This Issue: Join the Ranks of the New Achievers

"Eleven Companies Changing the World," an article in the September 20 issue of Business 2.0, profiles some of the most agile and aggressive young entrepreneurs out there today. If you want to take a page from their book and get your enterprise on the map fast, it is worth knowing what they are doing:

• Tariq Krim began offering easily customizable start pages through his Netvibes startup in September, 2005. The enterprise is growing fast and should have 15 million users by the end of 2006. When Krim was 12, he hacked into France's Minitel computer system and built a messaging application for it. Since he just got $15 million in funding for Netvibes, he is probably not doing much hacking these days.
• Craig McCaw, founder of Clearwire, is building a nationwide broadband Wi-Max network. According to Business 2.0, Wi-Max is more powerful than Wi-Fi, and its distribution networks are cheaper to build. If so, Clearwire will soon be positioned to undercut the broadband Internet prices charged by Comcast and Verizon. Maybe that's why Intel and Motorla have just invested $900 million in McCaw and his enterprise.

Krim, McCaw and the other entrepreneurs profiled in the article possess a potent mix of market-facing skills. They have the technical stuff down cold, but can also raise funds, negotiate deals, market on the Internet, build organizations, lead teams, handle the media - and lots more. That's why they are not still programmers sitting in the back room of someone else's shop.

Years ago, those skills were spread all around most organizations, separated by departmental walls. In today's fast growing young companies, all those abilities have to reside in the head of the woman or man at the top - you, the founder, the entrepreneur. That's exciting and challenging, but it also means that the stuff you don't know canlimit the growth of your company.

Our Entrepreneurship Mastery Program is a great place to make sure those abilities are working for you and building your success. There's a place waiting for you in the ranks of the new entrepreneurial achievers, but you need the skills to claim it.

SPECIAL NOTICE TO OUR READERS

Be sure to visit the Trump blog on Saturday, October 7th when we will post an essay directly from the desk of Donald J. Trump. It's called "The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get," and it is packed with insights that will get your life and your career off to agreat new start.Don't miss it.

I know a lot of men who are perfectly happy being single. They have every excuse in the world why they're not ready to get married.

I thought I had heard everything until I read why Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie say they won't be tying the knot anytime soon.

In an interview in the current issue of Esquire magazine, Brad said he and Angelina won't consider getting married until - quote - "everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."

Obviously, Brad is trying to be a social activist and make a point about dropping the restrictions on who is allowed to get married and who isn't in this country. Or at least that's what he wants people to think. Maybe he's just come up with an excellent way to stay a bachelor.

It makes him look really concerned about the plight of other people. Yet at the same time, he doesn't have to get married. This guy is smarter than I thought.

Donald J. Trump, Chairman of Trump University, offers his insights in many courses, including The Entrepreneurship Mastery Program. Classes are forming now.

Life-changing ideas from Trump University's Entrepreneur's Success Code

Many entrepreneurs nearly kill themselves running their businesses. They work such long hours that they experience no joy or true abundance in their lives.

When they finally get fed up, their solution is often to limit the size or scope of the business. True, that reduces the demands that their business places on their lives. But their organizations are still out of control, only smaller. That is hardly a recipe for success.

The solution is management, and that is a problem for many entrepreneurs. After all, we start companies because we hate that word. We don't want to manage people. We want to do what we love, but that becomes harder as our companies grow. We are pulled in hundreds of different directions.

Yet there are ways to get back in control of your company and your life.

Identify the tasks you will give away

First, keep a list of every single thing you do every day, every week and every month. Then circle all the things that you don't love doing. Those are the activities that you should get other people to do. You probably hesitate because you believe that you, and you alone, know how to handle those tasks. But you have to get the courage to give them away.

Second, make a list of the excuses you have for why you can't get back to doing what you love. Your excuse might be, "I can't do what I love because I am too busy making sales calls to potential customers" or, "I am too busy keeping the books." If you write down all those excuses, you will have another list of functions to delegate away.

Give those tasks away by delegating, hiring, outsourcing or whatever it takes. But first, optimize those tasks by following the advice that follows.

Put systems in place

First, walk around your organization and make a list of everything that everyone is doing. Write down shipping, receiving, calling, marketing, and everything else that you see.

Second, put a system in place to handle every one of those tasks. A system is simply a list of tasks that are entailed in each job. For instance, your receptionist: greets people when they arrive; answers the phone in a way that communicates the energy of your company; connects visitors with the people they have come to see, and so on. That list of tasks becomes your system for that position. Then when the time comes to replace someone, you can hire the best person to oversee that system, which is already in place.

And there should be a system in place for every function in your company - the ones that you plan to delegate away and all the others. This level of organization (dare I use the word management?) allows your organization to become what it was destined to be, without killing you or robbing the joy that led you to become an entrepreneur in the first place.

Jeff Burrows, professor of entrepreneurship at Trump University, specializes in helping entrepreneurs build their businesses without sacrificing their personal lives or their dreams. This post has been adapted from his self-instructional course, The Entrepreneur's Success Code.

To master the art of starting your own company, be sure to enroll in The Entrepreneurship Mastery Program at Trump University. Classes forming now.