Have you ever taken the leap to create a product, start a business, or launch a service? What was your strategy? Was it successful?

Here's the deal: Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. It's a fact. However, entrepreneurship can be found in the very basic factor of what makes America a great nation. Being self-employed, launching a start-up, and being an entrepreneur, in general, is not always easy or glamorous. You could peruse the internet and find people who have generated millions of dollars in revenue from their products and have a successful business.

Here is the raw truth about entrepreneurship: It's not always a winning situation. You have to work your butt off to make it work. Sometimes, you lose.

There, I said it. Not everyone will or can win. Not everyone is designed to be an entrepreneur. Maybe it is because you started your pursuit long after having piled up a ton of debt and you cannot afford to break away from the typical "9-5". Go ahead and send the hate mail. I can handle it. I am telling you from experience as I have failed, tried again, failed again, and tried again.

What is the secret to success as an entrepreneur?

Well, I have identified a few very practical and proven points to guarantee your success if you are considering the shift to a lifestyle of entrepreneurship or if you are already on your journey.

1.) Persistence: Never quit. You will absolutely have setbacks, it's part of it. You will find yourself struggling, wondering what you were thinking and wanting to find another way to generate revenue. If something goes bad, pick up the pieces and keep going.

2.) Diversify: If you are depending on one single product or one single service to provide to consumers, you will likely find yourself with zero revenue in the beginning. Develop multiple streams of income for your startup. If you have a product, offer a paid service to compliment that product. If you have a service, offer a product that compliments the service. Either way, seek out ways to diversify your business so you can have more sustainable and dependable revenue.

3.) Mentorship: There will never be a time when the learning phase ends. Always seek to learn more skills, perfect what you do know, and become an expert in whatever your field is. One way you can do this is through mentorship. Seek out a mentor and be a mentor to someone else. This is an investment you will never regret, especially if you have a championship caliber mentor.

These are not all of the things you should know or need to be successful as an entrepreneur, but this is what I have learned and it has helped me tremendously. Being an entrepreneur takes creativity, tenacity, and persistence. Expect slow growth up front. It is okay. Build on what you have, create a plan, and achieve what you set out to conquer.

Photo: Flickr/Dell Inc.

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Customer comments expose us. Excluding the customers who review to get something for free, many of the remaining comments are requests for communication and connection. This is valuable. Your response impacts reputation and revenue.

When a request for feedback is accepted, a promise is made.

Here's an example of a squandered opportunity from the hotel industry. "Thank you for staying at ......... hotel" and then asking for feedback. When the Brand's request for details about a stay is accepted, a promise is created to honor the guest's input and time. The request implies that we care about our service and customer experience. A guest receives in response an email from the hotel's General Manager. The email is often impersonal and created from a generic template.

When that happens, a brand promise of caring hospitality is breached twice. The first on any service problems encountered as a hotel guest. The second breach (worse than the first) is when a hotel's response is shallow and insincere. That kind of communication creates a new reason to try a different brand next time.

What impression are you creating?

It is world class to be exemplary and engaged in communication with customers. Dull and common does not cut it. What impressions are your last 10-15 responses to customer comments creating?

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The idea of business as an agent of change and a purveyor of positive values is gaining traction and legitimacy around the world. With a growing number of companies taking steps to be more responsible in how they treat employees, communities and the planet, we are seeing business emerge as a real player and solution-provider in the quest to put our world on a better course.

This trend is reflected in the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -- specifically in SDG 12, calling on business to adopt sustainable practices and integrate sustainability into their reporting cycles. The fact is that business action will be key to the success of each SDG. Responsible business operations, new business models, investment, innovation and collaboration are all part of the solution.

And business has good reason to wake up to the new global-sustainability agenda to be adopted by all 193 Member States at the United Nations on September 25.

The case is clear for business globally to get involved. For companies, successful implementation of the SDGs will strengthen the enabling environment for doing business and building markets around the world. Even the most principled and best-managed companies are challenged to thrive in communities marked by instability, to find skilled labour where adequate education is lacking, or to withstand natural disasters stemming from climate change.

The SDGs can provide inspiration and direction for companies to turn business risks into opportunities. With trillions of dollars in public and private funds to be redirected toward achieving the SDGs, there is an enormous opportunity for responsible companies to successfully deliver solutions and grow markets in the coming years.

Enlisting business support

The global goals provide a powerful aspiration for improving our world -- laying out a path over the next 15 years to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect our planet. We are all in agreement on where we collectively need to go -- with governments involving business, civil society and citizens in the process from the outset.

While the scale and scope of the global ambition laid out in the SDGs is unprecedented, the fundamental ways in which business can contribute remain unchanged. Companies -- from all regions, sizes and sectors -- can help to achieve the SDGs, first by ensuring that they are doing business responsibly and then by seizing opportunities to solve societal challenges through business innovation and collaboration.

In short, companies must first not make our world's problems worse before they try to help make them better.

This means operating in ways that, at a minimum, meet fundamental responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. It means that companies must enact the same values and principles wherever they have a presence, and realize that good practices in one area do not offset harm in another.

Through the United Nations Global Compact, we now have more than 8,000 companies in more than 160 countries committed to doing business more responsibly. A truly global movement is underway. Now, imagine if more companies everywhere took fundamental steps like respecting the rights of employees, providing decent work and pay, not polluting our land, sea and air, and not engaging in bribery. We would be much further on the way to reaching the world we want.

Of course, there is a world of opportunity once companies have taken care of their basic responsibilities. We see companies around the world thinking about how to use their core business strengths to tap into new markets and develop solutions to long-standing challenges related to health, poverty, sanitation, energy access, and many other areas.

Business as a force for good

The SDGs provide a clear, common aspiration that all companies can mobilize around -- allowing business to align their own sustainability goals with goals for the broader society.

For business, this will mean setting ambitious corporate goals inspired by the SDGs, which can stimulate innovation, investments, positive engagement and, ultimately, performance. For example, leading companies are already setting science-based targets, defined by what the external world requires, rather than by what seems easily achievable.

Effectively incorporating sustainability into core business models and strategies requires top-level commitment by management and the Board. Transparency and creating accountability across the organization are also essential.

Working to address the most challenging issues of our time is no longer just the "right thing to do." Employees, customers and investors increasingly demand that business proactively promotes environmental, social and governance practices across their operations and supply chain -- for their bottom lines as much as for the greater good.

Responsible companies are responding to the call, showing that principled business, combined with innovation and collaboration, can bring about powerful changes in markets and societies.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post, "What's Working: Sustainable Development Goals," in conjunction with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed set of milestones will be the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 25-27, 2015 in New York. The goals, which will replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015), cover 17 key areas of development -- including poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality, among many others. As part of The Huffington Post's commitment to solutions-oriented journalism, this What's Working SDG blog series will focus on one goal every weekday in September. This post addresses Goal 12.

To find out what you can do, visit here and here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Household consumption drives 60 percent of economic activity globally. Yet too often, our consumption is synonymous with environmental and social degradation.

What if consumer purchases could create positive impacts for people and the planet? That would seem revolutionary. In fact, just such an endeavor exists today to protect forests, one of the most precious and vital ecosystems on earth, which support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people around the world and 80 percent of terrestrial biodiversity.

From tissue and paper, to packaging, furniture and building materials, people consume and depend on forest products every day. While traditional, industrial forestry can destroy forests, there's a movement well underway to balance our immediate and long-term consumption needs while safeguarding forests, wildlife and forest-dependent communities. Known as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the approach uses market forces tied to sustainable consumption to ensure forests are protected for the long term, even as they provide wood and fiber for products we use every day.

Here's how it works: FSC sets high standards for responsible management, to which forests around the world are independently audited. FSC standards are designed to protect a wide array of forest values, including old growth, biodiversity and rare species, water resources, native peoples, forest workers and local communities.

Products from forests that meet FSC standards can use the FSC label. Consumers and companies looking to have a positive environmental and social impact purchase products bearing this label, which sends a signal back to the forest owner, creating an incentive for more forests to be managed to FSC standards in a positive-feedback loop.

To date, 450 million acres (184 million hectares) of forest in 80 countries have earned FSC certification, with 29,500 companies trading in FSC-certified products. This represents more than 15 percent of the global trade in forest products, excluding wood for fuel.

As FSC has grown, many consumer-facing companies have taken note, and made it a part of their business and sustainability strategies.

Take Kimberly-Clark, for example. With products like Kleenex, Scott Tissues and Huggies, the company is one of the largest buyers of forest products in the world. Nearly one in four people globally purchase one of their products every day. With this reach comes a strong sense of corporate responsibility to do the right thing, including a deep commitment to FSC. In fact, every Kimberly-Clark tissue product in North America -- along with many others around the world -- is now FSC certified. This one company has had an enormous impact, by creating demand for responsibly managed forests and by raising expectations for their entire industry.

Research demonstrates that FSC yields benefits for people and forests. For example, CIFOR, a nonprofit research organization, found that FSC certification in Africa's Congo Basin has been able to push logging companies toward "remarkable social progress." And the World Wildlife Fund has found that FSC helps protect biodiversity and reduce forest degradation compared to industrial forest practices. WWF even found that FSC can be more effective in halting environmental destruction than protected areas, such as national parks, in countries where law enforcement is weak.

Recognizing FSC's success with the forest-products industry, other sectors are applying the model to a growing array of consumer goods derived from agriculture (Sustainable Agriculture Network), minerals (Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance) and seafood (Marine Stewardship Council). While details vary, each of these systems aligns with FSC's premise that responsible consumption can yield positive environmental and social outcomes.

Embedded within the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 to "ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns," are objectives to achieve sustainable management of natural resources, encourage large companies to adopt sustainable practices, and promote sustainable public procurement. While the overall goals are appropriately ambitious, given the scale of the challenges we face, these objectives are well within our reach today. In fact, the Forest Stewardship Council provides a model that allows us to "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

As the world moves toward sustainable consumption and production, FSC represents a model for others to consider. And since forest products are so ubiquitous, FSC offers consumers a simple action with a profound impact, one that they can take the next time they shop at their favorite retailer. Through responsible consumption, we all have an opportunity to embrace FSC's promise of "forests for all forever."

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post, "What's Working: Sustainable Development Goals," in conjunction with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed set of milestones will be the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 25-27, 2015 in New York. The goals, which will replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015), cover 17 key areas of development -- including poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality, among many others. As part of The Huffington Post's commitment to solutions-oriented journalism, this What's Working SDG blog series will focus on one goal every weekday in September. This post addresses Goal 12.

To find out what you can do, visit here and here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

What comes to mind when you think of sustainable food production? If you're like many Americans, you probably picture a local farmer's market, celebrity-branded salad dressing or an organic farmer growing heirloom lettuces and free-range chickens.

