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E2E: Scale

Advice for Entrepreneurs on Board Management: Mind the Information Gap

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on March 28, 2018 where Michael Smerklo is a regular contributor.

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on March 28, 2018 where Michael Smerklo is a regular contributor.

When you’re a CEO, you have countless things to do every day. You are always pressed for time, you’re being pulled in a million different directions and you’re hyper-focused on growth. So you have to prioritize these never-ending tasks, and it’s only natural that tasks with *seemingly* little value-add get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. Frankly, that’s how I used to feel about my Board of Directors.

I felt it was a ‘necessary evil’ of my new gig as CEO: one that I knew I had to eventually deal with, but felt wasn’t going to be instrumental in helping my company. I didn’t get much insight from them when we met so why should I dedicate any of my already-sparse time investing in a relationship with them, right? Wrong. I was very wrong.

Michael Smerklo, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures

One, simple conversation with a mentor led me to realize that a Board can be the pivotal difference between success and failure during your entrepreneurial journey. You will be tempted to de-prioritize your Board in lieu of other initiatives that seem more important, and frankly are more enjoyable. Resist that temptation. You just have to take a step back and learn how to handle them and their expertise in the context of you and your company’s goals.

Before I divulge the conversation that changed my perspective on my Board, let me assure I was making classic “Founder moving to CEO” mistake.

For the first few years I was running my company, I didn’t really engage my Board in a strategic manner and kept most of the meetings high-level – making sure that I had every question answered before I even walked into the boardroom. I would fill my Board decks with pages of details on topics I knew I felt were solid, preventing any sort of critical discussion from materializing.

I wasn’t trying to hide anything, I just wanted to ‘check the box’ of my Board meeting as quickly and painlessly as possible because I didn’t understand how to get much from them – individually or collectively. I was treating my Board as an overlord that needed management instead of an arrow in my leadership quiver, and my frustration grew after every Board meeting when I realized these meetings were often interesting, but never compelling.

Although the change in how I approached my Board did not happen overnight, I owe a debt of gratitude to one of my best Board members, Bruce Dunlevie, founding partner of Benchmark Capital, the preeminent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Bruce could see what was happening from a mile away – he had seen so many other entrepreneurs fall into this trap – and he could empathize with me and my effort to deal with a powerful Board.

So after one particularly frustrating meeting, he pulled me aside and asked me one critical question that changed how I viewed my relationship with my Board by focusing on what I now call the: ‘Entrepreneur-Board Information Gap.’ He asked:

“Mike, does anyone on the Board know as much as you do about your business? Seriously – how big is the gap between what you know about the operations versus what the Board even understands about the business. Have you taken this gap into consideration when building the Board agenda and supporting materials?”

As I reflected on this question – keep in mind, reflecting on questions like these is not a natural exercise for most entrepreneurs – I quickly noted that I spent at MINIMUM 80 hours a WEEK thinking about my business, while my average Board member thought about the same topic for AT MOST 40 hours a YEAR. This is a HUGE discrepancy, and noticing this delta – this gap – is probably the most important realization for any entrepreneur managing their relationship with their Board, setting an appropriate agenda or building a compelling Board deck.

Simply put, the biggest mistake most entrepreneurs make when working with their Board is not minding the information gap – the Entrepreneur-Board Information Gap, let’s call it ‘EBIG.’

The EBIG dictates one, simple rule: don’t attempt to get your Board up to the same level of understanding as yours, rather, use this information gap to your advantage. That is, being aware of the EBIG and how to leverage it becomes the key to turning your Board into one more arrow in your quiver that will help you build an amazing business.

One specific way that minding the EBIG changed my approach to my Board was learning to strike a balance in my Board materials that was a good mix of key operational updates and open-ended strategic discussion. You will be amazed at how much you can get out of your Board in short order when you stop spending all your time trying to get them up to speed, or wasting time prepping abundant Powerpoint slides in an attempt to answer every question in advance of the meeting.

READ MORE FORBES CONTENT HERE

For instance, I used to spend 90 minutes of a four-hour Board meeting – and hours of prepping the meeting – providing an ‘executive summary’ of the current state of operations of my global business. I thought: How could they really give me any feedback if they didn’t thoroughly understand the state of the business that I worked with every day? But then I thought of the EBIG.

