Many years ago I was involved in a business targeting the shoe market. Through some connections I made, I was introduced to a potential investor. This investor was one of the original employees of L.A. Gear, a shoe company that at one point went public and was the third leading athletic shoe retailer behind Nike and Reebok.

Within 5 minutes of my conversation with him, one thing became extremely clear: this guy could give me a ton more value than just the dollars he could bring to the table.

He could tell me exactly how the industry worked. He could tell me what trade shows to attend and which to avoid. He could tell me which manufacturers to work with, and how to negotiate the best rates. He could introduce me to the best distributors to make sure my product reached as many retailers and customers as possible. And so on.

I tell you this because far too many entrepreneurs look at investors, particularly venture capitalists, solely as sources of cash. When it reality, many venture capitalists provide a ton more value than just the cash they offer. In fact, the right venture capitalist or VC is often the difference between your success or failure, or achieving minimal versus maximum success.

The three top areas where VCs often provide value include:

1. Contacts they have in their networks (these contacts can be for partners, employees, customers, distributors, vendors, etc.)

2. Advice in running your business, based on deep experience in your industry and in successfully growing and nurturing ventures

3. Contacts to additional sources of capital

Consider the following five VCs who are consistently ranked among the most respected VCs in the industry. Read their bios, and think about how their experiences and relationships could benefit your company.

Jim Breyer from Accel Partners. Jim Breyer is one of Facebook's earliest investors. He serves on the boards of Dell, Wal-Mart, and smaller ventures such as Etsy, Brightcove, ModelN, and Legendary Pictures. Jim also negotiated the sale of Marvel Entertainment to Disney for $4.3 billion and BBN Technologies to Raytheon for $350 million; and most recently closed two new venture capital funds in China.

Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital. Michael Moritz was one of the early investors in Google, Yahoo, and PayPal. He invested in video camera maker Pure Digital (Flip Video cameras) which was later sold to Cisco for $590 million. He also invested and served on the board of Zappos. Michael has also invested in and sat on the boards of Earth Networks, Gamefly, Green Dot, Klarna, Kayak.com, LinkedIn, Sugar Inc and The Melt.

Brad Feld from Foundry Group and TechStars. You should know Brad's name as he's a frequent contributor to the Growing Your Empire newsletter. Brad's been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years. Brad has invested in and/or sat on the boards of tons of companies including Abuzz, Anyday.com, Critical Path, Cyanea, Dante Group, DataPower, FeedBurner, Feld Group, Gist, Harmonix, NetGenesis, ServiceMagic, ServiceMetrics and Zynga. ALL of these companies have either gone public or been acquired.

Marc Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen co-founded Netscape, Opsware and Ning. He serves on the boards of Facebook, eBay, Skype and Hewlett-Packard.  He made seed investments in Twitter and LinkedIn, and later stage investments in Groupon, Skype and Zynga.

John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. John Doerr has made some of the best investments ever, investing early in Amazon, Netscape, Sun Microsystems and Google, where he currently sits on the board. He's also invested in online gaming firms such as Zynga and Ngmoco and clean tech firms such as Bloom Energy and OPower.

These 5 venture capitalists are clearly at the top of their game. But there are hundreds of others that could also provide tons of value to you. Look at the BILLIONS of dollars of value that these VCs created, by investing early in companies and helping them achieve massive success. And consider the vast number of connections these folks have, from investing in now ultra-successful entrepreneurs and sitting on boards along with other highly connected superstars.

Importantly, when seeking venture capital for your venture, find the venture capitalists that have the most relevant experience and contacts in your niche, that can thus add the most value to you.

Suggested Resource: In Venture Capital Pitch Formula, you'll learn exactly how to find and contact venture capitalists, exactly what information to include in your presentation, and how to secure your financing. This video explains more.

Last week, I shared the lessons of liquidity and sector that the intelligent early - stage investor can learn from Facebook's IPO.

This week, let’s discuss arguably the most important wisdom to be gained from the story of Facebook's founding, rocket ship growth, and now exit for its early investors.

That lesson is of the power of outliers.

Now, the concept of outliers and how they apply to early stage private equity investment is not a new one. It was best described by the Lebanese thinker and writer Nicolas Taleb, in his best-selling books "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan."

