This is a summary of the five biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a business from Jerry Kaplan  It’s good food for thought and particularly relevant if you are thinking about growing your business.

Jerry Kaplan is widely known in the US computer industry as a serial entrepreneur, executive, technical innovator, and author. Most recently, he was co-chairman of Egghead.com, Inc. Previously, Mr. Kaplan served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of online auction company Onsale, Inc., which he co-founded in 1994.

Fantastic video from Carly Fiorna, the previous female CEO of Hewlett Packard. This is a great discussion around what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur and how we can use our fears and risk taking to create momentum.

Carleton S. (Carly) Fiorina was president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Company from 1999 to 2005. She served as chairman of the board from 2000 to 2005.Prior to joining HP, Fiorina spent nearly 20 years at AT&T and Lucent Technologies, where she held a number of senior leadership positions and directed Lucent’s initial public offering and subsequent spin-off from AT&T.

Fiorina was named an honorary fellow of the London Business School in July 2001. In 2002, she was honored with the Appeal of Conscience Award, and in 2003 she received the Concern Worldwide “Seeds of Hope” Award in recognition of her worldwide efforts to make global citizenship a priority for business.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Dr. Joanna Martin at her presentation secrets event in London a couple of weeks ago.  Joanna specialises in helping business owners make money out of speaking around their subject area.  This vidoe runs through how to use satir categories in your speaking repertoire from a woman’s perspective (this is important because we can’t get away with some of them in the same way that men can).

Her courses are not just about how to present effectively, their real value is in how you turn your speaking slots into business revenue.  She gives you tried and tested methods for optimising your speaking efforts and turning that into new business or product sales.  Apparently almost anything can be sold from stage (even beds!) .  She has loads of Videos on her You Tube Channel and offers an online mentoring programme and face to face workshops that can help turn your speaking skills into business revenue.    She is offering a course from November 13 – 15 in London (I’ll be there!).  So if you’re in any way interested in using speaking as a business tool you should have a look at her site and blog

What I really like about Joanna is that she is one of the few women who are effectively selling from stage. She has a lot of experience in this area and was a lead presentation trainer for Christopher Howard Events. She has a unique insight into how women can make the most of their stage presence and in this video offers some real and practical advice on how to use satir categories to greatest effect.

Successful tailor and designer Imtaz Khaliq began business by going door to door to London boutiques with her garments. Imtaz took the advise of one of the shop owners and returned with fresh garments, one of which was later sold to Michelle Pfeiffer. From there her business grew in leaps and bounds with the wedding dress she designed for Sian Lloyd featuring on the cover of Hello magazine. Listen to her story.

At the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference and the upcoming Outliers: The Story of Success, gives two examples of hard work that later looked like genius. Bill Gates got up at 2am to program as a teenager, while the Beatles played together 1200 times, far more than most bands, before they ever got famous. Success, he believes, is the result of putting your heart and mind into something to create successful, meaningful work.

He also says that it is important to understand the barriers many people face in achieving their full potential—it’s about attitude, economics, and logistics rather than talent or genes—and to look at how we can continue to lift those barriers through meaningful work.

These videos have been provided courtesy of www.bnet.com

Eve Ensler wrote the global theater phenomenon Vagina Monologues after interviewing more than 200 women about their bodies. Its success propelled her to found V-Day, a worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls.  This video is an inspiring talk about the myth of security in our society.

See the other video with Eve Ensler where she discusses why she created the Vagina Monologues

Simon Woodroffe is one of the UK’s most successful, celebrated and unique entrepreneurs. He is a straight-talking, no-nonsense businessman who thrives on dishing out advice to people who, like him, want to take their big idea and turn it into reality.

Woodroffe left school at 16 and went into showbiz. 25 years later, he decided to open a concept restaurant, YO! Sushi, and put everything he owned on the line to launch the business. YO! Sushi was an overnight success, and Woodroffe was immediately offered £1 million to sell the business. He didn’t, and instead decided to expand his company. Today, Woodroffe has a number of businesses under the YO! Company brand, all of which challenge the industry and market they are in, and all of which are bound to be highly successful.

In this clip from a recent interview with Woodroffe, he shares his thoughts on the secret to making it in business.

Whether you are in business, thinking of starting up or have a great idea which you want to launch, take a few minutes to soak up what Woodroffe has to say.