My Board of seasoned executives wasn’t there to dive into the details of the operations. That was a waste of their valuable time, and a waste of mine. They didn’t need those details to understand the big picture of the business and provide me with the high-level insights I was desperately seeking.

Instead, after Bruce’s invaluable feedback and direction, I modified my typical 15-page ‘executive summary’ down to one slide. This slide had three sections: 1) What’s Working, 2) What’s Not Working and 3) Implications (of both). This one-page slide served as the springboard for repeatable, meaningful and open-ended Board discussions thereafter.

So no matter how busy you get, or how much is on your plate as a CEO and an entrepreneur, remember that working with your Board is a non-negotiable part of your job description and a necessary component to making your company successful. So don’t resist their feedback. Instead, take a step back, reflect on where you could use input and present it in a way to make that easy – or as I like to say: mind the EBIG.

Bruce Dunlevie

Building these types of judgment-free relationships is an endeavor that lasts a lifetime, and like any good relationship, having a strong network takes upkeep. It’s an active exercise, not a passive one. Just as you evolve as an entrepreneur, your mentorship circle should evolve as your business and personal needs change.

For example, when I was first getting started, it was critical for me to get advice from those who were highly engaged in startups and understood all the key issues that getting a business off the ground entails. Simple suggestions about hiring, board meeting agendas or what payroll systems work best all helped me avoid mistakes others had already made and also saved me countless hours.

However, when my company was a more mature and I was working to shift my business model, I proactively shifted my mentorship circle.

Whenever I am fortunate enough to retire and look back at the ups and downs of my career, I am going to have a lot of thank you notes to write. Without my mentors, it wouldn’t have just been a dealbreaker for some investors I met along the way, it would have been a dealbreaker for my career. So do some self-reflection, check your pride at the door and seek out those who will be able to make you a better entrepreneur, and a better person. It is the weak leader who believe they need to do it all themselves.

For instance, Ben’s advice on hiring was critical to me when I was going through the startup phase and hiring the first 50 employees. However, the ‘critical’ input I needed running a 3,000 person, publicly traded business was much different. I found myself needing to recalibrate my mentorship network. So I—once again—made sure my humility was still fully intact and proactively sought out seasoned, C-suite executives to help guide me through this new phase of my career.

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E2E: Scale

To Avoid An Entrepreneur’s Biggest Dealbreaker, Find A Mentor

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on December 5, 2017 where Michael Smerklo is a regular contributor.

Entrepreneurs walking into a meeting with potential investors are usually armed to the teeth with data points about their business idea. Looking to avoid investors’ dealbreakers, most spend hours prepping for questions about their competitors and the market size for their product.

However, when entrepreneurs sit down with me to talk about investing, I ask them two seemingly unusual questions that can make or break my decision:

‘Can you tell me what mentors you have now? How do you lean on these relationships to help solve any key problem you are facing?’

Why hang so much on a question that has nothing to do with a business model? Because unlike any other profession, being an entrepreneur means fully committing to the successes and failures of an enterprise. The roller coaster of emotions that an entrepreneur faces is staggering. There are extreme highs that bring moments of euphoria and excitement, followed quickly by extreme lows—often in the same day—that breed crippling self-doubt.

Michael Smerklo, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures

It is a heavy, heavy burden and one that you should not bear on your own. In order to not only be able to pick yourself up after these roadblocks, but to move on constructively, you must have one simple thing: a mentor. There is no way around it.

It could be a loss of a major customer, a new unexpected competitor or an unfortunate series of poor judgment calls that can short circuit your confidence and leave you questioning your ability to remain as captain of the ship. Mentors give you the context, guidance and support you need when you may not know how to move forward. Without them, you are blindly riding the roller coaster instead of using the latest GPS technology to navigate the best path.

Now I have to admit, acknowledging I needed to curate a support system to give me guidance during these troubling times in my own entrepreneurial journey was one moment of realization. But being able to actually swallow my pride, ask peers for help and incorporate their advice into my business practices was a whole different obstacle to overcome.

Soliciting this type of help is not a weakness, it is a strength. Pride has no place when it comes to building your mentor-mentee relationships.