In the Black Swan especially, Taleb described the nature and importance of outliers in a modern, inter-connected economy:

“What we call here a Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable."

Taleb continues, "I stop and summarize the triplet: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives."

Less famous, but more predictive of the Facebook phenomenon is Taleb's theorizing on how technological interconnectedness vastly intensifies Black Swan impacts.

This idea of technological interconnectedness is related - though not exactly the same – as that of the much ballyhooed Network Effect that is so much at the heart of Facebook's astronomical value.

In its simplest form, the Network Effect posits that the value of a network increases exponentially with each new user on it.

Or, in the context of Facebook, really the sole reason why folks use Facebook is because there are a lot of other folks that use Facebook too.

And, as more users join, such the value for others to join grows that much greater.

And so on and so on.

This is powerful but somewhat obvious so at a minimum, the intelligent early stage investor should utilize as one of their first screens the degree to which a network effect is present in a company's business model.

Now, let’s get to the rub of the matter as to how Taleb’s related concept of interconnectedness both informs and signals danger for the thoughtful investor.

Simply put, global technological inter-connectedness drives the winning business models to heights never seen before …

…because of this, there are a lot fewer of them.

To summarize:

1. The winners are bigger and happen faster than ever - Facebook's IPO will be bigger and faster than that of Google’s which was bigger and faster than that of Microsoft’s, which was bigger and faster than that of Apple’s.

2. Because the winners are bigger, there are less of them.

So that giant sucking sound you hear is the consuming of so much of the energy and return in the deal economy into fewer, bigger and more lucrative deals.

To put it another way, turning $500,000 into $1.8 billion in seven years as Peter Thiel has done as a small minority investor is just not beyond extraordinary - it is also unprecedented.

And, correspondingly, returns of this scale crowd out and widely skew the distribution to fewer, higher returning deals.

Now, how should we respond to this brave new and highly challenging investing world?

Well, one obvious response is to proceed extremely carefully.

Investing in early stage private companies can be great fun and you can make money beyond your wildest dreams if the stars are aligned right doing it….

…but the probabilities are very much against this happening.

And unfortunately, this is true no matter how enthusiastic, how passionate, how hardworking, how brilliant the entrepreneur that is pitching his or her deal happens to be.

So does this mean that early stage private equity investing is for the birds? And that we all should just stay away?

Of course not.

You just have to do it right.

Next week, we’ll share how the world's most sophisticated and successful early-stage investors do just that.

The other day I had the opportunity to interview two entrepreneurs I really respect.

The qualities of an entrepreneur I respect?

1. They've achieved significant entrepreneurial success

2. They've done it more than once, or over a prolonged period, so they clearly weren't "lucky" but rather know how to play the game

3. They're "paying it back" or using their entrepreneurial success to help others

The two entrepreneurs I interviewed clearly embody these qualities.

The first is billionaire entrepreneur Clay Mathile. Clay purchased Iams, the pet food company, in 1970. In the years that followed, Clay grew Iams from a mere $100,000 in revenues to $900 million and sold it to Procter & Gamble for $2.3 billion.

The second is serial entrepreneur Joni Fedders. With her husband, Joni owns and operates a successful decorative packaging company. And prior to that, Joni co-founded a technology services company that she grew to 100 employees and nearly $13 million in sales. Joni successfully sold that company.

Clay and Joni are "paying it back" now at Aileron, an organization that helps business owners achieve more success. Clay founded Aileron and Joni serves as President.

Now usually when I conduct an interview, I do it via telephone and have an audio file to show for it. But in this case, I'm glad Clay suggested we conduct the interview via video.

There were two reasons for this. First, video is much more engaging to watch and absorb the information (but if you want to listen to the audio on the go, feel free to download the MP3 version here).

The second reason is little different... Clay is an investor in Oovoo which is the video technology we used. For those of you seeking angel funding, that's what you want. An angel investor that can not only give you cash and know-how, but who is willing to promote your company. I must say that installing and using Oovoo was a cinch, and, as you'll see below, the video quality was great.

Ok...I'll stop blabbing. The interview I did with Clay and Joni is below. They share some incredible information. If you want to grow your business, listen to what they say, take notes, and then implement. I'd suggest you watch it twice; I'm sure you'll catch a few things the second time that'll make a big impact in your business.

