#5 in our series of interviews with successful entrepreneurs in which they talk about the mistakes that helped shape their careers. Our guest is Monica Gould, who founded her business, Strategic Consulting Partners, after a successful career at MCI, and has sustained it for more than 10 years.

Monica, like so many of the entrepreneurs I’ve talked to, is very candid and self-reflective, and willing to talk about mistakes, to teach others and to ensure they themselves learn from them. I was struck by Monica’s sense of humor when she discussed the cobbler’s kids dilemma – while she helped companies improve their planning she tended to neglect planning for her own business (something I’ve experienced myself). I’m sure you’ll enjoy the interview.

Monica Gould podcast (31:24)

Content:

0:30 How she got started
11:10 An early mistake…the “we can help you with anything” brand
13:30 Consequences of a consultant losing focus
15:15 A more recent mistake: how long to try to break into a new market?
17:10 “Time is your biggest commodity”
18:50 A difficult situation with a subcontractor
23:45 A final thought on planning…

(audio content copyright 2010 John Caddell)

If you are interested in contacting Monica , please visit her website.

Previous podcasts can be found here.

In our inaugural Silicon Pasture podcast, we talk to Harrisburg-based Jason Kichline, developer of the OnSong iPad application that helps musicians and bands manage chordsheets.

My favorite part of the interview is when Jason, when asked why he was able to succeed in building his own business developing websites, credited good timing rather than his own brilliance. Good for you, Jason!

Highlights:
0:35 How he got started
2:45 How can you build a sustainable business out of a hobby?
4:07 The idea for OnSong
7:05 What the app does
9:13 What’s happened since the product’s release
12:30 Marketing OnSong
14:45 On new computing form factors

You can download the podcast here: Silicon Pasture Podcast – Jason Kichline.

[A collection of other Silicon Pasture posts.]

Theme music: “Odyssey” by Woolfy.

Here’s another in our series of interviews with successful entrepreneurs in which they talk about the mistakes that helped shape their careers. Our guest is Tim Berry, a co-founder of Borland Software and founder of Palo Alto Software, the publisher of Business Plan Pro and Marketing Plan Pro, among other titles.

Tim has shared many other great mistake stories on his blog.

UPDATE 3 Jun, 5:23 central time. After our discussion, Tim was inspired to write a new post, “5 Business Fundamentals I Learned the Hard Way.” -Either he was inspired or really low on ideas ;)

Tim Berry Mistake Bank Podcast (25:45)

Content:

0:40 The making of an entrepreneur
5:10 An early mistake – with serendipitous results
10:10 “Adjusting the aim” when evaluating people
15:16 Believing the hype of the dot-com era
19:12 The importance of killing mediocre products

(audio content copyright 2010 John Caddell)

Previous podcasts can be found here.

Here’s our second podcast focusing on the mistake stories of successful entrepreneurs. Our guest is Charlie Crystle, who founded Chilisoft, a web infrastructure provider which in 1999 was sold to Cobalt Networks for $70 million. He and two partners later started Mission Research, which offers low-cost business software to support nonprofits. Now he is working on a new venture and advising startups.

Download the Charlie Crystle podcast (28:27).

Content:

1:10 Investing in someone else’s dream
4:00 On breaking up with a business partner
5:53 “Lessons learned doesn’t necessarily mean lessons applied.”
7:40 Personnel mistakes
12:50 Knowing when to step aside
16:45 On mistakes by your employees
20:00 Consequences of a culture of withholding information
21:00 “Startups have a lot to do with learning along the way”

(audio content copyright 2010 John Caddell)

Welcome to the first in a series of podcasts in which we explore learning from mistakes with successful entrepreneurs. First up, John Bliss, founder of Bliss PR, discusses starting out working for the family business, then going out on his own, and what he learned along the way.

Download the John Bliss podcast

Content:

0:45 A brief history of Bliss PR
4:35 When you’re starting out, you’ll take any business you have
6:55 A mistake – sharing equity with a business partner
10:00 Another mistake – losing focus
12:20 A few hiring mistakes
15:30 Going downmarket in bad times
17:15 Learning from mistakes my dad made
19:40 “It’s a ‘we’ business”

(Thanks to John, and also to Elizabeth Sosnow for connecting us.)