I remember early on in my career I took my first operating role with a then-unknown CEO named Ben Horowitz. I was tasked with hiring team members and was frustrated with how many interviews my star candidates were forced to go through just to get an offer. I had always thought I was great at spotting talent and didn’t understand why I was unable to get handle on the hiring process. So I complained to Ben—loudly, as usual—about this seemingly unnecessarily elongated exercise. I will never forget his response. He had seen the culture get eroded at Netscape by a failed hiring process and he was committed not to repeat it, he told me: ‘The first 10 employees are key, they hire the next 50 employees. And once that is done, the culture of the organization is largely set. That is why we are so focused on making sure we all hire great employees from the start.’

That type of advice from a mentor is invaluable and was incredibly important to me not just when I first heard it, but also a few years later when I was starting out as a first-time CEO. But taking that advice meant I had to step back, swallow my pride and recognize how little I knew about building a culture and an organization. Once you have your first powerful mentor-mentee moment like this, it becomes easier to see the value of these relationships.

So now that you’ve realized you need a mentor and you are willing to be open about your self-doubt, now what? Picking an effective mentor requires just as much self-reflection.

There are three things you should look for when tracking down a mentor:

  • Somebody who knows you and understands how you think
  • Somebody who understands the subject matter that you are dealing with
  • Somebody who has the wherewithal to give you objective advice

A mentor that encompasses these three attributes will be able to help you get to the root of the issue, empower you to regain your courage and equip you with tools to go back to doing what you do best: building an outstanding business.

Once I realized that I needed to be on the lookout for mentors like these, I naturally became more enthusiastic, self-aware and open to networking. Sure, I proactively sought out these relationships at industry events or through my existing network, but as I humbled myself and opened up to the idea of asking for help, these beneficial relationships also began to happen organically. It’s not just about blindly asking people on LinkedIn for coffee, it’s about approaching people with as much thoughtfulness and consideration as you would potential investors for your dream business.

As my mentorship network grew, I realized that each mentor offered me a different perspective and that the more data points I had, the clearer my vision was of how to move forward.

That’s why having one mentor is necessary, but having half a dozen is fantastic.

READ MORE FORBES CONTENT HERE

Building these types of judgment-free relationships is an endeavor that lasts a lifetime, and like any good relationship, having a strong network takes upkeep. It’s an active exercise, not a passive one. Just as you evolve as an entrepreneur, your mentorship circle should evolve as your business and personal needs change.

For example, when I was first getting started, it was critical for me to get advice from those who were highly engaged in startups and understood all the key issues that getting a business off the ground entails. Simple suggestions about hiring, board meeting agendas or what payroll systems work best all helped me avoid mistakes others had already made and also saved me countless hours.

However, when my company was a more mature and I was working to shift my business model, I proactively shifted my mentorship circle.

For instance, Ben’s advice on hiring was critical to me when I was going through the startup phase and hiring the first 50 employees. However, the ‘critical’ input I needed running a 3,000 person, publicly traded business was much different. I found myself needing to recalibrate my mentorship network. So I—once again—made sure my humility was still fully intact and proactively sought out seasoned, C-suite executives to help guide me through this new phase of my career.

Whenever I am fortunate enough to retire and look back at the ups and downs of my career, I am going to have a lot of thank you notes to write. Without my mentors, it wouldn’t have just been a dealbreaker for some investors I met along the way, it would have been a dealbreaker for my career. So do some self-reflection, check your pride at the door and seek out those who will be able to make you a better entrepreneur, and a better person. It is the weak leader who believe they need to do it all themselves.

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E2E: Scale

Know Thyself, Know Thy Leader: Steps To Hiring A Successful Sales Leader

Michael Smerklo

Many parts of scaling a business are about the basics, the time-honored fundamentals that CEOs have used time and time again to grow a company. These pillars of running a successful business rarely warrant exceptions, but there are some business functions that require a leader to develop their own formula for success — unique to their product and unique to their company culture.

This is especially true when it comes to picking a sales leader.

Take it from a former CEO that has lived the pain of this personally: Sales excellence and hiring great sales leadership is the most important determinant of success for a high-growth company looking to scale.