Two things I really like about online marketing are that 1) you can do quick and easy things that can make a real impact, and 2) there's a lot of leverage; meaning that once you find something that works, it's pretty easy to scale.

Contrast that for a minute with traditional advertising like a television commercial. Any changes to your strategy here, such as modifying your commercial or testing it on a new television station, are costly from a time and money perspective, and take a long time to see whether it worked or not.

Below are 5 quick online marketing tactics and strategies that you can implement in your business fairly quickly. And each has the ability to double your leads, revenues and profits.

1. Find out where your competitors are getting their leads and replicate them

This one is pretty straightforward. Simply find out where your competitors are getting their leads, and then do the same.

Let's start with finding and replicating the keywords on which your competitors are advertising on Google and other search engines.

Simply use a tool like Ispionage (http://www.ispionage.com/) or KeywordSpy (http://www.keywordspy.com/) and enter in the domain name of your competitor. The results will show the top keywords on which your competitors are advertising.

Importantly, you should track these keywords. For example, see what keywords your competitors are advertising on today, and take a screenshot of how their ads appear. Then, look again at each of the keywords in 30 or 60 days. If your competitors are still advertising on those keywords, they are probably profitable keywords. Likewise, see if they've modified their ad copy.

Another way to replicate where your competitors are getting their leads is to find the top websites that link to them. While there are some expensive tools that identify the "top referring websites" to your competitors, one no-cost tool is Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org). Simply enter the domain name of your competitor, and you'll see the top sites which link to them and thus give them traffic. Then, contact those sites to see if they'll link to you as well.

2. Understand what customers are doing on your site

It's one thing to drive a lot of traffic to your website. It's an entirely different thing to convert on that traffic.

Importantly, you need to know what customers do once they're on your website. And in many cases, it's not what you'd expect them to do. For example, one entrepreneur I know told me that tons of visitors were clicking on an image on his website, even though nothing happened when you clicked on it. So, he made a slight change; he made it so that when visitors clicked on the image, they were taken to a sales page. The result: his profits soared.

One great tool to see what visitors are doing on your website is ClickTale (http://www.clicktale.com/). ClickTale offers heat maps, usability and web analytics so you know exactly what visitors are doing. And then, you can improve your site based on your findings.

3. Improve your marketing funnel

To improve your results, you need to understand your funnel. For example, your online marketing funnel may look as follows: visitors click on an ad to get to your "landing page" (the first page of your website they visit); then they read the page and ideally click whether they want product A or B; then they go to a page that has more information on either product A or B; then they click a button to get to the order form; then they see the order form and hopefully buy; then they see an upsell offer to purchase an additional item.

As you can see, your online marketing funnel generally has many pieces to it. In order to improve your performance, you must:

1. Map out (on a piece of paper) your marketing funnel
2. Document all of your metrics, that is, currently what percent of people pass through each part of your funnel (e.g., out of 100% of people who get to your landing page, what % click on "product A"; and what percentage of those folks click the "buy button," etc.)

Then, you should start improving each piece of your funnel. With split testing technology, you can test new pages and see which ones improve your funnel's conversion rates.

Two no-cost tools you can use to aid in these efforts are: Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) which will give you your conversion metrics, and Google Website Optimizer (https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/) which allows you to quickly and easily conduct split tests.

Note: if you want to optimize your website based on phone calls to your company, use a tool like ifbyphone (http://public.ifbyphone.com/).  [ifbyphone is a Growthink client who has raised tens of millions of dollars, so I am biased. But I've used their tool myself and it's great.]

4. Determine your winning keywords, and then leverage them

A mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make is to try to rank organically on "root" keywords too early.

What I mean by this is that a desk manufacturer or retailer will often make an effort to rank (i.e., appear at the top of the search results) on the keyword "desk." Such a "root" keyword is often extremely hard to rank on, and typically much harder than "long tail" keywords such as "corner computer desk."

Not only are "root" keywords harder to rank on, but they may not be as profitable.

Rather, what you should do is conduct pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and optimize your marketing funnel as explained above. Then, you will determine the keywords that are most valuable to you.

Then, do search engine optimization (SEO) to try to rank on those keywords organically.