Now, what comes to mind when you think of industrial food production? Do you envision acres of conventionally grown corn stretching as far as the eye can see? Giant feed lots? Factories that process food into "center aisle" products for the supermarket?

When we think about sustainable food production, most people don't think about solutions coming from Big Business. Yet corporations have the potential to become our biggest ally in meeting SDG 12, the sustainability development goal set forth by the United Nations to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns by 2030.

Here's why

Our need to eat poses serious threats to the natural systems that sustain us. Whether it's small and organic or large and conventional, farming of both livestock and crops already uses up nearly 40 percent of Earth's non-ice surface and is responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions -- more if you count the GHG emissions caused by deforestation, which has largely been driven by agricultural expansion. Agriculture also consumes 80 percent of the world's freshwater supply and pollutes waterways with fertilizer and manure runoff.

Of all cropland planted, a relatively small portion is used to grow fruits and vegetables -- the food we buy at local markets and grocery stores.

The majority of cropland is devoted to growing commodity crops, such as corn, wheat, soy and palm oil -- the stuff that goes to fatten up livestock or become ingredients in prepared foods like bread, soups, tofu, and other products like biofuel.

The environmental impact of commodity crops

As demand for these crops has risen, so too has their impact on the environment. Demand for palm oil, for example, has led to widespread deforestation in South America and Asia. Overuse of fertilizer, particularly on nitrogen-hungry grain crops, has contributed substantially to more than 400 dead zones worldwide, including the biggest one in the Gulf of Mexico.

Consumers can play a role in reducing demand for these crops by changing their diets to include more fruits and vegetables and less meat and processed foods. Governments also have a role to play. But corporations are in the best position to influence commodity-cropping practices on the ground. After all, growers produce what the market wants, and business is driving the market.

How business is driving change

The good news is that corporations are starting to wake up. Companies are beginning to identify unsustainable agriculture as a business risk, and they're shaking up their supply chains.

In Brazil and Indonesia, for example, companies that control the production of four commodities -- more than 90 percent of soy purchases in the Amazon, around half of cattle slaughter in the Brazilian Amazon, and 96 percent of palm oil trade globally -- have committed to stop deforestation.

Walmart, as part of its commitment to reduce 20 million metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions from its supply chain (equivalent to taking 4.2 million cars off the road), has inspired 15 leading suppliers to source fertilizer-efficient grains. Fifteen may not sound like much, but together these companies represent 30 percent of the North American food and beverage market and include some pretty big names, like General Mills and Campbell's Soup. Their commitment to meet Walmart's mandate has produced a cascading effect, motivating at least one agricultural retailer -- United Suppliers -- to develop a fertilizer-efficiency and soil-health initiative that promises to transform 10 million acres of farmland in the next five years.

And last year, several agribusinesses, insurance companies, and food retailers joined the newly established Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture, marking the first time that corporations had a seat at the U.N.'s table to discuss sustainable agriculture.

By 2050, the world's population is projected to rise to nine billion, which will require a 60-percent increase in food production. If we are going to meet that need, we'll need to grow more food in ways that improve the economy and the natural systems that sustain us all.

Most of the gains in organic farming have been made in the fruit and vegetable department. And that's a good thing. But to achieve results at scale and meet the goals of SDG 12 on time, we'll need to engage Big Business. I'm encouraged by what I see.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post, "What's Working: Sustainable Development Goals," in conjunction with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed set of milestones will be the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 25-27, 2015 in New York. The goals, which will replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015), cover 17 key areas of development -- including poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality, among many others. As part of The Huffington Post's commitment to solutions-oriented journalism, this What's Working SDG blog series will focus on one goal every weekday in September. This post addresses Goal 12.

To find out what you can do, visit here and here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Blair Blackwell is manager of Education and Corporate Programs at Chevron Corporation, a position she has held since December 2012. In this role, Blackwell is responsible for leading Chevron's education-focused social investment initiatives in the United States.

Blackwell has over 15 years of experience with the private sector, nonprofit organizations, social enterprises and international organizations in Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia and the United States. Previously, she served as director of private sector initiatives for the International Crisis Group based in New York. Prior to this position, she was executive director of Princeton in Africa.

Blackwell views education as a fundamental cornerstone of prosperity and has been involved in many facets of education throughout her career, ranging from working on education reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina to working with students in Kazakhstan. Currently, Blackwell is on the Partner Advisory Council of 100Kin10 - a program aimed at training 100,000 STEM teachers by 2021 - and on the Advisory Council of the California STEM Learning Network. She also serves as a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Blackwell is from Winter Park, Florida. She earned a bachelor's degree in Slavic languages and Literatures from Princeton University. She currently resides in Oakland, California.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
I've had what many think to be a varied career, having worked both in the private and nonprofit sectors and in countries as diverse as Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Belgium. Those roles have often focused on increasing access to education as well as empowering women and girls, and I have loved every minute of it.

Growing up, however, my first dream was to become a shark biologist. Despite taking many more high school science classes than most, I wasn't exposed to strong female mentors in science fields and wasn't really sure how to pursue a career in marine biology. So I did what many young women do--dropped the science and pursued a different degree.

It has been incredibly rewarding that in my current position, I have been able to combine my passion around education with my early interest in science. In my role as Manager of Education and Corporate Programs at Chevron, much of our work has focused on providing girls with resources and counsel from a very young age to pursue their dreams and encouraging them to embrace science and engineering as a possible career choice. This is especially important as women are severely underrepresented in the field of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

How has your previous employment experience aided your tenure at Chevron?
Having spent many years in the nonprofit sector working in Africa, the Balkans and Central Asia, I saw firsthand the role the private sector can play in addressing global challenges as well as the importance of partnership between nonprofits, the public sector and the corporate community. At Chevron, we partner with education organizations, government officials, NGOs and community leaders to increase access to--and the quality of--education and career and technical training of students and workers. My past experience working in these different sectors has helped make me more effective at building strong and lasting partnerships, and I am a firm believer that it is only through a public-private partnership approach that real change can be achieved.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at Chevron?
It's been an amazing experience being on the corporate side of social investment, especially because of the time and effort Chevron devotes to its corporate responsibility. We take a very strategic approach and work directly with our partners to research the needs of the community, to develop innovative programs and support quantifiable results. We've come a long way from the time when nonprofits and others were skeptical of the shared value that can be achieved by engaging corporations, although on occasion that can still be a challenge.

Through successful programs, we continue to prove the importance of partnership. I've had many highlights since I've been in my position, but one that stands out was watching the faces of the junior high girls who participated in the launch of the first Chevron-sponsored Fab Lab at California State University, Bakersfield. Fab Labs (which are short for Fabrication Labs) provide great opportunities for students to bring STEM projects to life using 3D printers, laser cutters and milling machines. They are also great venues for mentorship to take place. To see the light bulb go off for a girl as she connects what she's been doing in the classroom to real-life examples and ultimately to careers, is incredibly rewarding.

What advice can you offer to women who want a career in your industry?
My best advice for women who want a career in STEM, or really any industry, is find mentors and sponsors who can provide you with guidance, share their own experiences and help steer your path. Don't be discouraged by gender bias or the feeling that you're entering a man's world--embrace the strengths that make you different from your male peers. Most of all, be confident in yourself and your own abilities, as you are your own best advocate.

What is the most important lesson you've learned in your career to date?
I've learned that if you are eager to learn from every experience and ask for support when you need it, it's possible to shape your own path and success. I always knew that I wanted to have a career with social impact. Even though I didn't pursue my childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist, my work at Chevron centers on bettering the community. By focusing on STEM fields, we're helping to develop an innovative, science-literate population that can strengthen the country's workforce and economy. Now my goal is to provide resources for girls so they don't lose sight of their aspirations simply because they can't immediately find the right path or they don't speak up.

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
I'm not sure there always is perfect work/life balance, but taking care of yourself and taking time to recharge is vital for staying happy, motivated and effective. I find a level of balance by keeping active and spending as much time outside as I can. Some days I throw my surfboard in my car in the morning to force myself to leave the office early enough to get into the water. It can often seem like a chore at the end of a long day to make the drive to the ocean, but I always feel better when I do. I've also found it's important to have friends and colleagues to hold you accountable to go to the gym or leave your desk for lunch. For example, one of my colleagues and I head to the Chevron gym together on Tuesday nights. Knowing that one of us will be standing at the other's office door with a gym bag in hand helps us both ensure that we get out of the office, take care of ourselves and re-energize.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
There are still not enough women in positions of leadership. An important element in solving this is sponsorship and mentorship. Mentors can bring great wisdom, and knowing people who have experienced a similar path and who can give advice on how to succeed is invaluable. Women also need sponsors who will advocate on their behalf for a promotion, a development assignment or a new role.

Both men and women need to be mentors and sponsors for women in the workplace. And, it's just as important for women to advocate for themselves. Far too many women think they are being pushy if they do this, but they're actually just being smart.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Throughout my career, I've had role models and mentors to look up to and learn from. I've made it a priority to call upon these people when I'm making changes in my career.

When I made the decision to transition from the nonprofit sector to the private sector, I made a long list of people to turn to for advice and guidance. These role models and mentors were able to share their experiences and provide me with the information I needed to make the career change and find the right company fit.

Now that I'm at Chevron, my boss plays a very important mentoring role to me. He has been with the company over 25 years, and provides me with essential advice and coaching on how to understand and work effectively across a large company. He also helps to expand my understanding of Chevron as a company and the industry more generally.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
There are many I admire. Mika Brzezinski is one woman for whom I have a huge amount of respect and have learned a great deal. I find that, often, women are not as open as we could be about the challenges we've faced and the "failures" we've learned from. We want to present a perfect picture and are afraid of being vulnerable. Mika, however, has been open and very candid, not only about her success, but more importantly about the challenges she and other women have faced and how they've overcome them. She has encouraged so many women to strive to reach their full potential.

There are also a number of women here at Chevron whom I admire. They are paving the way for other women to follow in their path and they still find the time to help support those around them. From a senior executive who sits on the Board of Techbridge, one of our nonprofit partners engaging middle schools girls in STEM education, to a young engineer working at the local chapter of the Society of Women Engineers to mentor college engineering majors, there are many examples across the company of individuals giving back to support the next generation.

What do you want to personally and professionally accomplish in the next year?
With the number of STEM jobs in the United States expected to increase steadily for years to come - and STEM jobs known to pay well relative to other industries - I want to continue to encourage women and girls to seize the opportunity to step forward as leaders, innovators, earners and mentors.