Unlike like other business initiatives — such as choosing a CRM system or designing the company’s web site — hiring a sales leader does not allow for a generic, one-size-fits-all formula. Rather, it is a unique learning process, one that each CEO must sit down and take an introspective look at to develop — and then learn to repeat. When approaching a complex business problem like this, the key is to peel back the layers to get to ‘first principles.’ From there, you can build a great business with the right leader for your specific sales process at the helm.

Along my entrepreneurial journey, I made a ton of mistakes with this challenge before finally nailing down the formula that led to a successful, scalable solution for finding my head of sales. Let me save you from making the same mistakes by sharing those growing pains.

At first, I did what most first-time CEOs do with sales hiring — I assumed that the only thing I needed to do was “hire the right Head of Sales”.

I was convinced that scaling the sales function was entirely dependant on making a great leadership hire so that is what i focused all of my energy on. And because I never hired a Head of Sales before, I relegated my interview process to time honored sales attributes — chronological resume review and basic questions about historical results and quota obtainment. This formula led me to fall in love with candidates that fit into a quintessential salesperson mold. Alas, I was dumbfounded when these great-on-paper hires failed at selling our software.

A prime example of this was the very first vice president of sales I hired — let’s call him Fred. Fred was one of the best interviewees I had ever met. He had long track record of sales success, extolled wisdoms about sale processes and swore up and down that he would hire an amazing team of ‘his guys’ that would drive us to sales greatness.

Well, Fred failed to sell anything, and his sales team of Fred carbon copies failed to sell anything either. So I fired him and found that not only had my business not scaled from a year earlier, I had actually gone backwards. So what went wrong?

It turns out I didn’t really understand my own customers’ buying process at all. Don’t get me wrong, I was deeply involved with our customers and understood our value proposition cold. But Fred never stood a chance because I hadn’t done my own objective research on what it would take to build a repeatable, scalable sales process of our unique ‘buyer’s journey’ for the organization.

How was a sales leader supposed to optimize the sales process when we didn’t even understand what our sales process was — and what it wasn’t?

This realization brings me to the first step of this process. And step one, like most business challenges for young CEOs, starts with stepping back and reflecting. Reflecting on what is truly unique about your business and the needs of your customers.

Start with simply determining how you are winning at sales. You do that by looking at the very end — the closing of the sale — and working your way backward. Ask yourself some basic questions about your product, who closes the sale, and how they got there. If you, as CEO, are heavily involved in sales, what do you specifically do in the process to help close the sale? Are you selling a transactional, high volume solution or a large, complex enterprise product? What attributes of your solution matter most: ease of implementation, financial benefits or cutting-edge technology?

Essentially: think about what makes the ultimate buyer say ‘yes,’ and painstakingly map out every step of the process from there.

An integral part of guiding this mapping exercise entails looking at your very best sales leaders and spending time understanding what they do to be successful. Is the sales leader enlisting a team with scrappy, cold-calling tactics or is it interconnected industry veterans that are networking their way into a sale? Is depth of product or industry knowledge key to sales success, or is it more important to build compelling financial models to win the day? Nailing down these sales leaders’ strategies is when your unique formula starts to take shape.

The next step gives your formula its teeth, it does this by taking the proven sales process and mapping out what attributes are needed in a head salesperson for them to be successful — and to a lead a team that will be equally as successful.

Identify the repeatable techniques and personality traits of the sales representatives that allows them to win at selling your product. Only then can you begin building a recruiting, hiring and training program that is tailored specifically to test for these attributes in a sales leader. This is crucial, because many CEOs try and clone the first principles that the sales process and your company culture rely on. However, it is cloning the attributes and techniquesthat nourish those first principles that allow your sales leadership thrive with your specific process.

For instance, looking back at my mistake at hiring Fred, it was clear I didn’t really know why and how we were winning sales with our product. I hadn’t mapped out the attributes necessary to make our sales leader successful in our particular brand of sales. So how in the heck was good-on-paper Fred supposed to come in and champion a sales process we didn’t even understand?

When analyzing what your optimal ‘Fred’ is like, it can be just as important to know which attributes you don’t want as it is to know which attributes you do want in a sales leader. There are many ways to vet these potential executives to see if they have the personality, techniques and experience to succeed in your particular formula for proven-sales glory. We liked a case-method of interviewing, but there are others like personality assessments or role playing sales scenarios that can force interviewees out of their classic salesman routines and into your specific buying process.

