tree falls... post.)

Hal Halladay at Leader Notes made a great observation about Seth Godin's commentary on leadership in an entrepreneurial setting.  The point seems to be that even a great entrepreneur may not be the right person to lead the business as it matures.

All entrepreneurs want to believe that they are the next Steve Jobs, able to launch a new venture in the garage and lead a Fortune 500 company.  It is important to remember that Steve didn't stay in the saddle from start to finish at Apple.  Do you remember NeXT, Steve Jobs venture between stretches at Apple?  A Wikipedia entry notes that "NeXT as a whole gained a reputation for failure that would never rub off."

The conclusion I draw from Steve Jobs's NeXT experience, is that the lessons learned by that "failure" helped prepare him for the successes he's had since at Apple and Pixar.

Do you have a "failure" in your history that prepared you for a later, greater success?

Seth Godin, blogger and entrepreneur extraordinaire, is having fun with us today.  He wants to know if we can find the ethernet jack in the photo.  The photo, as you can see, is dark.  It appears, however, that the port is nothing more than an ethernet cable tethered weakly to the front face of the desk, just out of sight, of course.

This is an interesting and intriguing commentary on hotel services. 

Seth will tell us tomorrow if we are correct.

Update:  I was wrong.  Oh the shame!