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Entrepreneur, 11-9-2016 -- “If I don’t win, I’ll consider this a total and complete waste of time” -- Donald Trump

Love him or hate him, the Republican candidate and New Hampshire GOP victor Donald Trump can sometimes say something extremely powerful.

The above quote is an example. It sums up the kind of mindset every entrepreneur needs to have: Never set out to do something with hopes of being second best.

So, what else does Trump have to teach us? Politics aside, here are four lessons that every entrepreneur can learn from the controversial billionaire and his presidential run.

1. Winning is everything -- there are no 'participation' trophies in the real world.

The younger generation today is being set up for failure. Its members are being taught at a very early age that participation alone is acceptable, but in fact that is so far from reality.

Trump never sets out to be a participant, in anything. He’s going for the win in the election and I guarantee he never opens a Trump resort with hopes of being one of the "top" hotels in the area.

I remember an incident back when my dad was the president of our local Little League. A parent was livid that the first-place championship trophies my team received were significantly larger than the ones awarded to the other teams. And my dad? He just smiled and said, “Welcome to the real world.”

I can’t help but think how he would have loved this TV commercial from Kia. It addresses a very serious problem head-on. While most companies play the PC card, Kia says it like it is, and for that I applaud them.

Trump is going for the win, and nothing less, which is the kind of attitude that every entrepreneur should adopt.

2. Your product or service will never appeal to everyone.

Trump understands that he doesn’t appeal to everyone, and he knows that he never will.

The same could be said for any product or service. There will always be supporters, and there'll always be opponents. Take the iPhone, for example. There are those that absolutely love the device and those that absolutely despise it and will try to convince every person they come in contact with how far superior an Android device is.

What does Apple do?

The company focuses on providing its supporters the best product and service it can. Apple isn't worried about appealing to everyone, because it knows it can continue to appeal to its captive audience, and maybe pick up some new supporters along the way. The company knows it will remain on top.

So, identify the market and audience you appeal to and focus on providing those people with the best product or service you can provide. If you try to appeal to everyone, your effort is going to be a losing battle.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

1-23-2017, CNBC -- Optimism among small-business owners has soared as entrepreneurs hope that President-elect Donald Trump will enact policies aimed at helping them.

Trump has promised to ease regulation. While some on Main Street cheer the goal, changing anything substantial about regulation is easier said than done.

But there are other ways that a Trump administration can make life easier for small businesses. Consider this five-step plan his first 100 days agenda for Main Street.

Encourage large companies and the federal government to hire small businesses "Trump should create tax requirements to source more from U.S. based small supply chain companies, and use incentives to get companies to pay these suppliers more quickly and invest in them with technology and skills training," says Karen Mills, a senior fellow at the Harvard Business School and former head of the Small Business Administration. She served under President Obama from 2009 to 2013.
 
"Instead of squeezing their supply chain constantly, large companies, in exchange for enormous tax benefits, should treat their small business suppliers like partners, creating more value and more jobs at home."

Also, Trump should maintain and potentially expand the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, a competitive awards-based program that aims to encourage small-business owners to pursue technical innovations, says Martin Baily, the Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Development and a senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings.

"This is a program that gets large federal agencies like the DOD [Department of Defense] and NIH [The National Institutes of Health] to provide a percentage of their innovation funding to small businesses," he tells CNBC.

Streamline communications with the government 

Communicating with the government is almost always inefficient. But it doesn't have to be.

"Trump needs to double down on the investments in technology made in the last several years, designed to streamline the federal government's interaction with the average consumer and small business owner," says Mills.

Mills recommends making all government forms digitally available with auto-filled required fields so that entrepreneurs don't have to complete the same fields over and over.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

2-15-2017, Multichannel.com -- The Consumer Technology Association has asked the Department of Transportation and Office of Management and Budget to rethink National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) guidelines for distracted driving and their impact on portable devices like smart phones, saying they could have a huge impact on mobile devices and apps.

That came in a letter to the new heads of both those agencies.

The guidelines were released Dec. 5, which falls within the post-election period during which Republicans warned against taking substantive auctions. They were phase two of NHTSA's distracted driver guidelines. The first deal with devices built into vehicles by the manufacturer.

"[F]ar too many are put at risk by drivers who are distracted by their cellphones," said then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. "These commonsense guidelines, grounded in the best research available, will help designers of mobile devices build products that cut down on distraction on the road."

The guidelines "encourage[d] manufacturers to implement features such as pairing, where a portable device is linked to a vehicle’s infotainment system, as well as Driver Mode, which is a simplified user interface. Both pairing and Driver Mode will reduce the potential for unsafe driver distraction by limiting the time a driver’s eyes are off the road, while at the same time preserving the full functionality of these devices when they are used at other times."

CTA says it is concerned about distracted driving, too, but argues that NHTSA "does not have the authority to dictate the design of smartphone apps and other devices used in cars," saying its proposal to do so "is dangerously expansive, representing the worst of government overreach."

"While NHTSA maintains that the proposed guidelines would be voluntary and nonbinding, in practice they could  have a sweeping effect on the multibillion dollar market for mobile devices and apps."

Read the rest of the story HERE.



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