Once you have decided on an interview process and appointed a successful leader, be sure to track your sales leader and their team’s success over a six, twelve and eighteen-month period. Make sure that the formula you invested so much time, energy and hard work into is still getting it right. As market conditions shift, you may need to develop a formula 2.0, but as long as you are committed to understanding the unique ways the sales team works with your product, there is no reason you can’t consistently have a thriving sales leader at the helm.

Don’t cut corners with this seemingly tedious and elongated plan — and don’t assume that scaling sales is all about making one great hire.

Getting sales right is the key to taking your idea, dream or emerging growth to the next level. Only by knowing thy self will you be able to know thy sales leader when you see them.

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E2E: Scale

The 3 Mistakes I Made Learning To Manage Time

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com on January 4, 2018 where Michael Smerklo is a regular contributor.

As a CEO, smart time management is critical to success. Let me tell you a dirty little secret: It doesn’t always come naturally, especially to entrepreneurs that become executives.

When I was just starting out as an executive, I found myself struggling with a seemingly infinite to-do list and not enough hours in the day to get everything done. I was determined to break the cycle. With practice, self-awareness and a few strategic adaptations, I learned how to correct what used to be my biggest time management mistakes:

Mike Smerklo, co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures

1. Wanting to spend time doing what I’m good at, when I should have been delegating.

By definition, CEOs are doers. We are committed to our company’s core purpose and are ready to work hard to advance our goals. It excites us, it invigorates us and it imbues us with a hero’s mentality: the idea that we are the only one that can bring the necessary experience and the perspective to successfully complete a task. And we’re willing to work ourselves ragged to do it.

For example, when it came to going on sales calls, I always found myself ready to jump on a plane to fly across the country to attend a sales meeting. I liked them, I was energized by them, and I felt like I was adding value to the company. After some reflection, though, I realized that just because I have that skill doesn’t mean that others don’t. I was spending a ton of time doing something that in most cases, I could have delegated to a trusted, qualified employee. My own time could be better spent elsewhere.

Now, I focus on tasks that I am uniquely qualified to do. When my instinct is to say yes to yet another commitment, I stop and question myself to determine whether it is simply something I enjoy, or whether there is someone else who is equally skilled for the job. It also means knowing when to say no, even when you may disappoint someone – or yourself.

2. Staying busy instead of staying effective.

It is easy to fall into ‘the busy trap,’ as described by Tim Kreider in his article for the New York Times. It’s where we run around talking about how busy we are, but not really putting a lot of thought into where all of our time is going and why. The temptation here is clear: as long as we’re always doing something, no matter what that something may be, we can tell ourselves that we are productive. We find comfort that we can pat ourselves on the back for ticking boxes off of our seemingly never-ending checklist.

Photo courtesy of Steve Buissinne, Pixabay.

But what if we’re ticking off the wrong boxes? Staying busy doesn’t necessarily make us productive, and it certainly doesn’t mean we’re being effective. It usually just drives us to chase tasks that are easily within reach instead of the ones that are most important.

I often used to find myself seeking that rush of instant gratification, so I’d send yet another e-mail or even decide to fly and visit some small customer just to feel like I was getting something done, even if it wasn’t necessarily the most important priority.

Lately, I’ve been able to overcome that urge for immediacy by starting my day meditating for 20 minutes. This practice allows me to clarify my thoughts and helps me to take a step back away from the hustle and bustle. After meditating, while I’m still in a clear state of mind, I write down the two or three most important things that I want to get accomplished for the day. This helps to hold me accountable, making sure that I don’t trick my mind into believing I’m productive when I’m really just busy.

READ MORE OF OUR E2E CONTENT ON TIME MANAGEMENT

3. Using procrastination to avoid tasks I didn’t like.

Even after I started sticking to my carefully crafted list of the most critical tasks to accomplish, I found that the task that I was most dreading somehow always made its way to the bottom. I’d start with the easiest or most comfortable task, and save the most uncomfortable one for last.

Sometimes, it was something I was good at, but didn’t particularly enjoy. Like budgeting, for instance. Other times, it was something that I didn’t want to face, like firing an employee who I liked, but who wasn’t producing. Either way, I realized that there’s a thin line between sensibly putting something off and procrastinating, and that I was often guilty of the latter.