To reiterate: don't blindly do SEO; rather figure out the most valuable keywords first, particularly the long-tail ones, and then optimize on them.

5. Scale geographically

Once you have optimized your PPC advertising campaigns as described above, scale geographically as appropriate.

Google AdWords and Facebook ads both allow for extremely customized geographic expansion and targeting. You can target new customers by zip code, county, state and even country. With regards to countries, consider, as appropriate, expanding to other English  speaking countries and territories like England, Ireland, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. (or expand based on your native language).

Each of these five tactics will enable you to grow your business fairly quickly and easily. So start employing them today.

Suggested Resource: Want to learn my entire online marketing system to methodically maximize traffic, leads, sales and profits? Then check out my Ultimate Internet Marketing System to learn how you can build the ultimate online lead generation machine. Click here to learn more.

The biggest technology IPO in history has rightfully captured the imagination of both the general and investment public.

However Facebook's stock ultimately performs, what is written is that those that invested in the company in its early days made one of the most incredible angel investments in history.

As a private company, Facebook has been not obligated to disclose the exact prices at which it sold shares in its early financing rounds.

However, both by pretty simple math and disclosures by the principals involved, we can pretty much deduce both the percentage and real dollar return of some of Facebook's earliest investors.

Most famous among them is Peter Thiel, who we know in 2004 invested $500,000 into Facebook at a valuation of approximately $4.9 million.

Facebook S-1 filing shows him now holding 44,724,100 shares of Facebook Class B stock - which at the estimated $41 price at which the stock is expected to go public - would be worth more than $1.8 billion.

For those scoring at home, that represents more than a 36 thousand percent return in 7 short years.
 
Now, first of all I think anyone who has ever made an investment of any kind - whether it be in real estate, in the stock market, in a commodity, in a private company -  that doesn't read that and not admit to at least to a little level of jealously and sense of the unfairness of it all…

…well, I would say that person is either lying, in denial or is just plain discouraged by this now 13-year “lost decade” of investing return that almost everyone that did NOT invest in Facebook has experienced.

So once we put this natural (and may I add wholly unproductive) emotion aside, the thoughtful angel investor should both gain great hope and powerful moving forward lessons from the Facebook IPO.

The first lesson is sector. 

Professor Scott Shane, one of the world’s foremost researchers on angel investing returns, makes the simple but crucial point that when it comes to making quality early-stage private company investments, technology is king, queen, court and everything in between. 

How important is it to have one’s investing focus be tech?

Well, Professor Shane estimates that the return expectation differential between an investment in an early stage, privately-held high tech company and one in a low tech company to be as much as 20x!

How can you make this work for you? 

Well, a simple shorthand to use is the “TechCrunch” test – i.e. whatever sector that most famous technology blog is writing about is a pretty good bet that there is also a LOT of smart angel investment money pouring into dynamic companies in it.

These days that includes social networking, gaming (mobile and otherwise), healthcare information technology, personal and business productivity software, entertainment convergence, and of course all things Apple.

This points to a second Facebook IPO lesson for investors, namely liquidity “signaling.” 

Sites like SharesPost and SecondMarket have become famous for their active and decent bid and ask spreads on high profile and cleanly capitalized tech companies like Twitter, LinkedIn, Zynga and Groupon, among many others. 

How these markets might fundamentally transform private equity investing for the better in the years to come is a story for another day, but for now the intelligent angel investor can view shares trading on these markets as great “acid tests.”

Simply asking the question of whether or not the shares of a private company could ever reliably trade - i.e. generate buying interest - on a popular trading market is a great signal as to the quality of and the prospects for the investment.

Folks, we're just getting started. 

Next week, we'll discuss an angel investment lesson from the Facebook’s IPO so powerful that a whole multi-billion dollar industry is springing up around it.

I have to admit, I'm not a pioneer by any stretch when it comes to most new technologies.

I was the last of my friends to get a cell phone. I held off on joining Twitter and Facebook until my employees told me I had to do it. And for years I refused to keep an online calendar, and rather opted to continue using my physical appointment book (several of which I kept and it's pretty interesting to look back a few years ago and see what I had scheduled on a daily basis).

And it wasn't until last week that I downloaded the QR code reader app on my iPhone (and now I'm like a little kid scanning every QR code I see).

