7 Resolutions for the New Year’s Entrepreneur

#7. Lobby Congress To Pass Pro-Small Business Legislation.  Simply reduce regulation and taxes on small business investment and watch America’s entrepreneurs create all of the jobs America needs and more.

#6. Support your Local Neighborhood IPO. While you’re at it, tell your congressional representative to make it easier for small businesses to access public capital. A huge part of the malaise of the U.S. economy can be attributed to the 75% decline in U.S. IPO volume since 2000. A simple and powerful fix –have Congress carve-out public offerings of under $100 million from the onerous requirements of Sarbanes – Oxley.

#5. Raise Your Standards. For yourself, your employees (and employer), your vendors, and your customers. Let’s live and let live less, and take more strong stands for extraordinary results and effort from everyone in our orbits. Usually the most appreciated (and hardest) thing one can do for others is to challenge them to be their best. Walk this talk and demand and inspire others to do so too.

#4. Think Globally. American small businesses are woefully behind their corporate counterparts in their global business strategies and execution. The funny thing is that the Internet has made it EASY for small businesses to compete and win around the world. While just having a website is obviously far from enough, the ability to connect with and fulfill international customers at the click of a button remains one of the great wonders of our modern world.

#3. Video. We agree with Cisco’s John Chambers when he says that digital video is the future of communications. If you’re not already, get on Skype, and USE it along with other inexpensive and increasingly high-quality video chat and conferencing tools.

#2. Get a Coach. There is a reason why the Phil Jacksons, the Bill Belichicks, the Mike Krzyzewskis of the world are held in such high regard (and are so well-paid). Because they make great talent perform at their best.

While there is great variance in the quality of business and executive coaches, the best of them are hired by the world’s top business leaders to help these already high performers be that much better. The modern business world is just too wildly competitive to succeed without help. Get it, and watch both the personal and professional return on time and investment multiply.

#1. Be Like Teddy. My biggest life hero is Teddy Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, and great man of letters and of action. In fact, my wife and I named our youngest sonafter him. And, at 3 years old, little Teddy Turo, in his daily enthusiasms and heartbreaks, channels his great namesake’s most famous quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Be like Teddy and may 2011 be the best year of all of our lives!!!

To your success,

Jay Turo

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Jay Turo
CEO
Growthink