I also want to reinforce the role men play in ensuring women are successful in their career path. The conversation is not just about how women manage responsibilities in their career and personal lives, but about how both men and women can better find that balance. There has been a cultural shift in the younger generation, with young men expecting a more balanced life and career. But there's more that needs to be done to educate both men and women around this issue and working together to solve the challenge.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Everything we produce and consume has an impact on the environment, on social fabrics and on the economy. This impact can be positive or negative, and frequently some combination of the two. Building more prosperous, sustainable societies requires us to minimize the environmental footprint of our production processes and consumption decisions. It is for this reason that Sustainable Development Goal 12, one of 17 goals in the United Nations' prospective new development agenda, calls for us to "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns."

With a growing, fast-urbanizing global population set to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, the challenges are immense. People need food, water, housing and energy. The rapidly growing global middle-class will want more consumer goods and services, from flat-screen televisions to overseas holidays. Hundreds of millions of people who still live in extreme poverty rightly hope to be able to consume more, not less.

Meeting these needs and demands in an environmentally sustainable manner is one of the great challenges of our time. And it will affect all of us. The Huffington Post reader in Cleveland, Ohio, who goes out of her way to buy sustainably sourced food and clothes -- but plugs her tablet into some of the dirtiest electricity. The farmer's daughter in a drought-affected district of Maharashtra who knows that the tube well on her family's plot will soon run dry, and is saving up for a ticket to the city. We cannot afford to disappoint the latter's aspirations. But if all of us were to have the former's carbon footprint, the planet would become unlivable.

Sustainable production and consumption matter immensely to the people I meet every day as head of the International Trade Centre, which works with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to help them boost growth and job creation by improving their competitiveness and connecting to international markets.

For most of the SMEs we work with, what's stopping them from producing goods and services more sustainably is not the will but their means to do so. Access to finance is already tough for SMEs, especially in developing countries. The higher up-front costs of investing on environmentally sound tools or production facilities can be nigh on impossible. The emphasis on finance for SMEs at the recent Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa was an important step. Financial institutions must build on this commitment to inclusivity by not only making it easier for SMEs to start up and do business, but to enable them to participate in our common quest to achieve SDG 12.

Tourism is one sector that has considerable potential for more sustainable consumption, production, and job creation. It has been on my mind this week, as I attended the annual meeting of the United Nations' World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in Medellin, Colombia. While tourism is often resource intensive, it is a major driver of poverty reduction in developing countries. According to the UNWTO, fully one in 11 jobs worldwide is directly or indirectly related to tourism: it's not just about the concierge, the waiter, and the lifeguard -- it's also about the plumber, the builder, the ice-cream maker and the tomato grower, and the artists who sell their crafts to tourists.

Talking to participants in Medellin was an eye-opening experience. They were acutely aware that the industry's future depended on reducing its environmental impact: to reduce water use, to think creatively about offsetting travel-related carbon emissions, to source fish and other food sustainably, and to reduce waste.

The tourism industry has considerable potential to be a sustainability role model in its role as a buyer of goods and other services, from building materials and green construction standards to farm produce. Indeed, research by ITC and UNWTO suggests that some of the hospitality industry's biggest positives for development come from its local purchases of goods and services. The industry surely has potential to buy more, and buy better.

Of course tourism is only one sector in which we have to rethink how we produce and consume. Achieving SDG 12 -- and by extension the other Sustainable Development Goals -- will require sustainable pricing and sustainable trade. We will need sustainable technology and food, especially in terms of energy and water use. We will need sustainable-procurement practices and education on sustainability. Above all, we will need lifestyles that fit within the carrying capacity of the planet.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post, "What's Working: Sustainable Development Goals," in conjunction with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The proposed set of milestones will be the subject of discussion at the UN General Assembly meeting on Sept. 25-27, 2015 in New York. The goals, which will replace the UN's Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015), cover 17 key areas of development -- including poverty, hunger, health, education, and gender equality, among many others. As part of The Huffington Post's commitment to solutions-oriented journalism, this What's Working SDG blog series will focus on one goal every weekday in September. This post addresses Goal 12.

To find out what you can do, visit here and here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Nanxi Liu is the Co-Founder and CEO of Enplug, a Los Angeles technology company that builds the industry-leading software that powers digital displays in malls, restaurants, retail stores and more.

All entrepreneurs have given soliloquies about how finding great talent is our priority. Yet, we rarely take the time to craft the best recruiting process.At Enplug, a tech company that builds digital display software for businesses, we've been able to instantly improve our candidates by asking better interview questions.

The veracity of answers from traditional questions like "What are your biggest strengths?" or "Do you like tech?" are hard to confirm in a short interview session. We've opted to ask questions that are more likely to reveal truths.

Our #1 question is: If you had unlimited capital and human resources, what would you build?

We immediately discuss the answer to this question when reviewing each candidate. Did the candidate think big? What does the candidate care about? Are they creative?

The less promising answers that we've heard include:

• A care package service to send to friends


• A food magazine


• An app to track productivity

And the answers that impressed us:

• A machine that turns any water into clean water


• A handheld device that instantly measures personal health (red blood count, cholesterol, disease, etc.)


• Batteries that last forever and don't need to be recharged

A major part of our team's culture is our obsession with developing impactful and useful technology. A standard in our product development is to constantly improve existing features, which often means imagining new designs to test. We need candidates who don't hesitate to share audacious ideas. For candidates who gave a weak first answer to the "unlimited" question, we ask them to think about something grander to build. If their second answer is excellent, we still add points, because they were able to adjust quickly based on our feedback.

Some of our other favorite offbeat questions are:

• Name a company in our industry that you believe is building a useful product. We ask this question instead of "Do you like tech?" Enplug has built the leading open software for digital displays in businesses, a hardcore tech product. So naturally, we are partial to interviewees who answer "Braintree," instead of "Nike." We encourage candidates to take a few seconds to name a company to avoid defaulting to Apple or Google. I want the candidate to give me an answer that my grandfather in China couldn't give as well.


• What tech leader do you admire? This is a difficult question to answer on the spot, so when candidates do give firm responses, we reward bonus points. There's no right or wrong answer. We value how they answer. For example, "I like Bill Gates, because he's built a great company and has a great cause now" is not as strong as "I like John Legere (T-Mobile's CEO), because he's unapologetically rebellious and outspoken. He has openly criticized other mobile carriers on social media."


• What are a few of your proudest accomplishments? Please brag! We want to be surprised. For the majority of our sales candidates, we've seen resumes that's listed "consistently beat quotas" or "top sales rep." However, it's the candidates who then tell us that they started an art gallery and run it on the weekend that catch our attention.

We think it takes more guts for a seasoned executive to answer that they'd build a solar-powered jetpack than any new app. Leveraging this question as a tie-breaker between leading candidates has worked out for us. May your next new teammate be only one quirky question away.

 

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Have you ever had this experience: You are talking with an employee in a business and they help get you the information you are asking for, but at the end, you can almost see them squirm with discomfort at the thought of asking you to purchase?

Think about your own company. Have you empowered your non-sales staff in helping you sell more?

Here are 6 simple ways to get your non-sales staff adding to your revenues.

1. Educate your team that selling is everyone's job.
Too many employees have never made the connection between their role and sales for their company. Not only is it your responsibility to help them connect the dots, but you need to also help them see how increasing sales benefits everyone, creating security, opportunity, and stability for them.

So start by explaining this to your team. Share stories of how people in the company helped do just that. Celebrate the successes of non-sales staff who help generate more business. Reinforce this into the culture of your company.

2. Teach your team to "recommend" or "share" their favorites.
Ever wonder why the waiter at a good restaurant share's his favorite appetizer? After all, why should a total stranger's opinion matter to what you order?

The answer is that it does matter. We are social beings. We care and are influenced by what other people like or do. Social psychologists call this "social proof".

Train your team to recommend a specific product, or service, or solution to any prospect they run into in the course of business.

What's more, when you frame selling as "recommending" or "sharing", this dissolves the internal barriers that many non-sales people have with the very idea of sales (and the potential rejection they fear.)

3. Train your team how to spot new sales opportunities.
Every team member in your company should continuously be on the look out for new sales opportunities. We call this activity, "Lead Spotting".

What are the signals that hint at a good opportunity? What situations are you best primed to solve for a prospect? What clues indicate urgency, need, and budget?

Train your team to ask a few gentle probing questions and then make sure you have given your staff a simple process to hand these leads over to your sales team. This could be a web form they fill out, a lead card they hand to your sales staff, or an email address they send all lead possibilities to.

Train your sales staff to "close the loop" by telling the referring team member what happened with the lead they handed in, this will encourage your staff to be on the lookout for even more sales opportunities.

4. Train your non-sales staff in how to appealingly and succinctly give your best scripted elevator pitch for what you do when they meet potential customers.
Don't leave this one to chance. Left to their own, they'll likely ramble off a mind-numbing description, our mutter an obscure 5 word description of what you do, and a great opportunity will be lost forever.

Here is a powerful formula for an easy and effective "elevator pitch" when meeting a potential customer. Script this out and then repeatedly role play this with your team.

Formula: "You know how __[insert #1 biggest pain point of your target market that you solve]___, what we do is ___[insert your biggest solution and benefit to that pain point]___."

Here's an example we use at Maui Mastermind with our Business Coaching Program:

"You know how most business owners end up trapped in their business, with no time freedom and their business totally dependent on them? What we do is help business owners grow their companies and get their lives back by building a business, not a job for themselves. In fact, our average business coaching client not only grows by 32.4% per year, but she also has reduced her company's reliance on her by over 80%."

The most important part to this is to make sure you train your team through actual role play to use the powerful scripting your marketing team has likely already created.

5. Systematize how your non-sales staff can get key customer data and feedback to other parts of your company.
Did a customer make a good suggestion for new features? Make sure this information gets to your product team.

Did your client share a big win they enjoyed based on using your service? Make sure that your sales and marketing teams hear about it. Your marketing team might have a subject for your next case study; your sales team may have a reason to ask for referrals.

All too often as companies grow information from one section of the company doesn't flow to other areas. You need to have a process for how your team shares important customer and market feedback and data.

6. Help your team learn to ask for prospects to buy.
I wanted to end with what might be the most important suggestion of all - training your team to get more comfortable and willing to ask for the sale.

This last suggestion isn't rocket science, but it is rock solid.

Role play with your team, helping them get repetitive practice at asking for a prospect to purchase. Don't try to teach them 10 different sales closes, rather, train them in one simple "best practice" that will work in the widest number of sales situations. And rehearse that one best practice of asking for the sale over and over and over. This way when they are scared they will fall back on the default that they have practiced so often.

For more tools to help you increase sales and reduce your business's reliance on you, click here and access our free Scale Tool Kit. You'll get immediate access to over a dozen training videos (15-60 minutes in length) and several of our most powerful pdf tools to grow your company. Enjoy.