But for some technologies and/or new services, I have been more of a pioneer. I was one of the first users of Google's AdWords program. And I was one of the early adapters of Voice Over IP.

I tell you this since there's a new type of marketing that's available to marketers everywhere. And while I've only dabbled in using it to date, I am going to be making much more use of it in the near future. And I urge you to do the same.

This new type of marketing is Mobile Marketing. And the statistics proving why you can't ignore it are staggering. Consider the following:

GROWTH

1. According to Nielsen, the iPhone's growth was 10 times faster than the growth of America Online.

MARKET SIZE

2. According to Mobile Marketing Association Asia, more people on planet Earth own a mobile phone (5.1 billion) than own a toothbrush (4.2 billion) {gross but true}.

3. According to the CTIA Wireless Association, 250+ million Americans carry mobile phones; representing over 80% of the nation's population.

ACCESSIBILITY

4. According to Morgan Stanley, 91% of all U.S. citizens have their cell phone or mobile device within reach 24/7.

5. According to Facebook, there are more than 350 million active users [44 percent] currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. And people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.

SPEED & ACTION

6. According to the CTIA Wireless Association, while it takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email, it takes just 90 seconds for someone on average to respond to a text message.

7. According to Mobile Marketer, 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour.

REVENUES & RESULTS

8. According to Borrell Associates, mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.

9. According to Yankee Group, global mobile payments (called m-payments) currently total approximately $240 billion and are expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2015.

10. According to IDC, mobile app downloads will reach 76.9 billion in 2014 and will generate $35 billion in sales.

So what does this mean to you?

Well to me, it means that mobile marketing should be a key part to the marketing plan of virtually any company. Mobile marketing allows you to reach customers quickly. Customers will get more and more used to paying you and other companies via their mobile device. And mobile applications will continue to explode, and are not only a way for you to stay in front of customers, but they could be a huge revenue source for your company.

So, don't ignore this key marketing trend. Rather, seize the opportunity to become the mobile marketing leader in your niche.

"I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." ~ Larry Bird

I just love this quote from Larry Bird (who was a professional basketball player, and later coach, for those of you who don't know him). Yes, things always tend to work out, and you always tend to achieve success when you give it your all.

The best is when people look at successful athletes and entrepreneurs and say "look how lucky they are." Well if you call working all hours of the day and maintaining a laser-like focus on your goals "lucky," then I guess they're right. But you and I know better.

I grew up watching Larry Bird. My dad was a huge Boston Celtics fan (which is relatively odd considering he grew up in New York City). So, I became a huge Celtics fan too. And I was a big fan of the heart of the Celtics, Larry Bird.

This guy never gave up. And he nearly always hit the clutch shots.

(If you have 52 seconds and can tolerate terrible video quality, you need to watch this incredible steal by Larry Bird on YouTube. I clearly remember watching this live with my dad in 1987: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0vwJlvB-Po)

But as great as Larry Bird was, he would not have won so many NBA Championships (he won three), if he didn't have great teammates (same with Michael Jordan).

As an entrepreneur, you also need great teammates. Since you can't possibly build a great company by yourself.

In fact, great entrepreneurs are more like Larry Bird the coach (who "hired" and coached his players into being the best they could be) than Larry Bird the player (who performed key tasks and made his co-players better).

The key is this -- you need to find, hire and then train and coach the best people. Because there are TONS of bad people. I learned this very early on at Growthink. Years ago, I generally gave people the benefit of the doubt. If they said they could do something, I figured they could. And then I quickly realized that some people "have it" and some people don't.

I think "having it" is the quality of people who "do what they say and say what they do" and always try to do their best. You want people who "have it" and at the same time people who are qualified and uniquely skilled at the position you need to fill. For example, while I "have it," there's a whole bunch of positions that I'm not qualified to fulfill or which wouldn't inspire me to do my best work.

So, how do you find these great people who "have it" and possess the skills you need. Here are my recommendations:

1. Event Networking: great people have several common traits, one of which is their dedication to ongoing education. That's why great people generally go to events and conferences. You also need to go to these events, where you'll find some very talented individuals.

2. Being Sociable: I've heard lots of stories of people meeting people at sports events, supermarkets, on a plane, etc., and striking up conversations that results in great hiring decisions. I must admit that I'm not the most sociable person outside of work; but I'm getting better at this.

