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Matt Crowe – 3 Secrets From a Chess Master Who Built One of the Fastest-Growing Companies in the U.S.

Matt Crowe’s Blog

Before  he founded one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., Josh Manion was an experienced international chess master and was ranked as one of the top 80 players in the U.S.

Manion has attributed a large portion of his success with his company, digital-marketing platform Ensighten, to his involvement with chess. Mr. Manion has applied many of the lessons he has learned from the game to guide his business decisions.

“Chess was instrumental in establishing the right rigor for the way that you problem solve and approach business and life,” he says.

Here are three examples that Manion says have helped him become a better business owner.

1. If you see a good move, you should wait. There might be a better one coming soon.

Inexperienced chess players often jump at an opportunity to take an opponent’s pawn instantly, according to Manion. They’ll stop their search for their move because they’ve located one. In business, you need to make sure that you’re looking at the whole field and actually making your choices based on complete information.

2. Winning requires you to plan many moves ahead.

Too many entrepreneurs try to start businesses without having a very long-term way to create a viable company. They may get some traction or raise a first round of funding, but they don’t actually thought through the later steps of the plan, Manion says.

3. In chess, you have to manage your time or you can lose–even with the better position. The same can be said for cash in business.

In chess, you have a finite amount of time to make a moves. It doesn’t really matter what’s happening on the board. If you lose on time, you’re done. That has a strong correlation to cash in startups. It doesn’t matter if you have the best product. If you run out of cash along the way, you can’t go on.

from Matt Crowe http://ift.tt/14Rgr8a

Matt Crowe – Four Ways to Stop Saying “Um” And Other Filler Words

Matt Crowe’s Blog

Public speaking is such an important part of being an entrepreneur.  It is important to not fill your speech with place holder words.  Here are 4 easy tips to help avoid this filler language.

  1. Hear Yourself Using Filler These Words: If you ever listen to a recording of a call where you say “Um,” too much, you will have a very  natural urge to cringe. This is an important  step in helping yourself remove  filler words from your language. Once you start hearing yourself filling this silence with “Um,” you will start to notice when others do it too.
  2. Chunk Your Info:  One thing that is for sure – we are most likely to have rambling speech when we lack a strong plan for organizing these ideas.
  3. Make Eye Contact. It happens to become more awkward to use filler words when making full eye contact with a person.
  4. Pre-plan Your Transitions. One of the main functions of “Um” is to indicate to your audience that you are not done talking yet. As an alternative, have some transitions to use in any presentation or meeting.

Now you have four tips to help you improve your next presentations.

from Matt Crowe http://ift.tt/1wIxHaA