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You've been in this meeting: Your leadership team is facing a whole bunch of bad news. What seemed like a plausible plan just a few months ago now seems in jeopardy. Maybe worse, it seems like a pipe dream.

You look around the room. The team has the usual characters: the three people you naturally gravitate toward; the guy who rubs everyone the wrong way but doesn't know it; the little cluster who sees the world very differently from you, who you'll never get; the peace-maker who is always trying to smooth off the rough edges of any disagreement; the individualist who was never really into this team anyway; the person who must be the smartest person in the room.

You bring your eyes back to the deck placed in front of you by the CFO, whose unenviable job is to communicate in a professional monotone that you, collectively, are screwed. The competition is ramping up. Customers are defecting. Regulators are rattling their keys on the door.

For a moment, you feel yourself slipping into despair, like the Dilbert character who offers to die an hour earlier in exchange for the freedom to skip this meeting.

Right then, stop. Take a deep breath and realize that your team is normal. Under pressure, every team faces four great temptations. It's your choice whether you give in to them or go another way.

• Temptation 1: Denial - It's easy to turn a blind eye to the realities facing a team under pressure. If you've always been successful because of your focus on service or price or innovation or whatever, you double down on that historical strength. You ignore the pressure. Despite the raging storm outside your windows, you make believe it's sunny and 70. As a leader, you're tempted to engage in willful denial so that fear doesn't invade your team. Which leads to...


• Temptation 2: Panic - We should expect action in teams under pressure. But there's a big difference between action and panic. Panic looks like scattered energy without clear thought. Unless that thought is, "Holy -- !" There may be a lot of ideas in the team, but most of them are pretty unhelpful.


• Temptation 3: Retreat to Self Interest - Under pressure, it's easy to lose confidence in the team, to believe that no one else has your back. You're tempted to retreat, to think If I don't take care of myself who will? One of the great acts of faith on any team is that the team will watch out for my interests. In this moment, we're tempted to recant our faith, to implicitly say that we're unsure anyone else gives a rip about us. And if no one else is going to watch out for me on this team, I'll have to watch out for myself. So I retreat to my own area of responsibility and hunker down. I know that this won't help the team succeed. But I've given up on the team at this point. Now it's about self-preservation.


• Temptation 4: Blame - Put any team under pressure and the natural temptation is to blame others. We blame corporate. We blame regulators. We blame competitors. Yes, we even blame customers. But mostly, we blame each other. If someone else would just do their part, we'd be out of this mess. If we stopped long enough, we'd know that it's not fair or helpful to be that cranky but that doesn't stop us.

While bad enough when faced by an individual, these temptations accelerate when they're in a team. They're contagious. They gain a momentum all their own. Left unaddressed, they can quickly destroy months and years of hard work in building your team's momentum.

Like any temptations, these can be avoided but only if they're replaced with something better.

• Replace Denial with Reality: It's not always sunny and 70. Everyone knows that unless you happen to live in southern California, but I have nothing to say about that. Many leaders are worried about stating the truth because they don't want to spook the troops. But what really gives confidence to your organization is when you acknowledge challenges, even acknowledge failings, and show positive steps forward. That reassures them that your head isn't in the sand and that you're fully invested in the solution side of the problems.


• Replace Panic with Focused Action: I have a client facing tough times right now. One smart guy on the leadership team has reminded us frequently of the famous scene from Apollo 13 when Gene Kranz, the flight director for the doomed mission, gathers his team and says, "Let's work the problem, people. Let's not make things worse by guessing." This is what teams need under pressure: structured activities aimed at constructive outcomes to replace the frenetic and random actions of panic.


• Replace Retreat with Partnership: Scattering is easy and reflexive. It's also depressing because you know deep down that you've given up on the team and on your teammates. You're not the colleague you'd wish for in tough circumstances. You're normal, but in a bad way. How much better to look around and ask yourself, who can I help on this team right now? As I do my normal work, how could I do it in a way that brings value and extra energy to the person right next to me in the team? It's amazing how taking your eyes off yourself can raise your own spirits.


• Replace Blame with Ownership: Shouting at the wind is easy and therapeutic in the short term. But it's a dead end in the long run. Sure, you can't control everything that happens outside your team. The question is, what can we control or influence? The same applies with blame within the team. I can't be sure that everyone will own their part of getting the team moving again. But I can be sure that I will do my part.

Just as all of these temptations can spread, so the replacements can build their own kind of momentum. A few people take ownership. A few others make quiet but useful contributions to the success of others. Denial or exaggeration is replaced by the clarity of the truth. People get to work on useful projects to address the core issues. Spirits slowly start to lift as team members look around and say, "Hey, we're doing something real and productive together. Maybe we can pull through this!" It's usually slow and fragile, but the tide can turn.

Ending this post now would be convenient, but trite. The truth is that you may choose to replace these four temptations with the virtues of reality, ownership, partnership, and focused action - and your situation still may not improve. This is the real world we live in. Sometimes best efforts and noble responses yield limited results.

And yet...

If work is about more than results, if it also acts as a sort of laboratory for your soul, wouldn't you rather walk away from even a circumstantial failure with the clear sense that you had grown as a person?

Wouldn't you be better prepared to be an exemplary teammate and contributor during the next challenge thrown your way?

Wouldn't it improve the chances that you would view those on your team as great people on whom you'd call in some future crisis?

Wouldn't that be worth it?

In that case, even a superficial failure just might provide you with long-term benefit that defies calculation.


Be Bright.

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There's one thing that almost all entrepreneurs want: to have a few more hours in a day. Impossible as it may seem, a few hacks can actually make it workable. Starting the day right with powerful morning routines can help entrepreneurs big-time.


Image Credit: Patrick Fore

If you are ready to know why, here are some productivity hacks used by many successful entrepreneurs to make their mornings more productive.

1. Work when others are asleep
Sallie Krawcheck, former president of the Global Wealth & Investment Management division of Bank of America, works while everybody's sleeping. Since there's less distractions, mornings are the best time of day to focus on ourselves. Meditate, prepare a cup of tea, or kickstart the day with a hearty meal. Pablo Ruiz, Investment Analysis & Portfolio Management at Nxtp Labs, shared in curated site Quora that he wakes up at around 5:30 or 6am to have a relaxed breakfast or write stuff for company website. Doing errands while the rest are asleep can also help mom-preneurs maximize their time. Mary Kathryn Johnson, author and entrepreneur, wakes up about an hour before her kids get up for school.

2. Exercise
Be it yoga, running, or whatever you find sustainable, exercise can be very helpful in countless ways. President Obama does morning exercises to clear his head and release stress. Andy Tiffany, Cofounder of LaunchSky, does some bodyweight squats and pushups to get the blood flowing. Don Peppers, an American business executive and author, gets up and works out before the workday begins, no matter what time zone he's in. Mattan Griffel, the CEO of accelerated online education company One Month, spends fifteen minutes or so doing nine stretches as part of the Starting Stretching program. Griffel said this warms up his body while his brain doesn't want to function.

3. Visualize how you make your day
This also reminds us of the late Steve Jobs, who used to ask himself this question every morning: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" Tony Robbins, the self-help and personal development expert, said a morning routine should involve 10 minutes of thinking of everything you're grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. Once it's done, envision "everything you want in your life as if you had it today."

4. Read
Aspiring entrepreneurs educate themselves on the business they propose to undertake. Hua Wang, an entrepreneur and world traveler, spends her mornings reading The Wall Street Journal, theSkimm, and Fast Company. She believes in being on top of the news in order to be on top of her game. Many other successful people also start the day reading the news. Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger is devoted to The Economist while the company's CEO Warren Buffett reads a hefty list of world news.

5. Make family time
Many business leaders spend their mornings having breakfast with their families or taking the kids to school. Liberty Media Corporation's CEO Greg Maffei said he eats breakfast with his wife and kids before driving his older boys to the bus stop before 8am.

This article was originally posted on Tech Cocktail

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BERLIN -- Two years ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Internet "Neuland," a "new land," that she doesn't understand. She is now feeling the impact of her weak grasp of the new medium. Her address to the German nation two weeks ago welcoming refugees went viral around the world through the web and social media, raising the hopes of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the troubled countries of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who were literally already walking toward the German border. Her comments prompted thousands more to escape the dreariness of their tent refugee camps or lives in bombed towns and villages that used to be their home.

A "Neuland" on German soil is precisely what millions of refugees now long for -- and expect -- based on the chancellor's remarks.

A 'Neuland' on German soil is precisely what millions of refugees now long for -- and expect -- based on the chancellor's remarks.

The German constitution guarantees the right to asylum. Yet, that guarantee is clearly meant for individuals or groups that are persecuted within their national, ethnic or tribal societies. It was certainly never meant to be applied to such a large outpouring at once as we see today. What term would one use to describe the displacement of an entire nation? This, too, is new territory. It thus comes as no surprise that the German minister of the interior is considering amending the constitution to clarify this point.

The hopelessness of the Syrian people motivated Germany's open door policy. But Chancellor Merkel clearly was not solely motivated by her background as a pastor's daughter. She also wanted to show leadership in the debate among European member states regarding the process of placing the refugees entering the European Union.

As of this time, though, it is clear that her approach has failed. She has had to reverse course. Temporary border controls have been instituted. Germans still welcome Syrian refugees. People still open their homes, the German army, the Bundeswehr, has vacated some of its buildings to shelter refugees. Parishes and monasteries are taking in refugees. But there is just not enough capacity.

Syrians Tread in the Wake of the Turks

Many Syrian refugees are well trained and educated. Many of them speak English. This marks an important difference with the immigration waves of the 1960s and 70s. Today, there are around 3.5 million people of Turkish descent in Germany. Their fathers were not very welcome at the time. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt even said that it was a mistake to have taken in these people of a different cultural background.

The writer Max Frisch described the dilemma: "We asked for workers, but in the end human beings came." The outcome was half a century of "them" and "us" in segregated communities. A Turkish name is still a hindrance in the job market, as surveys show.

'We asked for workers, but in the end human beings came.'

Yet, even today, the utilitarian argument is present in every conversation: we need qualified workers for Germany's future. When the Frankfurt International Motor Show opened its doors this week, Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche urged the Germans to take in the skilled and ambitious refugees at a moment when the country seeks to fill approximately 40,000 trainee positions in various industries. The cause is honorable. But will Germany repeat its former mistakes?

The people entering the country today are human beings, not breathing machines. They bring their whole identity, their history, their collective memory. And this includes their religion. But, Germans fear nothing more than radical Islam that has some roots in Arab culture. Indeed, there has never been much of a problem with the Turkish variants of Islam in this country. The first wave of immigrants did not practice their religion in an aggressive manner. Why would they have? Originally they intended to return to Turkey after a few years of working in Germany. In the end, they stayed. Yet, only 10 years ago, half a century after their first arrival, the German public finally accepted the idea that the people who helped build the country might need proper places of worship. There are great examples of new mosques now, such as this one in Cologne.