3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great online network to find qualified people to come work for you. Join relevant LinkedIn groups to find folks with similar interests and who are looking to further their careers. And reach out to the best ones.

4. Recommendations & Referrals: Oftentimes the best hires are the ones that were recommended to you by friends and colleagues. Send emails out to your network and advisors asking if they know someone with the skills you need. People generally only recommend people that they believe are competent, since their own reputations are on the line.

5. Executive Recruiters: while this will cost more money in the short-term, executive recruiters (also known as "headhunters") can find you great candidates. This is what they do. Importantly, they will often find you people who aren't actively looking for a new job. These are often the best folks. I mean, would you rather hire an unemployed person looking for any company that will take them, or someone who's thriving at a company but sees great opportunity in helping you grow your venture?

Importantly, in its relative infancy, eBay used executive recruiting firm Kindred Partners to find and hire Meg Whitman. Whitman turned eBay into a multi-billion dollar company and herself into a billionaire.

Using one or more of these five tactics will get you qualified job candidates. But, before you hire any, I highly suggest you give them two tests as follows:

1. A skills test: whenever possible, you should test the skills of the job candidate. If you are hiring someone for a research job, give them a research assignment. If you are hiring someone to be a receptionist, do mock calls with them. Etc. I realize that for some jobs, it may be harder to test, but get creative since you want to make sure they will be able to perform.

2. A culture test: if someone comes highly recommended and passes a skills test, it still doesn't mean they're the right hire. They MUST match with your company's culture. For instance, if they're a stiff, and your company thrives on fun and creativity, then they're not the right match. Your company culture is critical, so don't ignore this key test.

Hiring the right players for your team is critical to your success. There are no wildly successful 1-person companies that I know of. So, follow these steps so you can build a great team and a great company.

Note: I've also used Craigslist to find people. I have found good people on Craigslist, but I've also found some really bad ones. But it's possibly worth trying as long as you do the two tests before hiring them.

Suggested Resource:  To become the ultimate leader, you need to do a lot of things, like hire the right people, create the right culture, establish accountability structures, etc.

If you haven't led a highly successful company before, there are a lot of mistakes you will make. However, I've put together a program that allows you to skip the mistakes and get it right the first time.

In my program, I'll teach you everything you need to do to find, recruit and train the right people, and build an amazing organization that allows you to thrive. Click here to access it now.

When I think of the great entrepreneurs that I've been blessed to get to know personally over the years, Mr. Martin Tibbitts truly stands out.

Marty, as the Founder and CEO of the BOSS family of businesses, has both built and acquired an impressive array of companies - ranging from telecommunications to security software, to web services and analytics, to digital media.

What stands out about Marty for me above all is his beautiful entrepreneurial mind.

Extremely well-read and with a wide array of personal, athletic, and intellectual passions and experiences, Marty is the master of the "non-obvious."

He is able to connect the strategic dots between industries, market and competitive trends with a creativity and panache that can only flow from a lifelong passion for the game of "business chess."

This ability to visualize the impact of small moves here and there - like securing an incremental cost advantage - and then translating those advantages slowly but surely into a strong competitive position - well this is an essential quality of great business strategy and one that Marty possesses in buckets.

As a successful “real world” entrepreneur, however, Marty’s skills go well beyond strategy.

He also possesses great heaping platefuls of business guts.

Unlike far too many educated at America's most prestigious universities (and Marty is a proud Stanford graduate), Marty's career has been defined by the paths not taken.

No law school or business school for Marty. No safe corporate training or analyst programs early in his career.

Heck, to the best of my knowledge Marty has never had a job in the traditional sense of the term in his whole life!

Marty began his career in straight commission sales and by his late twenties had already started and failed at three or four businesses before finally laying the groundwork of the Telco company that would be his first big success.

These early life experiences - especially the failures - incurred in him the core and so inspirational mindset that the unforgivable sin in modern business is not coming up short in one's pursuit of the brass ring.

But rather it is that so depressing combination of over-conservatism, nay-saying, and settling for just getting by that unfortunately plagues way too much of American business.

And what really inspires me - especially when I compare Marty to so many of our Stanford peers that took the “safe” career road - is not his personal economic success, however impressive that might be.

