How Would You Turnaround a Dying Best Buy?

“The best leaders don’t climb to the top, they are carried to the top!”

— Hubert Joly, CEO Best Buy

In 2012, Best Buy was in crisis; Amazon was killing Best Buy with its online pricing, the company was reporting huge losses, the stock was tanking, and the CEO was fired for misconduct. Who would have the courage to lead and turnaround the company at this point? Enter Hubert Joly, a McKinsey “turnaround” consultant!

We have always encouraged listening to these podcasts as they are great for improving business knowledge and learning from the experiences of others. Now, here is a podcast about someone who openly confesses he was not a born leader and never had the opportunity to lead large teams. How did he develop his leadership skills? When the opportunity knocked on his door, was he able to successfully lead an IT consulting firm with 3000 employees ?

Listen and learn from his experiences at three different companies until he took the office as CEO and Chairman of Best Buy.

Key Points to Ponder

• What is the role of a leader? Is it to be the smartest person in the room, come up with great ideas, and make good decisions? Or, is it something more? Think about how a good leader drives inspiration. Have you ever thought about inspiring your employees, and how much emphasis should a good leader put into that?
• What is the purpose of a company? The famous economist Milton Friedman said, "The role of a company is to create value for shareholders through profits." Do you think there is more to it? What about employees, vendors and customers? What about the communities they live in? Should the purpose of a company be to serve all of them?
• What are the steps to a successful turnaround? Most turnaround teams start with cutting down on extra expenses, selling off poor performing assets and streamlining operations. Layoffs is usually a key part of the strategy, but is that really the right way to do it? What did Hubert Joly do at Best Buy? Did he fire people the day he joined the company? What were his first steps?

Finally, pay attention to what Hubert has to say about customer focus

Focusing on the competition is interesting but not fascinating. It's all about a focus on the customer. If you're passionate about understanding the needs of the customers and then creating ways to provide a great solution for the customers, this is how you win!

Contact BBCCH and see how we can help you turn your ideas into your next business venture.

Now click below and listen to this awesome podcast from NPR.

Can a Janitor become a VP at Pepsico?

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door!”

— Milton Bene

You have heard many success stories … “rags to riches,” they call them. Now, here is one that we would like to share with you. It is inspiring; It exemplifies the pride one should feel in their work. It talks about hustle and initiative. Best of all, it proves that despite how low one starts at the bottom, a janitor doesn’t have to live and die a janitor.

Please note that there are some discrepancies in the accounts of this story, but one thing will always remain true: Richard Montañez didn’t stop where he started as a janitor in the 1990s.

Key Points to Ponder

• Initiative: How Richard answers the call to initiative with ideas, lots of ideas
• Courage: He makes a call to the CEO and presents his idea in front of the big guys
• Resilience: How he keeps taking steps forward untill he gets to the top of the company

Finally, keep in mind how he learns from his mistakes. What could Richard Montañez have done differently in his career? If he had more courage, could he have turned his innovative idea into his own business? Contact BBCCH and see how we can help you turn your ideas into your next business venture.

Now click below and listen to this awesome podcast from NPR. If you would like to read the story instead, click here

A Business Story About Cookies

“In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: Cash and Experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later. ”

— Harold Geneen

We can learn a lot from the experience of others, and use that to shape our business journey. In this curated blog post, we are bringing to you the story of someone that starts with something very small; like many of us. She loves what she is doing and continues to do it determined to make it successful. All the hard work and the small disappointments don't dishearten her from moving forward. She tries new things and learns from her experiences. Finally, a time comes when the business is running on its own. All was good, she had money, real estate and time on her hand to enjoy life until she makes one wrong decision that ruins everything for her. And then she fights … to get her business back!

Before you dive right into the podcast, prime yourself with key points you can learn from this captivating story. You will find that success is always based on a few fundamental principles.

Key Points to Ponder

• Passion: Nothing happens without passion. Her baking business wouldn’t have taken off if she didn’t have the passion to improve and perfect her craft

• Courage: She risked her personal money to setup the business because she was passionate about it. But she didn’t just stop there. Despite the obstacles, she kept moving forward maintaining a positive attitude. She experimented with recipes, sold door to door to strangers, made new investments in her business, and even paid the debt piled up by others to make her business success

• Resilience: Highs & Lows are part and parcel of any business. Things happen and they will always happen. You can’t control that. What you can control is learn to be resilient and be able to fight back like she does when adversity strikes hard.

Pay also special to attention to partnership issues and why it is important to setup partnerships correctly. Contact us and we can help you setup your partnerships correctly according to Shariat, in a way that protects the investment of all parties and gets you the Rida of Aqa Maula (TUS).

Finally, learn the importance of work / life balance from her. Money is not everything and spending all your time in business is never worth it in the end.

Now click below and listen to this riveting podcast from NPR.

Rice Business Plan Competition: Winners Announced!

Rice Business Plan Competition

TriFusion Devices from Texas A&M wins 2016 Rice Business Plan Competition

TriFusion Devices from Texas A&M University emerged as the top startup company in the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) Saturday at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business. The annual event is the world’s richest and largest student startup competition.

Selected by 275 judges from the investment sector as representing the best investment opportunity and taking home nearly $400,000 in cash and prizes, TriFusion Devices bested 41 other competitors hailing from some of the world’s top universities. TriFusion Devices offers breakthrough 3-D printed products and services aimed at revolutionizing the health care and sports-equipment industries in powerful and profitable ways.

2nd Place: Neurable, University of Michigan

$40,000 second-place prize and $280,000 Owl Investment Prize. The second-place prize was awarded by one of the sponsors of the first RBPC in 2001, Finger Interests. It was increased from $15,000 to $40,000 in memory of Jerry Finger by the Anderson Family Fund and the Greater Houston Community Foundation.

Neurable has created the first noninvasive brain-computer interface that allows for real-time control of physical objects and software.

 3rd Place: Gecko Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University

Gecko Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University takes home more than $150,000 in individual prizes including: Norton Rose Fulbright 3rd place prize, $60,000  TiE Investment prize, $50,000 US Department of Energy Clean Energy prize, $10,000 Shell Technology Prize, $10,000 Wells Fargo Clean Tech Innovation prize and $10,000 Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Challenge prize.

Gecko Robotics builds robots for industrial inspections, starting with power plants.

4th Place: Bold Diagnostics, Northwestern University

Bold Diagnostics, Northwestern University -- fourth place and more than $73,000 in individual prizes including: EY 4th place, $25,000 TMC X Digital Health Accelerator prize, $25,000 Cisco Internet of Everything Innovation Challenge prize, $20,000 NASA Earth/Space Human Health & Performance Innovation prize, Palo Alto Software Outstanding Written Business Plan prize and 4th place Mercury Fund elevator pitch prize

Bold Diagnostics is an early stage Northwestern University startup that is developing the future of blood-pressure monitoring with an innovative platform. The company’s patent-pending technology is currently being validated through a 150-person preclinical study at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. 

5th Place: Oncolinx, Dartmouth College

Oncolinx, Dartmouth College -- fifth place and more than $100,000 in individual prizes, including one of the $100,000 TiE RBPC Angel Investment prizes and 5th place Shell Technology Venture prize.

Oncolinx is developing targeted cancer therapies that both destroy the tumor and activate immunological memory to improve patient response durability.

6th Place: MDAR Technologies, Northwestern University

MDAR has developed a 3-D vision system that eliminates the trade-offs of existing technologies, thereby enabling a new wave of robotics.