Over the past decades, the Turkish government has tried to influence people of Turkish decent via the ministry of religious affairs, which delivers the Friday sermons from Ankara to mosques all over Germany. But still, there has been no disturbances of any sort coming out of Germany's Turkish community.

In light of the current influx of Syrians, one wonders if an apology by the Germans might be appropriate at this point. The Turkish (and other guest workers from Greece, Italy and Portugal) never got much assistance and support from the government. Now, the so-called third generation is the one paying taxes and helping integrate Syrians and others through their good will. The chairman of the Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, has already made clear that the Muslim community expects laws and rules to be upheld by the new guests of Muslim belief in the country.

Fear of Islam Remains

The fear of Islam, however, is still enormous, both in secular circles that cherish a liberal society as well as by the Christian faithful in the country. Right-wing parties all over the continent seek to fuel their xenophobic campaigns with reminiscences of historical conflicts between Christians and Muslims even as the current refugees are fleeing from a religiously inspired, denominational and ethnic war in their homelands.

Surely, many of today's refugees may not care about religion anymore. But they do not become "enlightened" Europeans just by entering Europe. The refugees need time to understand that there is no prescribed religion in Europe and that the commitment to the constitutions and the values embodied in them is paramount.

Chancellor Merkel may have thought that by welcoming the refugees she would solve the societal debate about whether or not Germany is a country of immigrants ("Einwanderungsland"). But conservatives still struggle to accept the fact that every fifth German today is of foreign descent. In major cities the immigrant numbers are even higher. Muslim religion has been added to the curriculum in public schools. There are Muslim cemeteries, hospitals and other institutions, such as libraries or hospitals and Muslim private schools.

Many of today's refugees may not care about religion anymore. But they do not become 'enlightened' Europeans just by entering Europe.

Bavaria, the province on the border with Austria, reveals the cleavage in German society. The Christian Social Union chairman in Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, invited Viktor Orban, Hungarian prime minister and persona non grata in Berlin known for his anti-immigrant views, to Bavaria. He has further stated that -- without Vladimir Putin -- the war in Syria could not be brought to an end. This was also understood to be a criticism of the United States for upending the entire Middle East after 9/11.

Mr. Seehofer has pushed to close the German borders. Voices predicting that such measures would mean the end to Schengen -- the treaty on free movement of people on the continent -- have so far been proven wrong: European public opinion seems to have accepted the border closures in Germany and Austria as fair measures. And the call for ending the Syrian war as the alternative to accepting more refugees is getting louder and louder.

Eastern Europe

Eastern European nations struggle even more with the idea of losing the homogeneity of their populace. Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary all seek to wall themselves in, refusing to take in refugees unless they are Christians. With EU leaders failing to find any common ground on allocating some 120,000-160,000 refugees among more than 500 million European citizens, the EU has become as dysfunctional on this issue as with the sovereign debt crisis.

Germany can gain a lot from taking in the Syrian refugees if it doesn't repeat the mistakes of the past with Turkish migrants. It is, unfortunately, a hard truth that the many thousands of refugees that wish to enjoy this safe haven of Germany cannot at this point be taken in. As long as the EU doesn't solve its issues, Germany, as Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, has said, cannot shoulder the burden alone. A common European refugee strategy is also "Neuland" -- and a very distant prospect at this point.

Earlier on WorldPost:

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When you dream of success, do you envision late nights and weekends spent holed up in the office? Probably not. Unfortunately, this is one of the sacrifices that many make in order to achieve financial success. But what good is all that money if you don't have time for your family or even yourself?



Being "rich" is no longer solely defined by how much money you make. Today, freedom is valued nearly as much as income. For a growing part of the workforce, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year while working 60-80 hours a week isn't a worthy trade-off. In fact, many people turn to entrepreneurship for exactly this reason: they want the opportunity to make big bucks while maintaining control over their own schedules. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. In many cases, owning a business is more restrictive than working for someone else. However, there are things you can do as you build your business to avoid handcuffing yourself to your desk. With these tips you'll be able to carve out the freedom to work and play.

Top 5 Ways Business Owners Limit Their Freedom:

1) Employees. As your business grows, it will make more economic and operational sense to hire full-time employees. However, when you are building your business, employees can create more problems than they solve. As an employer, you are responsible not only for your employee's salary, but also for their personal and professional development.

Alternative: Use quality contractors whenever possible. Hiring a contractor for website development work, writing, admin support, or sales doesn't always look like the cheapest option. But if you factor in your time, the quality of the results, and scalability, it's often the best value for a young business. Relationships and incentives with contractors are very clear. These relationships require significantly less management and typically provide better reporting than full-time employees. If you don't have a good local source for hiring contractors, this Inc.com article provides a great list of freelance sites.

2) Office Leases. If you have an office lease, you'll feel compelled to spend much of your time there. The lease may also incentivize you to fill the space with employees, even if you don't need them just yet. Additionally, if your business is still growing, it's difficult to determine how much office space to lease.

Alternative: Transform a room in your house into a home office, join a coworking space, or sign up for a virtual office that offers office spaces and conference rooms all over the world when you need them. For mail, go paperless! Mail is another chain often tied to an office lease that you should avoid. Virtual mailrooms like Earth Class Mail and Mailbox Forwarding, Inc provide scanning, shredding, and bill payment services.

3) Hourly Pay. If you build a business where you, personally, are paid by the hour, you will never be in control regardless of how much money you make. In fact, you'll have less control the higher your hourly rate is. Your high-paying clients will feel like they own a certain amount of your time, and they will feel entitled to determine when they will use it.

Alternative: If you are a lawyer, accountant, or other professional, this is going to be nearly impossible to avoid. Those building service businesses should focus on creating processes from the beginning, so that other people (contractors or employees) can service the clients. Another option is to build a product-based revenue model rather than service-based. Products don't necessarily have to be manufactured or capital-intensive. For example, customer leads are a type of product.

4) On-Premise Servers. On-premise servers are basically big computers that live in your office and house all of your digital files. By their nature, these servers are difficult to access from remote locations. Server firewalls and operating system issues can make mobility very expensive.

Alternative: Save all your business files in the cloud using a service like Dropbox for Business (if you don't have extreme or specific security concerns). You can also consider getting a virtual server from a company like VMware. These cloud services allow you to scale up or down as needed and provide instant access to your files from anywhere in the world. No more emailing documents to yourself or worrying about whether you have the current version on your laptop or desktop.

5) On-Premise Communications. Office fax machines and business phone systems are tethers that can only hold modern business owners back.

Alternative: Use cloud services for phone, fax and contracts. The biggest tether on business owners and employees alike is fixed communication. Having to wait on a call, fax, or contract to come through is extremely limiting. Cloud services like eFax, RingCentral, Nextiva, Jive, and HelloSign provide managed communication services that make your communication tools follow you--not the other way around. If you want a single service that offers online faxing and esigning for contracts, this article lays out your options.

2 Bonus Tips to Make Your Business Life Easier

1) Use a cloud-based project management tool like Trello or Basecamp. If you hire contractors and even a few employees, you'll need an easy way to assign and track their work. Cloud services eliminate the need for both parties to download software to their computer, which is a great bonus. They also allow you to create projects and specify participants, organizing all your business activities.

2) Get a great bookkeeper. They can work from anywhere--especially if you have a paperless office. You should be intimately familiar with your own books, but you need an experienced bookkeeper to regularly review and update your books to ensure that you don't make any major mistakes. Hiring a good bookkeeper will make taxes easy and guarantees good reports to keep you in excellent financial standing. If you don't know where to find a bookkeeper, use one of the freelance sites from the previously mentioned Inc.com article.

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Entrepreneurship is stressful, but you can manage that stress with these five strategies.

Entrepreneurship is a double-edged sword; you'll have more freedom, more flexibility, and more control over your destiny, but you'll also have more work, more responsibilities, and more pressure to get things done. As a result, entrepreneurs tend to be more stressed than they've ever been in a normal job, but they also have less access to time and resources to reduce that stress.

If you find yourself in such a position, try using these five ways to relieve stress:

1. Get some exercise. If you don't have time to go to the gym for a full workout in the morning, don't worry--just about any physical exercise can help reduce your stress. Try doing some pushups at the office, or going for a walk around the building. Get your heart pumping and you'll feel more energized and less stressed in no time.

2. Force yourself to focus. One of the most stressful parts of being an entrepreneur is trying to manage lots of things at once. To reduce this stress, try limiting yourself to one task at a time. Cut off all other communication while you do this, and don't deviate from your current priority until it's done or you're ready to move on.

3. Breathe deep. This is a good strategy because it can be used in any situation--even while multitasking. Take a deep breath in, counting to five and holding, and a deep breath out, counting to five and holding. You'll be amazed how you feel afterward.

4. Include positive interactive pieces around your desk. Make your desk a place of your own, and since you're the boss, you can make the entire office a place of your own. Fill it with small, short activities like puzzles, pictures, toys, or anything else you enjoy or that reminds you of something positive.

5. Blow off steam with the team. As the entrepreneur, you're in charge of building your team, and you can fill that team with talented, creative, insightful, fun, friendly people. Go mingle with them at lunch or in a game.

You have to make time to relieve stress, even if it seems like you have no time to spare. Otherwise, that stress will consume you and your entrepreneurial journey will turn to a miserable rut of burnout. Stay positive and prioritize your own mental health.

Jose Vasquez is a serial entrepreneur and tech enthusiast dedicated to helping startup technology companies get the direction and momentum they need to succeed. As the founder of Build. Brand. Blast., Jose has established a collective resource for tech entrepreneurs to consult when brainstorming, creating, launching, or expanding a new business. Jose is also the founder and CEO of Quez Media Marketing, a marketing firm that combines technology and creativity to help new and growing companies get the results they need.

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MOSCOW -- Will Syria become a second Afghanistan for Russia? Is it wise for Russia to intervene in that conflict? Rumors are circulating that Moscow is planning a face-saving maneuver whereby it gradually "hands over" the Donbass in fulfillment of the Minsk agreement while aiding the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition in Syria to get back on good terms with the West. The plan sounds good in theory, but it looks unfeasible in practice.

The White House remains implacable toward both the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the possibility of Russia providing military and technical assistance -- much less troops -- to aid his forces. The U.S. called on its allies to close their airspace to Russian aircraft flying to Syria.

Judging from the tone of the messages out of Washington, the West might soon impose sanctions against Russia for its role in Syria, in addition to its role in Ukraine. Because Assad carries out massive air strikes against residential areas occupied by the "opposition," the West views him as the main culprit behind the suffering and deaths of civilians. That prompts the logical conclusion that, by helping the Assad regime, Russia is only exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Syria and not contributing to its resolution.

