Stephen D’Angelo and Carol Christopher are two successful entrepreneurs who share their great leadership tips.
Stephen D’Angelo is a best selling author and Silicon Valley veteran with more than 30 years experience in the tech industry. He has led global sales organizations as a CRO and served as CEO and President of both private and publicly traded companies. Stephen has been an integral part of IPO’s and company acquisitions and has helped build global organizations that become leaders in their respective market segments.
His book A Single Day of Peace serves as a guide for self-empowerment and how to climb to success in both business and personal endeavours.
Here are Stephen’s 9 Leadership Tips
#1 Winning
A leader must believe the business can win, but winning is partly dependent on the other principles of leadership.
#2 Accountability
Leaders must be accountable for their actions. Since your team will hold you accountable and you will instill accountability in them, it’s a two way street. Both groups need to be totally accountable.
#3 Transparency
Things don’t run smoothly in a business all the time. There are many bumps in the road. Acknowledge the bumps and be transparent if you don’t have all the answers. Brainstorming with your team to come up with creative solutions will make for a stronger business.
#4 Continuous learning
Learning comes in different forms and shapes for all of us. From YouTube, to books, courses and learning from each other. If you are stuck, learning from a coach or mentor can be invaluable. Don’t be afraid to reach out.
#5 Process and metrics
If your business has effective and efficient processes (think Amazon) then you will delight your customers and you can measure your results. The metrics are powerful for customer retention and improvement.
Equally important are processes for each of your job functions. If an employee understands what is expected and feel supported, then you will get the maximum output.
#6 Customer and market driven
Nothing provides repeat business like customer satisfaction. If you are focused on your customers repeat business is almost guaranteed. They will stick with you even in times where you might have supply chain or capacity issues if you are transparent and accountable.
#7 Leverage diversity
If you only hire people like you, your company will be one dimensional. Diversity in gender and age is important to the growth of your business. You need the diversity of thought and opinion. Are you open to diversity?
#8 Caring and recognition of people
Does your business leadership create a caring work environment and recognition of their efforts? From the bottom to the top, your business culture must set a standard that cares for its employees right from the first day of hire to retirement.
#9 Having fun
You and your staff spend at least 8 hours a day with each other, so make it fun and an enjoyable place to work.
For more great leadership advice from Stephen D’Angelo, listen to the full interview on our Fabulous Fempreneurship podcast.
Carol Christopher is CEO of Ellis Day Skincare Science and has a solid background in business
Carol has spent more than 25 years in the biopharma industry, focused on translating new technologies into valuable commercial products and sustainable businesses. As Director of CNS Drug Discovery at ALZA Corporation, Carol built ALZA’s CNS pipeline, and is an inventor on several of its patented products, which led to ALZA’s sale to Johnson & Johnson for $13B in 2001. After ALZA, Carol spent 10 years as a founding team member of three consecutive venture capital-backed biopharma companies (AeroGen, Alexza Pharmaceuticals, and NuMedii), where she held executive roles in finance, business development, and product development.
Carol’s advice on Leadership is to think about forming a Collective in your industry. What is a Collective? A Collective is a group of people with similar interests who can help each other grow quickly and sustainably.
Carol is the founder of a Collective in the beauty industry. With over 300 members they help each other with so many phases of their business that each individual business is able to progress at a faster pace because of all the specialized help they receive from other members of the Collective.
The beauty industry has so many competitors that it is amazing that a Collective with this many members was able to launch, given the competitive nature of the business.
Carol said the secret to success was forming relationships with leaders who were like minded. And to find leaders who felt this way, Carol found her tribe on Clubhouse. After many Clubhouse sessions, a core group formed the Collective for common good. Members are from all across the globe.
From the Clubhouse start, the Collective moved to form a Group on the Slack platform. With the ease of asking questions within the Slack group, so many issues have been solved for these beauty businesses.
From labelling, to regulatory issues, sourcing products to patents, many questions have been answered by members of the Collective.
Carol finds the Collective to be so inspiring to help founders become better leaders of their business that she recommends it to any small business group. Click here for the full podcast interview with Carol,
Elaine Slatter is a Small Business Expert, founder of XL Consulting Group and author of the popular book, “Fabulous Fempreneurship”, a complete business guide for women. XL Consulting Group helps entrepreneurs with market planning, strategy, branding, web design and social media. She has over 30 years of executive business and marketing experience and is ready to help you rocket your business to success. Elaine is passionate about mentoring women to become successful women entrepreneurs. To find out more, visit XL Consulting Group or join the Fabulous Fempreneurship mastermind.