I discovered a two-step process to help me overcome my own delaying tactics. First, I began to rank-order my list in terms of priority and made myself tackle the tasks in order. If something was at the top, I had to suck it up and get it done. I wouldn’t let myself make excuses. If for some reason I decided that it wasn’t suitable for me to be the one to execute one of the tasks at hand – see mistake number one – I could then make the decision to delegate. Either way, my habit now revolves around not letting myself move on without addressing the task at hand.

Time is money, and so much more

There’s an overused saying in business that ‘time is money.’

But it’s more than that. It’s sanity. It’s self-satisfaction. It’s freedom. A better, more mindful approach to time management helps us get our priorities straight, leaving us more fulfilled both in the workplace – and in life itself.

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E2E: 20/20

Are you truly ready to be an entrepreneur?

This article was written by Tom Taulli based on an interview with Mike Smerklo and published on Forbes.com on Nov. 5, 2016.

Co-founder/CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick, speaks onstage during ‘The Übermensch’ at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Oct. 19, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)

Being an entrepreneur may seem glamorous and exciting.  But the reality can be much different. Hey, I talk to many entrepreneurs – and I often hear words like “tough,” “challenge,” “difficulties,” and so on. And these are often from those people who have had tremendous success!

So before making the decision of becoming an entrepreneur, you really need to do a gut-chuck. Are you willing to make big-time sacrifices? Ready for lots of unpredictability?

Yes, this is all inherently personal. But it is still a good idea to get some insight from those who have been in the trenches.

And one such person is Mike Smerklo, who is the co-founder and managing director of Next Coast Ventures (his firm makes venture investments in early-stage tech companies – with a focus on megatrends). But before this, Mike was a successful entrepreneur, having founded ServiceSource, which he took public. The company was a pioneer in the cloud space and grew at a hefty 40% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for a decade. ServiceSource also returned over $100 million to investors before even becoming public.

OK then, what are some of his takeaways when thinking about making the jump?

First of all, you need to truly understand the amount of work that is required. “Think 80-hour work weeks, a ton of stress and riding a virtual roller coaster on a daily basis,” said Mike. “Starting a business is likely the hardest job in the world – so make sure you are personally ready to take this challenge on and give it 100% commitment.”

As for his own experience with ServiceSource, Mike jokes that in the early days of chasing his dream his apartment furniture consisted of one chair, a bed and a TV in the bedroom. “The apartment was strategically placed at just under a mile from the office so I could get there as early as possible and I could walk back late at night if necessary,” said Mike.  “I was 33 and ready to take on the world. I didn’t own a car, house or dog. I worked 100 hours a week. I flew around the world on a moment’s notice.”

Kind of brutal, right? Definitely. But it is what needs to be done if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.

But then again, hard work is just one part of the puzzle. You also need to think about how to most effectively spend your time. What is the best strategy?

According to Mike: “Do you have a really great business plan or just a neat idea? Given how much risk and hard work it takes to be an entrepreneur, think long and hard about how differentiated your business plan is and make sure to stress test this with as many smart people as possible.”

You do not want feedback from those who will give you mostly happy talk. Instead, you should seek out those who are dogged skeptics (if anything, this will provide good preparation for dealing with potential customers).

For example, it would be downright suicidal to try to create a rival to Uber or Airbnb. While the market opportunities are massive, it would take huge amounts of capital to get an edge.

In other words, try to focus on those categories where there is still lots of pain points and customer dissatisfaction. It also helps if you have a background in the industry. And if not, why not work for a company in the category and gain some experience? In fact, this was critical for Mike, who worked with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz at LoudCloud.

And finally, Mike recommends that you need to make sure your friends, family and mentors are really behind you as you jump into this head on. You need as much support as you can get – because there will certainly be several near-death experiences for your venture.

“You need the right mindset when heading into the wide open and turbulent seas of being an entrepreneur,” said Mike.  “There is so much written about business strategy, building a team and raising capital – all of which are critical to taking your business from idea to the next great thing. But I would assert that getting yourself ready to take the daily ups and downs of running a business, both mental and physical, is equally as important and might have more to do with your success than coming up with a better mousetrap.”