The U.S. may be very close to declaring a "no-fly zone" for Syrian aircraft over part of the country. Washington already conducts airstrikes against Islamic State forces in Syria without informing Damascus.

The U.S. also supports the efforts by Turkey -- which recently joined the ranks of the anti-Islamic State coalition, and whose security forces until only recently were flirting with and even supporting the Islamists -- to create a "security zone" along the Turkish-Syrian border.

That is, the scenario for the de facto partitioning of Syria might already be in motion. And the West has no desire to indulge Russia's apparent desire to help Assad maintain control over at least the Latakia region, the stronghold of the country's ruling Shiite Alawite sect.

The West is in no mood to 'buy' anything from Moscow now that relations have become so thoroughly soured over Ukraine.

Washington is particularly concerned about rumors of possible coordination between the actions of the Russian and Iranian militaries. These rumors first emerged following reports of a secret meeting that President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu allegedly held one month prior with Iranian Major General Ghasem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force in Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Although Moscow denies that there was a visit or that it held talks with Soleimani -- whom the UN has sanctioned and forbidden to leave Iran -- rumors of increased Russian military involvement in Syria began soon afterward.

If Putin is hoping to "sell" his participation in the Syrian settlement during his upcoming speech before the UN General Assembly in the same way that he "sold" his plan regarding Syria's chemical weapons back in 2012 -- and which U.S. President Barack Obama viewed as a positive step -- he is probably in for a disappointment. The West is in no mood to "buy" anything from Moscow now that relations have become so thoroughly soured over Ukraine.

As for the idea of "handing over the Donbass" in exchange for another brilliant operation by Russia's "polite men in green" -- this time in Syria -- the fans of complex military-political moves are probably exaggerating the possibilities this time. Life in Russia and the political discourse here are both simpler now.

The average Russian is tired of hearing about Ukraine. Events in so-called "Novorossia" have clearly lost their former importance and drama. If control over the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Donbass were to pass into Kiev's hands tomorrow, Russian public opinion would not react, save for a few jingoistic bloggers.

And the threat that thousands of volunteers who fought in the Donbass would return home and destabilize the situation in Russia is, I think, also greatly exaggerated. Once upon a time, a far greater number of Afghan war veterans returned home, and did they play any substantial political role in the country save for opening certain types of businesses and conducting what might be called "security arbitration" activities? No.

The same is true of veterans of the two Chechen wars, any of whom might take offense at the current "triumph" of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- himself a veteran of those wars. The most that returning Donbass volunteers might achieve in Russia's political system is to get their names on the election lists of some fringe parties that have no chance of ever winning an election.

'Foreign adventures' should be the last thing Russia needs right now.

It is another matter that the Donbass and "Novorossia" remain the subject of contentious political bargaining between the Kremlin and the West. Moscow will not just give away the Donbass for a song. Russia will try to wear the West down, hoping that Europe will eventually get fed up with Kiev and its decidedly un-European political culture and practices. Moscow might eventually win special status for the Donbass, if not de jure, then at least de facto. The Kremlin will probably choose not to aggravate the situation there so as to avoid any additional sanctions and extra problems at home.

On the other hand, Russian leaders have already done a good job of proving that the sanctions have not had the "devastating effect" that the West had only recently anticipated they would. As the Kremlin predicted, Russian society is not complaining in the least. The ruling elite are highly unified, at least outwardly, and nobody is carrying Putin's "head on a platter" to Washington.

Will Syria become another Afghanistan for Russia? Does it make sense for Russia to meddle in this situation when it has serious economic problems at home? The answer to the second question is seemingly obvious: "Foreign adventures" should be the last thing Russia needs right now.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee that Moscow or the Russian economy would benefit in any way from "handing over" Assad. Bilateral relations are so bad now that the West is unlikely to reward or thank Putin's Russia, no matter what it does.

In fact, Syria will not become another Afghanistan for Moscow. Russia will not interfere in that conflict on a scale even remotely comparable to its role in the Afghan war. The Kremlin will probably opt for something resembling the "hybrid war" in Ukraine, only this time in place of "volunteer" fighters, Russia will provide, for example, "guardians of the Islamic Revolution."

The result is that the field for large-scale and dangerous geopolitical games is becoming wider and the players more numerous -- with each striving to achieve his particular goal. None are willing to consider the long-term consequences or to talk with opponents about a possible compromise. And that is exactly how mankind has, at various times in its history, ended up getting drawn into major wars.

Earlier on WorldPost:

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As a CEO of a company in a competitive industry, I cross my fingers that my competitors will implement wellness programs.

Indeed, the more comprehensive their programs, the better it is for me. Those competitors will suffer increased healthcare costs, compounded by declines in productivity. Best of all, these programs' negative morale impact may lead some employees to quit, thus facilitating our own recruiting efforts. (This is especially true for overweight employees, whom wellness vendors really seem to dislike. We, on the other hand, find employee weight makes no difference in either productivity or health spending.)

So hopefully my competitors will disregard the rest of this posting.

As background for those readers of the Huffpost Business blog who are mercifully still unfamiliar with workplace wellness programs, they generally consist of four components (called "pry, poke, prod and punish" programs as shorthand):

1. A "health risk assessment," or HRA, that pries into your employees' personal lives, often asking about their drinking habits, marriage etc.;


2. A "biometric screen" where technicians in white coats come to your workplace and poke your employees with needles to test them for diseases that in many cases, the government's clinical guidelines say they shouldn't be tested for. A small but increasing number of programs demand employee DNA, which isn't in any clinical guideline;


3. Prodding employees to go to the doctor when they aren't sick, to see if the doctor can find anything wrong with them;


4. Punishing employees who refuse to submit, either in the form of penalties or lost incentives.

Further, more and more programs are "outcomes-based," meaning money gets tied to weight loss. (To maximize earnings at the expense of their long-term health, employees can binge before the initial weigh-in and then crash-diet before the last. Is this a great country or what?)

There are three reasons I hope my competitors undertake these programs.

First, their healthcare expenses will rise. Even wellness vendors themselves admit -- in their official consensus industry guidelines -- that wellness loses money. That's why the Los Angeles Times calls wellness a "scam," why the New York Times' economists say: "workplace wellness programs don't save money," and why the steadfastly neutral nonprofit RAND Corporation says it "does not reduce...cost." Wellness may be the only issue that the right-wing publications we Huffposters love to hate - Newsmax and the Federalist - agree with the reviled "liberal media."

In addition to the considerable cost of wellness itself, there are the extra checkups, lab tests, and the whole "treatment trap" that an employee gets sucked into when a wellness vendor "finds something," which wellness vendors love to do...and brag about, even making up diagnoses to inflate their findings. We call that hyperdiagnosis.

Second, their productivity will decline. Consider the time spent completing these HRAs, the time wasted in "health fairs," and the hours lost to forced annual checkups that everyone agrees are worthless, even the doctors themselves. But that's not the half of it. Now add in the time employees spend telling one another what a stupid idea your wellness program is (and you need only read the comments on other articles about wellness to see how employees feel). And that raises the third point...

...Their corporate morale will suffer. Once again, this is something the industry readily admits, "morale impact" being one of many program costs listed in their consensus document. (Probably never before in history has an entire industry voluntarily admitted its worthlessness as thoroughly as the wellness industry did here. Use this reader's guide to help interpret this self-immolation.) No need to take the industry's own word for it. Penn State, CVS, and Honeywell provide excellent case studies.

Better yet is this rant, a typical set of complaints about wellness - the wasted time, stupid and overly personal queries, incompetence, and increased cost. Unfortunately, this organization for whom this person works is not a competitor of mine, or I'd have my recruiters working overtime.

Newsflash: employees want to be left alone to do their jobs. Except at both extremes, it doesn't matter what they weigh. So don't "play doctor," or force employees to get "coaching" for issues they don't want you involved with.

If you engage your internal wellness staff in a candid moment--which we hope our competitors don't do--they themselves will likely admit or offer that wellness vendors just make their own jobs harder, make them more unpopular and probably impede them from actually helping to create a healthier culture, which is why you hired wellness experts in the first place. Like all your other employees, they just want to be left alone to do their jobs.

Yes, this is a much different take on wellness than the kumbaya viewpoints that have also been shared on Huffpost. However, those Huffposts are written by the CEO of a wellness vendor and bear no relationship to what that particular vendor (or most others, with a few carefully validated exceptions) want to actually do to your employees to maximize their profits. And these posts lead to another observation about wellness: no one defends it except the vendors and consultants who make money off it. This is a true indication of an industry's parasitic irrelevance.

Unfortunately, even my densest competitors will figure this out on their own someday.

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You have probably heard this a hundred times, "you have got to work smart not hard to succeed".

How do you define working smart though? Would working smart mean less work and not working hard to be smart? If we work hard does that have nothing to do with working smart? Do smart people not work hard? or do hard workers not work smartly ? Confusing, right! Let's take a deeper look.

Traditionally, working hard is considered to be the cornerstone of achievement. You work hard at something, burn midnight oil, sweat and out run everyone else around you, to reach your goal. Maybe it's school, or grad school, or looking for a job. Maybe its learning a new skill, or improving an existing one for that manner.

It has been well known, said a hundred thousand times and drilled into our heads - "if you want to succeed, work hard". "You have to burn midnight oil". "Life is not easy, you have to work very hard to achieve something ". I completely am a fan of this thought, yet so many us miserably fail at achieving our goal even after working so hard at it. We sometimes fall just short by inches, left to bite the dust. I have personally tasted this failure, even though I worked so hard at things. I just did not succeed.

What was wrong? Was I not working hard? I was working very hard ! So what was wrong! Oh no, Was it about being smart ?

Being smart is about making smart choices. Its about making the right decision, the right step or the right choice. Smart people move up the ladder real fast. They also are the ones that have great cars, lot of money, and everything else the rest of us desire. Right?

These are people that played smart and won big times. Seems so easy. But does that also mean they did not work hard to be where they are. Consider some very famous people, your idols, and your heroes. Did they just work smart and not hard? My honest opinion. They worked very hard. They worked so hard that we cannot even imagine what they went though. People who are successful in business life, work, or a profession typically go through hell before they can reap the rewards of success.

Take the example of musicians. Training for 8 to 12 hours a day is not uncommon among the top highly paid musicians in the world. Similarly performers, artists, professionals spend hundreds of hours honing their skills, without taking any shortcuts to perfect their art and to stay at the top. As you reach the pinnacle of success, you start making less mistakes. As you grow more experienced, you make less errors, and this results in something that saves you a lot of time, effort and energy. You have now become smart. You now make smart choices. You now play smart!

