Some approaches to business

by phil on Monday Apr 21, 2003 5:43 PM
business tips

There are some general modes that get people businessy-success.

1) An Iterative Approach - Repeat something over and over again, each time with an incrementally better approach, and eventually you'll create some gold. I find in designing websites that the more iterations I do, the better it turns out.

2) Baby-approach - Some people are good at expressing their needs and desires to everybody. Eventually, people start to see an opportunity in this person, and seek to help him out. I noticed a lot of CEOs that were just good at whining. The more they emphasized needs and faults, the more others responded to fill the holes.

3) Networking Effects - Others, like Dubya, know how to surf the network. People are the most practical information-rich sources. Effective businessmen understand the value of a well-watered contact. They also understand the small degrees separating them from success, and they know how to tap the n-squared effects of smart people working together.

4) Build it and They Will Come - Inventors and creative types understand that if they just make something extremely fantastic, someone will take notice and throw money at them.

5) Wanderers - These people are good at transitioning to various situations. At every junction they sift around, looking for the next best leap, and then have no shame making the plunge. In maze of successful posts, they are constantly moving around until eventually they strike it clean.

6) Movers and Shakers - See previous post. Essentially movers and shakers have an intuition for doing all the things that, "change everything." A knack for prioritization if you will.

My source of information is a pattern-analysis I did of a handful of Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders who spoke at Stanford. Don't believe me? See the videos for yourself. Some beautiful combination of the above, some common sense, and some ambition more or less model these characters.

The next question is whether you want to be like these people or not. And for that, I'll let the rest of Philosophistry dissect.