While the debate over the value of business school – especially to entrepreneurs – continues, I firmly believe that business schools cannot imbue students with certain qualities that are, ultimately, the most important qualities for entrepreneurial success.

In other words, whether or not you go to business school and get some value out of it… it will never be able to teach you the most important things you’ll need to build a profitable, sustainable business.

What comes to mind when you hear the word ‘failure’? Chances are that aside from conjuring up certain images, ideas, memories, etc, the word also elicits certain negative emotions. But why should we feel so bad when failure is, ultimately, just an arbitrary label used to describe a certain outcome?

Sure, it’s an outcome we don’t want… but do we do ourselves any favors by calling it a ‘failure’?

The following true story explains why stupid people rarely get away with evil schemes and why it’s the smart ones you’ve got to watch. On the other hand, as you’ll see, there’s also a sting in the ‘tale’…

A couple of years ago I was an online marketing strategy consultant for a major corporation here in Australia. I was leading a project to create a huge amount of content for the company’s website – both to create more compelling content for our target market and for search engine optimization purposes. As part of the project, I arranged for subject matter experts within the company to write a bunch of articles.

Based entirely on my own observations from reading, listening and viewing hundreds (maybe thousands) of profiles of successful entrepreneurs (i.e. individuals who have built large, profitable companies) two things stand out.

Firstly, entrepreneurs are a diverse bunch. They come in all shapes and sizes, from all kinds of backgrounds, possess various philosophies, and have lots of different ways of approaching business and life. Secondly, for all their differences, successful entrepreneurs share a supreme confidence in themselves. So much so that I propose that all successful entrepreneurs are slightly deluded.

Recent research confirms what many of us already know: the average worker is addicted to email and customarily checks their work email outside of business hours.

According to research by Harris Interactive for Xobni (which makes tools for Microsoft Outlook), 72 percent or Americans and 68 percent of British workers check their email whilst on vacation, when taking time off, on the weekend, and/or on other non-work days.

Sometimes, in business as in life, we are faced with ethical dilemmas. These often involve being faced with a choice between a course of action that delivers a much-desired business outcome, but involves a minor (or major) ethical compromise, or a course of action that is ethically sound but doesn’t deliver the business outcome we want, or at least as fast as we want it.

Here’s a real-life example from the late 1990s/early 2000s when we ran our previous online business, an IT security company. You may relate to the following ethical dilemma faced by one of our competitors…

Working from home, or from an office close to home, is not only convenient and efficient, but, according to recent studies, probably better for your health and well-being than commuting long distances to a workplace.

If you’re running your own business from home or a nearby location you probably already grasp this, but here are some interesting statistics that make the case against long commutes even more compelling.

Let’s say one of your competitors is making false or dubious marketing claims or misleading consumers by emphasizing benefits of their product that aren’t really benefits at all.

You’re tempted to ‘name and shame’ them in your marketing – in your emails, on your blog or even in your ads – but don’t want to give your competitor any more attention than they’re currently getting. Nor do you want to risk being sued for defamation or some other law (however unfounded a lawsuit might be). What do you do?

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change”
- Dr Robert Anthony

According to psychologist and author, Dr Robert Anthony, we can literally change things based on looking at them differently. It’s not just a matter of perception… it’s a matter of quantum physics.

I can’t give this topic justice in a short blog post. Suffice to say that there is scientific evidence to suggest that we can literally change what we see by how we look at it.

Of course, you must REALLY change the way you look at whatever you want to change…

Show me a person who asks lots of questions, and I’ll show you someone who is continuing to learn and grow as a person. This applies to the entrepreneur who is constantly looking for ways to improve their business, and it certainly applies to the individual seeking greater knowledge, understanding and self-actualization in their lives.

It’s no surprise that kids are constantly asking questions: they’re eager to know about the world and themselves. What’s sad is when adults stop asking questions. In my mind, when you start saying to yourself or anyone else, “I don’t want to know” you’re virtually saying, “I don’t want to grow.”