Working hard or working smart cannot be separated from each other. Even when working hard you have to make smart choices. You cannot just wake up one day and say to yourself, "Today I will make smart choices". No, you should be saying that to yourself every day and work "hard" on it.

Give anything your best shot and work towards your goals like there is no tomorrow. Be strong willed and work hard to get what you want, because the desire to achieve something is only as strong as the smallest distraction that can take you away from it. Be smart about setting your goals and planning how to achieve your goal. Be smart about making choices in life and then work on making those choice spring you good things. Work hard in making smart choice and work even harder to learn how to make smart choices. Make mistakes but be smart enough to learn from them.

Try to be smart in making your choices in life and work hard towards fulfilling your dreams !

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Wheeee - this is fun!  

Remember, I can only tell you what is going to happen and how to profit from it - that is the extent of my powers - the rest is up to you.  Yesterday afternoon, for example, I sent out this tweet (from our Member Chat Room) that we had decided to short the fake-looking Fed rally at Dow (/YM Futures) 16,800 and Russell (/TF Futures) 1,190.  

As you can see from this chart, we NAILED the top at 1,190.  This example had 2 contracts at an average of $1,187.80 and we caught a very quick ride down to 1,175 where the profit on two contracts was $2,500 on /TF and $2,000 on /YM and I sent out another tweet at 3:30 noting we called for taking the quick gains off the table - making $2,500 in 25 minutes - nice work if you can get it.  

But that's the point - you CAN get it all the time.  On July 25th I published "Using Stock Futures to Hedge Against Market Corrections," where we discussed this very strategy for taking advantage of volatile swings like we had yesterday.  In fact, just this Tuesday, we had a Live Trading Webinar (replay available here) where we talked about Futures Trading Techniques (and we shorted the S&P!).  

You can also protect your portfolio with options and ultra-ETFs of, our preferred method - options on ultra ETFs - as we discussed in Sept 4th's "Hedging for Disaster" (you know, the one we're having now) as well as, of course, yesterday's morning post, where we told you the Fed would not be easing and we discussed the very obvious Gold ETF (GLD) spread, which ended the day at $2,830 - up $640 (29%) for the 2nd day in a row (you're welcome).  

Of course our TZA, SDS and SQQQ hedges (also discussed in yesterday's post but from the 4th) are all doing great, of course - and it looks like they'll be doing even better today as the Futures indicate down another 1%.  The good news is though, that we can still use the bounce lines we predicted for you way back on Aug 26th - just after the last crash - using our Fabulous 5% Rule™.  Those lines are:

• 
  Dow 16,200 (weak) and 16,650 (strong) 
  


• 
  S&P 1,900 (weak) and 1,950 (strong) 
  


• 
  Nasdaq 4,550 (weak) and 4,700 (strong)
  


• 
  NYSE 10,050 (weak) and 10,300 (strong)
  


• 
  Russell 1,130 (weak) and 1,160 (strong). 
  

See - nothing to worry about so far.  We're just testing those strong bounce lines (colors include futures moves) and, if they hold up - it's actually a healthy test and we may be inclined to do some more buying.  If the S&P, Nasdaq and Russell join the others in failure, however - look out below!  

It's already DOOM!!! on Germany's DAX as they fail to hold the 10,000 line (see "Monday Market Movement – DAX Incredible!" and "Testy Tuesday – German Investor Confidence Crashes with the DAX") because the other time they failed it was August 24th - and that was a bad, BAD thing.  

Unless the DAX can get back over 10,000, it would be foolish to expect any better from our indexes but it is a Quad Witching Day for options and futures contracts (they all expire), so CRAZY things can happen (aside from the 1% pre-market drop).  We'll have to keep on our toes and go with the flow but we pulled a perfect Jenga play in our Option Opportunities Portfolio yesterday and cashed in the winning leg of our Dow ETF (DIA) spread and left the short calls - turning our portfolio instantly bearish right at the top and protecting our 10% gains on day 40.  

Europe is down 2.5% heading into their afternoon and we have to deal with them until 11:30 but, after that, I think "THEY" will try to prop the markets back up as best they can to engineer a not so terrible close.  The Dow, in fact, is the best bet for a bounce on the EU close because it has Apple (AAPL) in it as well as other stocks that are well priced at 16,350 so /YM Futures are fun to poke at down there (and S&P, /ES Futures over the 1,950 line, but very tight stops, of course, as we may have a major meltdown on our hands.  In fact, 1,950 can be a shorting line below too!) and we may flip our Option Opportunities Portfolio long - or at least back to neutral, from that level (adding a less aggressive hedge into the weekend).  

That's our plan and I'd love to say we're sticking to it, but not likely on a quad-witching Friday - we'll have to play it by ear in our Live Member Chat Room!  

 

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This post was co-authored with Omri Stern and originally appeared in Harvard Business Review.

Israel has been branded the "startup nation." For good reason: A tiny country of only 8 million people -- 0.1% of the world's population -- has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any country in the world save the United States and China. Frequently cited as one of the world's most vibrant innovation hubs, Israel boasts more startups per capita than any other country in the world.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Israeli startups are struggling to scale. Only a handful of so-called unicorns -- companies that have achieved a valuation of over $1 billion in the last 10 years -- come from Israel, and only one Israeli firm, Teva, ranks in the world's 500 largest companies by market capitalization. As a result, tech-sector employment has declined as a percent of the workforce, from 11% in 2006-2008 to 9% in 2013. That's disappointing for a country with so much potential. But is all of that changing? Are Israeli companies on the verge of developing a repeatable playbook to scale their companies and become market leaders, not just acquisition fodder for the Silicon Valley giants?

We think so.

Decades ago, the thesis of Yossi Vardi, a prolific technology entrepreneur who has invested in 75 Israeli startups, was that Israeli entrepreneurs should seek quick exit opportunities through global corporations interested in buying a window into Israeli talent and technology. Today, this thesis is less relevant. For the first time in history there are Israeli companies scaling up successfully as global market leaders, and the ecosystem is evolving to support them. Indeed, the pattern of scaling seems to be changing meaningfully in recent years. In 2014, for example, 18 IPOs raised a record-breaking $9.8 billion, compared to just $1.2 billion in 2013.

So how do Israeli ventures scale up? What are the challenges and lessons of scaling up? To answer these questions, we built a database of 112 Israeli companies founded between 1996 and 2013 that have met or exceeded $20 million in revenue. We selected this benchmark because it reflects the phase in which companies have proven product viability, achieved initial product/market fit, and are now expanding sales and growing more complex operations. We also interviewed over two dozen Israeli entrepreneurs and the investors from these companies -- the leading thinkers in the region -- to determine the playbook that these startups are executing in order to scale.

Here's what the data say about Israeli startups:

They're Israeli-run but with global footprints. Eighty-two percent have global offices, and yet 91% are still run by Israeli CEOs, as opposed to foreign executives hired from the outside.

American VCs are critical. Ninety-one percent of the firms have received funding from foreign (mainly American) VCs.

The founders have started companies before. Sixty-three percent of startups currently scaling up are run by Israeli entrepreneurs with prior founding experience.

This evolving model is being supported and encouraged by the local Israeli VCs. According to Izhar Shay, a general partner at Canaan Partners, "The investment community has matured to recognize they need to plan for scale. They are seeking to build companies so that they are attractive to late-stage funds." And the late-stage global funds are swarming in, from Accel to KKR to Li Kai-Shing's Horizon Ventures.

This post outlines some of these patterns, seeks to characterize them, and draws out patterns in the data.

Pack Your Bags Early.

Despite hosting a rich startup ecosystem, Israel is simply too small a country for entrepreneurs seeking to build big companies. As a result, Israeli entrepreneurs need to begin immediately thinking outside of Israel since their primary market is often the U.S. The common approach is to incubate the business locally in Israel with a small development team, prove early product/market fit, and then build a sales and marketing organization abroad, usually in the U.S. In the old model of Israeli startups, many Israeli executive teams would hire a vice president of sales in the U.S. to assist with the local go-to-market approach. More recently, Israeli founders are themselves moving to the U.S. to build the satellite office and to personally oversee the recruitment and management of American executives who can lead the sales and marketing efforts.

However, waiting to move to the U.S. until the late-stage go-to-market phase may be too late. All of the risks inherent in launching a startup are exacerbated by the geographic distance between Israel and the U.S. Hiring talent and gathering customer feedback are even harder when teams are so physically far apart, and this separation can make it harder to build culture, forge partnerships, and raise capital.

So how early should the founders pack their bags and ship out to the U.S.? Our analysis and interviews suggest the prevailing wisdom has shifted toward a simple answer: as early as possible. Although the technical team often remains in Israel, many of the executives interviewed recommend departing for the U.S. as early as a year or two after founding. A move allows the business to get close to the customer, learn their pain points, and adapt accordingly. Understanding the market and establishing product/market fit is a critical seed-stage milestone.

When Udi Mokady and Alon Cohen launched CyberArk -- the darling of the cybersecurity industry, with a market capitalization of nearly $2 billion -- the founders abandoned the local strategy early on. "We began selling to local Israeli companies but had a strong feeling we were developing a product and go-to-market strategy that was missing the larger opportunity," said Mokady. As soon as CyberArk raised Series A funding, they set up a U.S. headquarters, in Massachusetts, to immerse the team in the American market. "At the time, moving close to the market was not a given, and venture capitalists did not have a clear playbook. Nowadays the argument is very clear."

Similarly, when Yaron Samid launched BillGuard, his team debated whether to build an enterprise or a consumer company. One-and-a-half years after founding the company, Yaron moved to New York and discovered that consumers, rather than banks, were the primary customer of BillGuard's service, which helps customers identify fraudulent credit card charges. With the development team based in Israel, Samid shuttles between New York and Tel Aviv, where he shares weekly insights garnered from conversations with partners, consumers, and investors in the market. Viewing this as the typical challenge of running a global company, Samid believes there is no substitute for the learning that comes from being close to the market.

The second reason to move early is to hire the absolute best sales and marketing talent. Again and again, the most challenging issue we heard about from entrepreneurs and investors is finding and retaining exceptional talent, a problem exacerbated by geographical and cultural distance. According to Modi Rosen, general partner of Magma Ventures, "The challenge of scaling is primarily in hiring for the sales and marketing front. Having the founder [locally] present for this process can be the difference between success and failure." Companies should strengthen the Israeli management team with local talent who understand how to define the market, how to sell into it, and how to gather feedback. Furthermore, companies need particular executives to serve as the primary liaison between the sales and marketing team in the U.S. and the development team in Israel. There are many Israeli professionals who have worked in the U.S. and have gained management experience at large organizations such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. There are also American executives who have experience working with startups with R&D in India, China, and Israel. Both cohorts can bridge cultural and geographical gaps.

