The Entrepreneurs with Ben Lehnert & Derek Lidow

How to create a relationship with a potential mentor

Mentors are often life changing for entrepreneurs and founders. But reaching out to someone who you see as a role model but don’t know can be scary. In this week’s episode, Ben and Derek discuss how you successfully create a relationship with a potential mentor. This episode prompts to you also listen to Sprint 8, 9 and 10 to learn the basics skills of relationship building.

Sprint 18: Starting to plan the future of your startup

Almost all entrepreneurs either over plan or do not plan at all. In this sprint, Derek and Ben describe specifically what level of planning and anticipation of the future makes most sense for an entrepreneur once they feel their idea has potential. As the entrepreneur now wants to invest some time and money in working out how to turn the idea into an actual product or service a customer is gladly willing to pay for, they need to make sure the needed money, time and people will be there when needed.

Sprint 17: How will you lead your startup?

Founding a company and leading it from being just an idea to actually serving customers and prospering for many years is extremely challenging. In this episode, Ben and Derek will help you reflect on the learnings and coachings from Sprints 7-16. Doing so, will help you set your personal priorities, which can be difficult under the pressure of a startup. You will learn to create a Personal Leadership Strategy (PLS) which enables you to formulate an objective list of strengths and weaknesses relative to your entrepreneurial ambitions, and, even more importantly, develop and implement strategies to leverage your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses, further improving your chances of entrepreneurial success. This also helps keeping a balance with friends and family.

Sprint 16: Flourishing with co-founders, family and friends

In this episode, Ben and Derek cover one of the leading causes for startups and businesses to fail. In the US, over half of all startups have more than one founder. On a global basis, over 75% of all startups involve a family member. Once a startup finds traction for their product, co-founder conflict is the biggest cause of failure. Only 1 in 4 founding teams stay together for more than four years. Co-founder relationship building skills we discussed in sprints 8, 9 and 10 are essential for maximizing a startup’s chances for survival, let alone success. When family members, friends and love interests are involved, these skills are even more important. We describe how do use these skills to carefully structure and document the shared objectives and payoffs you agree to pursue before working together on a startup. Find this and all our free sprints here: https://www.theentrepreneurs.io/sprint-library [https://www.theentrepreneurs.io/sprint-library]

Sprint 15: Leading from idea to mature enterprise

Keeping with the metaphor we used in sprint 14 of waking up and finding yourself at the control of an airplane, in this sprint we describe how to pilot the takeoff, climb, cruise and landing of your enterprise. The takeoff, climb, cruise and landing correspond to 4 very specific stages of enterprise maturity. In the previous sprint you learned about the 3 essential flight controls: projects, processes and culture. Without understanding how these controls work and how to pilot your enterprise through the 4 stages, expect poor performance and then failure. Interested in learning more? Find this and all our other FREE sprints at https://www.theentrepreneurs.io/sprint-library [https://www.theentrepreneurs.io/sprint-library]