“Every entrepreneur needs to have a not-to-do list.” Entrepreneurs are trained to look for opportunity. A new customer. A new market. A new product. A new way to grow. But what if opportunity itself becomes the distraction? I recently spoke with Richard on The Tony DUrso Show. He started HomeServe with £50,000 and spent more than three decades helping build it into an international company ultimately valued at more than £4 billion. Yet Richard told me something I didn't expect. Looking back, he believes HomeServe might have become twice as large if he had learned sooner to stop pursuing so many opportunities. Richard describes entrepreneurs as “foxes.” We're curious. We see possibilities everywhere. Something new appears and our instinct is to investigate it. He says growing a great company sometimes requires becoming more like a “hedgehog” – putting up your prickles, ignoring distractions and continuing methodically in the direction that matters. That lesson about focus came from experience. HomeServe ventured into furniture warranties, insurance repairs and smart-home devices. Some of those businesses took attention away from the company's core model. “If I'd not been distracted by so many ideas, HomeServe could have been twice as big.” That's a remarkable admission from someone who built a multibillion-pound company. But Richard's story also challenges another assumption about entrepreneurship: that success requires a completely original idea. HomeServe's first business model didn't work. The company nearly ran out of money twice. At one point, Richard's business partner told him his lifelong dream of [...]

“Business, as you know, is chaos all the time.” After more than five decades in business, Terry Conway knows something about chaos. Markets change. Regulations appear. Competitors catch up. Costs rise. New technologies arrive. And every day brings another problem demanding a leader’s attention. Terry’s answer is surprisingly simple: Don’t let the noise make you lose sight of what matters. I recently spoke with Terry on The Tony DUrso Show. He spent ten years as CFO of Perdue Farms before leaving a successful career to buy a small seafood company. It had one primary product, limited distribution and just one telephone line. His friends thought he had “rocks in his head.” Terry saw an opportunity. He improved the product, modernized production, increased capacity and hit the road to make sales. One major innovation cut the time required to freeze the company’s soft-shell crabs from about 20 hours to just 38 minutes, dramatically improving quality. Then Terry began looking around the world for new sources and markets. That led to some unusual adventures. He remembers waking up with chickens in the hallway, finding a scorpion in his luggage and listening to geckos chattering on the ceiling. At one point, he earned the nickname “Indiana Jones of the seafood business.” But international growth also taught him humility. Rather than arrive in another country assuming he knew how things should be done, Terry learned to ask questions – about the culture, traditions and ways of doing business. Listen first. Learn. Then adapt. [...]

“Your past doesn't have to determine your future.” There are moments when circumstances seem to make the decision for us. A business struggles. An opportunity disappears. A plan falls apart. Someone tells us we're not capable of doing what we believe we can do. Sometimes the obstacle is even bigger than that. The question is what happens next. Eric Bailey knows something about that question. He was abandoned at birth, raised in South Central Los Angeles, diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease, and told he might never walk. Instead of allowing those circumstances to dictate what came next, he eventually became a professional basketball player, global speaker, and CEO of a multi-million-dollar enterprise. I recently sat down with Eric on The Tony DUrso Show to talk about resilience, accountability, vision, and what he calls Championship DNA. You can hear our conversation at The Tony DUrso Show, where Eric shares what entrepreneurs and leaders can learn from elite athletes about performing when the pressure is on. One idea from our conversation stayed with me. “Vision creates direction – but action creates results.” Most of us have a picture of something we'd like to accomplish. Maybe it's building a business, changing careers, becoming financially independent, improving our health, or simply creating a better life for the people we care about. But knowing where we want to go and actually getting there are two very different things. Eventually, vision has to become action. And that becomes much harder when adversity arrives. Markets [...]

“You’re not going to lose your job to AI. You’re going to lose your job to somebody that’s using AI better than you.” Artificial intelligence is changing business faster than many of us expected. Jobs are changing. Industries are being disrupted. And skills that once provided decades of security can suddenly feel uncertain. But entrepreneur and disruption expert Jay Samit sees something else happening: Opportunity. Jay has spent decades at the forefront of technological change. He pioneered technologies used by billions, raised hundreds of millions for startups, helped grow companies including LinkedIn, and held senior positions at Sony, Universal Studios, and Deloitte Digital. When Jay recently joined me on The Tony DUrso Show, we explored an important question for every entrepreneur: How do you stay relevant when the world around you keeps changing? You can listen to our conversation at The Tony DUrso Show. One of Jay’s answers begins with something surprisingly simple. Pay attention to problems. He recommends writing down three problems you encounter every day for 30 days. The exercise trains you to stop moving through life on autopilot and notice what others simply accept. Why is this so difficult? Why hasn’t somebody created a better way? A frustration may reveal a problem. A problem may reveal an unmet need. And an unmet need may become a business. “Obstacles are opportunities in disguise.” That’s especially powerful today because AI gives entrepreneurs capabilities that once required substantial money, specialized knowledge, and entire teams. Jay encourages entrepreneurs to stop [...]

"Resilience helps you survive. Adaptability helps you grow." Entrepreneurs have always been told to be resilient. Work harder. Push through. Bounce back. Those qualities still matter, but according to adaptability expert Anne Grady, they are no longer enough in today's rapidly changing business environment. During a recent conversation on The Tony DUrso Show, Anne explained that tomorrow's most successful leaders won't necessarily be the smartest or the strongest. They'll be the ones who learn to adapt. Artificial intelligence is transforming industries. Markets shift overnight. Customer expectations continue to evolve. For entrepreneurs, uncertainty has become part of everyday business. The challenge is that our brains aren't naturally designed to embrace uncertainty. Anne explained that the human brain is constantly scanning for threats. When faced with uncertainty, it often responds by becoming more skeptical, more critical, and less collaborative. That's why change can feel uncomfortable — even when it's leading us toward something better. One idea that stood out was emotional aptitude. Anne describes emotional aptitude as the ability to understand your emotions, recognize how they affect others, and intentionally regulate your responses. For entrepreneurs and business owners, that skill may be more important than ever. According to Anne, leaders become the emotional thermostat of their organization. Walk into a meeting stressed or overwhelmed, and that emotion spreads throughout the team. Walk in calm and confident, and that spreads just as quickly. "Leaders become the emotional thermostat of their company." That idea resonated with me because leadership isn't only about making [...]