In CyberArk's case, Mokady admits the team faced major challenges in hiring talented and seasoned American executives. "We had a rough start," he says. "As an unknown Israeli company breaking in to the U.S. market, we were not able to attract A-rated sales and marketing professionals. It took some time to gain momentum and learn how to attract local talent."

One of the key lessons CyberArk learned is to partner with VCs in order to source top talent. Mokady believes that partnering with a Boston-based VC would have helped CyberArk address its talent problems more effectively because the VC would have vouched for the company. With that said, the founding team had big dreams of becoming a global company from the beginning. Although their investors were not local, CyberArk still benefitted by partnering with foreign VCs that helped them make the leap from Israel to the U.S.

Think Bigger.

This takeaway surprised us. After all, Israeli entrepreneurs are known to be tenacious and eager to tackle complex technological and entrepreneurial challenges. However, in our interviews with Israeli venture capitalists, we learned that around the board room, Israeli entrepreneurs tend to become overly preoccupied with the product and core technology. This fixation generates a short-term view on the potential of the venture to expand beyond the immediate product line. Of course, almost all entrepreneurs are preoccupied with near-term priorities, but our interviews uncovered a pattern of Israeli companies putting too much focus on the product at the expense of building a broad vision for growth, even after achieving product/market fit.

Scaling up begins with thinking about how you build a bigger story and a bigger vision once the company is expanding. Alan Feld, cofounder and managing partner of Vintage Partners, cautions Israeli entrepreneurs not to define their product category too narrowly. "The big idea is to think as a potential industry leader rather than a one-product company. Think of where you want to be in five years and begin building a product pipeline to get there." For Netanel Oded, of Israel's National Economic Council, the critique is more poignant: "In Israel, nobody is saying 'I'm going to completely disrupt transportation.' Israeli entrepreneurs are first and foremost focused on applying technology to create a business, not necessarily on disrupting big markets through the use of technology." This subtle difference risks limiting the scope of the opportunities Israeli entrepreneurs are chasing.

Once startups begin to scale up, founders need to ask long-term strategic questions such as: How do I support growth in human capital? How do I strengthen my market position through acquisitions and innovation? How do I prove the unit economics to justify raising a growth round that will let me expand more rapidly? These are also questions that will concern late-stage investors who provide the companies the opportunities to scale and, eventually, go public.

Partner with Foreign VCs

Israeli entrepreneurs are becoming more focused on getting foreign (mostly American) VC partners in the early stages to help them pursue these opportunities from the onset. American VCs have a significantly wider network and have a capability to access management talent, data, partners, and customers to help a company scale. American VCs think about scale from the start, because their large fund sizes necessitate bigger returns. They spend more time on strategy, go-to-market, business development, and financing.

The data reveal how dramatically foreign investors impact the growth of Israeli companies, as measured by annual sales and number of employees. Israeli companies funded solely by foreign investors generated more growth than those funded by both Israeli and foreign VCs and significantly more growth than companies funded by Israeli investors alone. (One caveat: This may not point to causation, as some investors are better than others at picking rapidly-growing companies.)



But American VC partners might not always be the right choice, especially in the earliest stages. Many entrepreneurs and investors argue that Israeli VCs are more frugal and that this discipline is an important early attribute for startups. According to Ori Israely, investor and former general partner of Giza Venture Capital, "There is more fit between [an] Israeli entrepreneur and [an] Israeli investor in the seed stages. Israeli funds often know how to work better with the early stage companies because they provide efficient capital, not necessarily more capital." Israeli VCs seek to invest relatively smaller amounts--not to squeeze out the entrepreneurs, but to help them be more efficient in the early stages.

The extra runway from an American VC can come with strings attached. Once entrepreneurs bring in an American VC that typically invests at higher valuations, there is greater pressure to hit bigger milestones, move to the U.S., and pursue larger outcomes. So the decision on when to bring on an American VC is an important and strategic one.

Lead Your Company to Scale.

A decade ago, the traditional model for building up Israeli companies was to hire an American CEO. Our interviews and analysis suggest that this model failed. Today, companies reaching scale are run by Israeli founders and/or Israeli CEOs. Studying the liquidity events of Israeli firms valued over $150 million, Vintage Partners found that 81% were run by Israeli founders, while half of the remaining 19% were run by professional CEOs who were Israeli. In short, Israeli entrepreneurs are leading their companies to scale.

This conclusion is an interesting one. On one hand, Israelis need to continue to lead their companies to scale effectively. On the other hand, they need to attract foreign VCs to help them do so -- typically by moving to the U.S. and recruiting a U.S.-based executive team.

So how can Israeli entrepreneurs effectively lead their organization to scale? Our interviews suggest Israeli founders have worked hard to mitigate the risks associated with a move to the U.S., developing techniques to effectively manage distributed teams and cut through cultural barriers:

Focus on culture from day one. Startups are incredibly fluid early on, and these early days are critical to building teams that can communicate and function effectively in geographically distributed circumstances. Over the course of 2-3 years, the product, the value proposition, and the competition will change dramatically. Yahal Zilka, of Magma Ventures, emphasizes that for the company to be aligned in multiple locations and react effectively to rapidly changing circumstances, employees need to develop a culture of trust and respect that transcends continents.

Place one founder on each continent. If the founding team contains more than one person, an effective formula that we've witnessed is placing one founder in Israel and one abroad, where he or she will recruit the management team. Typically, these founders know each other very well, have a deep mutual trust and respect, and can communicate seamlessly, often from years of serving in the military together. Alon Cohen, cofounder and former CEO of CyberArk, moved the company headquarters to Dedham, Massachusetts, just one year after founding in Israel. Cohen said that moving the headquarters to the United States had been talked about for some time after the company was founded, in 1999. Shortly after the move, the company hired 25-30 people in the U.S. while maintaining R&D in Israel. Fifteen years later, CyberArk employs more than 500 individuals worldwide and serves more than 1,800 customers, including 40% of Fortune 100 companies.

Get a mentor with a solid track record. It may sound obvious, but unlike in Silicon Valley, there are not many entrepreneurs from Israel who have built unicorn-sized companies. "Over the growth stages in particular, Israeli entrepreneurs need access to mentors that can deliver contextual insights and ask tough questions about scaling up in the United States," says Dror Berman, of Innovation Endeavors. The mentors who serve this role in the U.S. know how the entrepreneurial game is played, know the relevant growth-stage investors and investment bankers, and are adept at navigating exits at different stages. There are also more institutions and infrastructure for training managers, such as MBA programs, executive education, and certification programs. Most Israeli entrepreneurs have not been through this whole cycle at scale. Those that have are gold.

Israeli entrepreneurs are influenced by the success stories of their past. From 1995-2010, the Israeli startup ecosystem was not focused on creating big companies. Things have changed dramatically in the past two decades. What was once the story of ICQ's $287 million exit to AOL is now the story of MobileEye's NYSE IPO and $12 billion market capitalization. Years from now, Waze's $1 billion sale to Google may look like merely a solid outcome, rather than the canonical case study of Israeli entrepreneurship that it is today.

It is time for more Israeli entrepreneurs to swing for the fences. Building big companies means Israeli entrepreneurs should pack their bags and move to a large market early, partner with American VCs, continue to lead the company through the mid-to-late stages, and focus on building a culture.

In our data set, we found over 100 companies that have the potential to become unicorns and decacorns. We look forward to watching that list grow and evolve.

Many thanks to all those interviewed as well as Walter Frick for his help in editing.

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"Each of us must be better off as one of us."

If you are negotiating with me in good faith, you must believe that you can do better with me than on your own. If I'm negotiating with you in good faith, I must believe that I can do better with you than on my own. Putting these two beliefs together, each one of us must believe that we can create sufficient value together to share it in a way that each of us is better off as part of a collaborative effort than as an isolated individual. In other words, we can do something together that makes each one of us happier than we would have been by ourselves.

We could be wrong. Until we explore our options, we can't tell for sure if our beliefs are warranted. It may be that we can't create that much value together, or that we can create it but we can't split it in a way that makes each one of us better off than he or she would have been by him or herself. In that case, it's best to finish the negotiation "agreeing to disengage." In that case, each one of us can implement the best possible course of action for him or herself that does not involve the collaboration of the other party.

The boundaries for every rational negotiation are, thus, the best alternative each party has to a negotiated agreement, or its BATNA.

Your BATNA is the worst possible outcome to which you would agree in a negotiation. Anything worse than that, you'd prefer to walk away. For example, if you are negotiating with a potential buyer, your BATNA is to keep your product and sell it to the next best offer. If you are negotiating with a potential seller, your BATNA is to keep your money and buy it from the next best offer. If you are negotiating with a potential employer, your BATNA is to not take the job and work somewhere else. If you're negotiating with a potential employee, your BATNA is to not offer him the job and hire someone else.

Consider the example of the previous post where two of my kids are arguing about how to split a cookie. The negotiation will be very different depending on what each of them believes will be the case if they don't agree. For example, if Tomás (Sophie) thinks that in a case of disagreement he (she) gets to keep the whole cookie (BATNA = 1), it's very unlikely that they will ever agree. If they both know that unless they agree I will take the cookie away (BATNA = 0), it's very likely that they will agree.

Never Negotiate Without It

By discovering your BATNA, you clarify the lower boundary of your negotiation space. It gives you confidence because it lets you know what value you can guarantee for yourself even in the no-agreement scenario.

One of the most useful things you can do in preparing to negotiate is to take action to improve your BATNA. For example, negotiating the sale of your house when your alternative is to be foreclosed by the bank is very different from when you have the financial means to carry the loan, or better yet, an offer from a potential buyer that guarantees that you will get a price above your original investment.

Your BATNA is not a given. You can work to improve it. For example, before you apply for a job at a particular company, you can acquire skills that make you more appealing to other employers. If the market salary of an unskilled worker is twenty dollars an hour, and the one of a skilled worker is thirty, you can raise your "minimum wage" from the former to the latter through your educational investment. There is nothing more self-empowering than doing one's homework and entering a negotiation with a high BATNA.

In this video you will find out more about why you should never negotiate without discovering and developing your BATNA.



Readers: Take a negotiation you must conduct and consider your BATNA. Is there something you can do before negotiating that would improve this value for you? What do you think is your counterpart's BATNA? What could you offer that would make him (and you) better off?



Fred Kofman, Ph.D. in Economics, is Vice President at Linkedin. This post is part 2.1. of Linkedin's Conscious Business Program. You can find the introduction and structure of this program here. To stay connected and get updates join our LinkedIn Group: Conscious Business Friends.

You can Follow Fred Kofman on LinkedInhere.

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