It is not the fact that he has probably paid 100X, 500X, 1,000X of the local, state and federal taxes of the “average” American.

It's not even the hundreds (if not low thousands) of jobs his companies have created over the years - and the families that those jobs have supported in the depressed Detroit metropolitan area where his businesses are headquartered.

No, while all these accomplishments are impressive and worthy of praise and admiration for sure, what really turns me on about Marty Tibbitts and what I see as the core driver of his entrepreneurial success is that he has had - and still has in buckets - the courage to act on his creative convictions.

And an entrepreneurial and business lifetime of so thinking - and so acting - well that is a career, and a life, worth living.

"Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn't be done."

This quote from Amelia Earhart is one of my favorites.

And I think it is especially applicable to entrepreneurs. Since most entrepreneurial achievements are ones that seemingly couldn't be done.

Take Google. Would you have thought that this startup, which initially faced heavy competition from other search engines like Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Lycos, and others would eventually dominate the industry?

Or take Apple. Would you have bet in 2004 that Apple would develop sensational products and become the world's largest company based on market capitalization? And that from 2004 to 2011, the company's revenues would grow EIGHT times?

Both of these feats, and virtually every other feat achieved by entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial companies have seemingly been impossible. But, they were achieved.

Which leads to the question of "why?" Why were these entrepreneurs able to achieve these amazing feats while most other fail?

From my work helping entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses for over a decade, and from reading countless books on success, I have identified 5 key reasons why entrepreneurs achieve success.

And I expect that Amelia Earhart thought and did these things as well on her way to becoming a legend.

1. Surround yourself with winners

Success coach Jim Rohn said, "You are the average of the 5 people you hang around with most." It's true. If you hang out with losers, unfortunately you'll be a loser. But if you hang out with winners, you'll become a winner. Because winners have a different way of thinking. And winners (particularly other successful entrepreneurs with whom you should be spending time) have often already encountered and overcome the challenges you face in your business.

How do you surround yourself with winners? Meet them at networking events. Seek them out (e.g., successful local business owners and executives). Etc.

Amelia Earhart also surrounded herself with winners. She was mentored and taught by famous air racer Frank Hawks and pioneering aviation teacher Anita Snook. She also spent significant amounts of time with ultra successful entrepreneur and book publisher George P. Putnam.

2. Identify your limiting beliefs and then overcome them

Limiting beliefs are beliefs that we hold either consciously or subconsciously that serve as obstacles to achieving and attracting what we want.

For example, each year many schoolchildren are told by teachers that they "aren't smart" or "won't amount to much." As a result, these children often carry, throughout their lives, this extremely negative and limiting belief. They incorrectly believe, at either conscious and/or subconscious levels, that they can't achieve success, and as a result they don't.

This holds very true in business, and, as such, it is imperative that you both identify and overcome your limiting beliefs.

For example, do you hold any of the following limiting beliefs?

• I don't have enough time to become a successful entrepreneur


• I can't start or grow my business since I don't have enough money


• Failure is shameful, and if my venture fails I will be shamed


• I can't be a successful entrepreneur because I'm lacking certain educational degrees


• I can't change or improve; I do things my way and that's who I am

These false beliefs and "excuses" prevent many entrepreneurs from achieving greatness. So identify these beliefs and force yourself to expose of them.

3. Accept the idea of failure

While you shouldn't dwell on the possibility of failure, you must accept it. If you don't, you may be striving in your business to prevent failure, rather than striving to achieve success. The latter will always help you achieve better results.

It turns out that actual failure is never as bad as we think it will be. Specifically, research shows that when people fear the worst and it happens, it's not as bad as they thought it would be, and they recover quickly.

MANY entrepreneurs have failed before achieving success. Milton Hershey, P.T. Barnum, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Donald Trump -- all of these super successful entrepreneurs failed big at one point in their careers and had to claim bankruptcy.

That's why I love this quote from Phil Knight, the co-founder and chairman of Nike, Inc. - "people only remember your last success." So, even if you've failed before, or fail again, as long as you end up on top, that's all people will remember.

4. Dream positive

What you think about in your mind often comes true. So you need to stay positive. For example, rather than thinking about what to do to prevent customers from leaving you, think about ways to better satisfy your customers and get them to tell all of their colleagues about you.

