Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training

Instead of writing my own post today, I want to share the commencement address by Admiral William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, at the University of Texas at Austin (published in today’s Wall Street Journal).

Forget the Competition — Focus on Your Customer

All too often we obsess about our competition. We consider it “smart” to be “one step ahead” of our competitors and spend large chunks of time trying to understand their strategy and next moves.

Growth vs Profitability

There are largely only two ways to build a company: Focus on growth or focus on profitability.

In the first case you plough all your capital and income (and then some) into activities which aim to grow your company — with the assumption that fast growth is…

Beware of Too Much Customer Feedback

You know all about “lean” and it’s famous “Build-Measure-Learn” principle. The holy grail. Follow this simple maxim and you’ll be successful.

Not quite so fast.

How to Build Your (Advisory) Board

You know that you need to surround yourself with amazing people. People who support you, who act as a sounding board and who challenge you. One important place where you want to gather these people is on your (advisory) board.

Ideas vs Execution

We are never short of ideas. But an idea is extremely complex: By the time consumers see something, they may think it’s this one simple thing, with a name, like an iPod or an iPad.

But underneath that thing are millions of ideas. So this notion of “the idea” is the…