Business Mentoring

Any successful business must reinvent itself to keep going. In 35 years running her agency, Yvonne Tocquigny experienced all the ups and downs of a small business, the roller coaster that went up at some times and then came crashing down at others. Few agencies last as long as Tocquigny has, and it’s because Yvonne…

Sometimes an entrepreneur starts a business by choice. Sometimes it is by necessity. For Yvonne Tocquigny it was the latter. In 1980, she moved to Austin, Texas, then a small town, and had a job at a small agency. When she came back from a trip, the agency had folded, and with the economy in…

You never know what idea is going to work out, says TJ Muehleman of Standard Code and We&Co. As a result, it’s important to keep trying things and embracing failure. Many entrepreneurs are excited to start out and jump in the entrepreneurial waters for a few months—but as soon as they hit their first storm,…

Curiosity is one of the most overlooked ingredients in success. Asking questions of smart, successful people and getting to hear their thoughts on important topics, and learning to understand how they think and why, gives a new perspective and generates creative thinking. Joan Kingsley, author of The Fear-free Organization, says it does more than that.…

Even leaders who appreciate the importance of culture and team often struggle when the problem behavior is coming from a top performer. But Joan Kingsley, author of The Fear-free Organization, discusses how, even when it’s a superstar, there must be zero tolerance for toxic actions like bullying and other abusive behavior. Letting the high performer…

A team is more than just a collection of people. Every team is composed of a diverse group of individuals who are good at different things, with different personalities, different skills, and different ways of thinking. Joan Kingsley, the author of The Fear-free Organization, says that organizations need to do a better job of seeing…