At the end of the day both of these thoughts are similar, but framing it in a positive light is proven to increase your chances of success.

5. Believe in yourself

The biggest barrier to your success is often believing that it is possible.

Consider this story as told by marketing consultant Dan Kennedy:

"One man I know, who made over $100 million in his business in its first three years from scratch, had gone broke in business several times before. After the three years of remarkable success, he said, "Making $100 million is about the easiest thing I've ever done. Believing it could happen to me was the hard part that took 20 years."

You must believe in yourself if you want to succeed. You CAN do it. Simply stating that you can do it in front of a mirror every morning for 30 days will improve your belief in yourself. Maybe that sounds "hokey" to you, but it works, and if you really want to become a super-successful entrepreneur, it's worth doing.

As some of you may know, I started my career with The NPD Group, which is one of the world's largest market research firms.

One of the things I learned there was that statistics can be easily manipulated. That's not to say market researchers purposefully falsify their research. Rather, what I'm talking about is how statistics can easily be manipulated during interpretation.

For example, I can say that 93% of pet owners prefer brand X. But, if I didn't mention that my sample only included pet owners in the highest income zip codes, my results clearly wouldn't be telling.

But sometimes market research is as clear as daylight. And such was the case when I read the latest statistics from the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).

The seemingly good news from the NVCA was that the amount of venture capital funding grew 22% from 2010 to 2011.

However, when I dug deeper, I found some deeply disturbing news. Specifically I found that the lion's share of this funding went to later stage companies (companies who have already raise previous rounds of venture capital, have revenues, and are looking to grow further before being acquired or going public).

In fact, the NVCA's numbers showed that in 2011, venture capital investments in seed companies or startups declined 48% versus 2010. Down forty-eight percent. That's huge. And that's terrible. Since it means that venture capitalists are now less willing to bet on higher risk, earlier stage companies.

What it also means is that if you want to raise equity capital, you need to rely more heavily on individual or "angel" investors. While angel investors have always been a huge source of early stage equity funding, they are now more important than ever. Since venture capitalists want to see that you have raised this funding and progressed your business before they'll fund your future growth.

So, how should you decide if angel funding is right for you? Answer these questions:

1. Can you make significant progress with your business for less than $1 million?

While I've seen companies raise more than $1 million from angel investors, the average angel investment in a company is only $338,400 according to the Center for Venture Research.

So, think about your business and figure out if you could accomplish significant milestones for this amount of money. Specifically, you need to accomplish enough milestones to make your company cash flow positive, or enough that shows investors you can execute and that it's less risky for them to write you a larger check.

2. Are you willing to give up equity in your business?

There are still many entrepreneurs and business owners who are concerned about giving up too much equity and/or losing control of their company.

Let me start by saying that capital is the MOST important thing to your business. In fact, running out of capital is the reason why most businesses fail. And with capital, your business gains massive competitive advantages such as the ability to hire better personnel, buy better equipment and technology, etc.

Now, in terms of giving up equity to investors, consider this important yet simple mathematical fact: 100% of nothing is nothing. And without the capital, your company may be worth nothing. As such, it is my experience that a small piece of a big company is better than a large piece of a small company. For example, a 10% piece of a successful company (perhaps a $10 million company) is twice as great as 100% piece of a small company, perhaps a $500,000 business.

Importantly, equity investors want YOU to maintain the lion's share of your company's equity, since they know it will give you the motivation you need to work really hard and make the company a huge success. In general, you should expect angel investors to want 10% to 35% of the equity of your company.

3. Are you willing to kiss a lot of frogs?

The process of raising angel funding (which you can learn to do here) includes a lot of frog-kissing. That is, you need to speak with a lot of individuals in order to find the few that will write you checks.

It can clearly be done, as tens of thousands of entrepreneurs raise angel funding each year, but you will need to invest time and meet a lot of people in order to raise the funding.

Few things are more exciting than building a company from nothing to a thriving enterprise. Doing so nearly always requires a significant cash investment. Unfortunately venture capital firms are no longer making nearly the number of such investments as they once did. But angel investors are. And if you're an entrepreneur seeking funding, you should start speaking with these angels now.