“I need a mentor.”
If those four words have ever crossed your mind or come out of your mouth, these 6 tips are designed to help you increase your success in finding the perfect mentor and getting the most out of the connection.
Keep reading to understand how you can find an amazing mentor and get a mentorship experience that helps you achieve your goals faster and easier.
“I feel naked.”
That’s how Carter Wigell, CEO of Ideator, describes how he feels after graduating from the Salesforce Incubator’s first cohort and moving to his own San Francisco office space with co-founder Charlie Smith. Connecting with his 22-person team, more than half of whom are remote, via video conferencing and messaging apps is a stark contrast to the literal and figurative in-person elbow rubbing the incubator provided.
The Ideator team was out in New York City last weekend for the Next Gen Summit. The conference surpassed all expectations. And our expectations were pretty darn high. From our online snooping of one of the founders of the conference, and community, we saw that they had been in multiple high-profile publications including Forbes, Huffington Post, and Inc., to name a few.
But how could millennials really be all that accomplished? What can other generations learn from millennials who are so young?
Are you planning to be in San Francisco on September 21-23? If not, you might want to rearrange your schedule (or scroll to the bottom to see what Ideator can do for you!). We don’t want you to miss one of the most fun and exciting technology conferences of the year.
Things move fast. Not so long ago, people complained that conversation was a lost art. Now, even telephone conversations are going the way of the dodo. So much communication takes place through other channels – text, email, social media – that proper phone manner is getting rarer and rarer. Make sure you have the proper etiquette to make it a welcoming conversation.
But there’s plenty to know, and plenty to learn if you haven’t mastered it. Telephone etiquette isn’t dead yet, and it’s important to signal to whoever’s on the other end of the line that you’re showing them respect and attention. Otherwise, nobody gets what they want in the end – and at Ideator, we want everybody to go home happy. (more…)
Let’s face it: with the stakes and pace of business these days, getting people to focus on etiquette can seem hopelessly old-fashioned. Wasn’t digital age titan Steve Jobs infamously rude – he of the brutal appraisals and two-word emails? Aren’t businesspeople supposed to project power, not niceness? Hasn’t technology changed the rules so much that they’re not worth following anymore?
It’s an understandable perspective to have, especially for those on the outside looking in. But here’s the thing: it’s just plain wrong. In real life, people don’t do business by screaming obscenities into their phones. That’s a caricature meant to make the whole thing seem more exciting – the TV version. And this is not the correct way to be a successful business. What business is really about, ever-changing technologies notwithstanding, is relationships: cultivating them, maintaining them, and building on them. And the only way to do that is to treat people with respect.
Here are a few ways to make sure you’re doing business right: (more…)
Relationships. Every business depends on relationships, especially those that are bootstrapping and looking to gain co-founders, strategic partners, and investors. However, that means you have to make great friends, and that means being a great friend. And that’s where the entire idea of creating strong relationships gets tough.
For that reason, I’ve gathered a few great perspectives on building relationships from three of the best thought leaders on this subject: (more…)
People with great ideas have the ability to change the world in amazing ways. We believe in the power of Ideators, and Sir Richard Branson, Founder at Virgin Group, agrees:
Budding entrepreneurs with fresh outlooks have the freedom to think quite differently, which is tremendously exciting to potential collaborators. (Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/240497)
Startups provide the world with new products, new solutions. Often times, this means innovation and introducing new ideas into the marketplace. Since universities have incubated new ideas for hundreds of years, it might seem only natural that they also incubate new businesses, right? (more…)