(audio content copyright 2010 John Caddell)

We talked to Sydney Finkelstein, co-author of “Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You” back in March. In this excerpt, Syd discusses 4 red flag conditions that could indicate faulty decisionmaking.

Minipodcast (4:59)

For more information, you can access a web site with more resources about “Think Again.” And you can find the complete 20-minute podcast here.

In this minipodcast, my friend Robert Wiesheu, who has sold in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for more than 10 years, discusses a little-known corner of the sales world: the use of local agents to break into a new country market. It’s a challenging area with lots of traps – listen to Robert’s common-sense recommendations.

Podcast file (2:21)

Related post:
Full Shop Talk Podcast with Robert Wiesheu

Roberto Verganti’s book “Design-Driven Innovation” is one of the best business books of the year. It discusses the methods certain companies use to create products with radically new meanings, offering customers something they never realized they wanted and generating long-term competitive advantage and outsized profits as well. In this podcast, Professor Verganti discusses the ideas behind the book and how it applies to companies like Apple, BMW, Artemide, and Harley-Davidson.

For more information, visit the book’s companion website.

Podcast: Roberto Verganti on Design-Driven Innovation (mp3, 39:41)

Timeline:

0:35 What is the “meaning” of a product?

6:00 The meaningfulness of the iPhone

13:50 The role of “interpreters” in Design-Driven Innovation

19:50 Relationships between companies and interpreters

23:45 What is the CEO’s role in Design-Driven Innovation?

30:00 How much of the CEO’s time is required?

33:25 More resources on Design-Driven Innovation

Related post:
Review: “Design-Driven Innovation”

[Theme music: "Up the Coast" from West Indian Girl's CD "4th and Wall"]

UPDATE 20 October 2009: There is now a video tour of the FCX Clarity:

We talked to Todd Mittleman of Honda last spring about Honda’s environmentally-focused cars, the Civic GX natural gas vehicle and the FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle (which, at the time, had not yet been released).

Well, a lot has changed in a year. The FCX is now out, and that’s the least of the news since then. People have reined in spending in many ways, not least of which is their utter reluctance to purchase a car from any manufacturer.

So how do green vehicles fit into Honda’s strategy now? We brought Todd back for another discussion. Podcast file: todd-mittleman-mar-2009 (21:37).

Highlights:
0:25 Description of Civic GX and FCX Clarity
4:15 Positioning of “green” vehicles in current economic climate
8:20 Does the US government’s support of alternate energy help the GX and Clarity?
10:45 Positioning of the new hybrid Insight versus the GX
14:17 More on the FCX Clarity
15:50 First customer feedback on the Clarity

(Photo: the Honda FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle)

I recently finished “Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You” and it is my favorite business book of the year so far. Sydney Finkelstein and his co-authors, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell, systematically dissect why we sometimes make and carry through terrible business decisions–whether it’s a poor acquisition decision, an ill-fated product redesign, or even deciding to park our money with Bernie Madoff or Allen Stanford. Even better, they let us know how to create structures that identify possibly faulty decisions in order to avoid them or, at minimum, monitor their outcomes carefully so bad ones can be reversed as quickly as possible.

Syd is a clear, engaging speaker, and was a delight to have on the podcast. Listen in for a 20-minute lesson on how we decide and how we can decide better. The podcast file is here.

Summary:

0:33 – Why studying decisions gone wrong is interesting and useful

1:05 – How our brain’s evolution impacts sound decisionmaking

2:35 – Has the complexity of our businesses outpaced our brain’s ability to keep up?

3:38 – Four red-flag conditions indicating possible faulty decisionmaking

8:03 – Decision-affecting attachments to people, ideas, things

9:20 – Important decisionmaking process safeguards

For more information, you can access a web site with more resources about “Think Again.”

[Theme music: "Up the Coast" by West Indian Girl, from their album "4th & Wall."]