Inc.com

Smart entrepreneurs from a variety of industries share the interview questions that tell them everything they need to know about a candidate.

Interview questions: Everyone has them.

And everyone wishes they had better ones.

So I asked smart people from a variety of fields for their favorite interview question and, more importantly, why it's their favorite and what it tells them about the candidate.

1. If we're sitting here a year from now celebrating what a great year it's been for you in this role, what did we achieve together?

"For me, the most important thing about interviews is that the interviewee interviews us. I need to know they've done their homework, truly understand our company and the role... and really want it.

"The candidate should have enough strategic vision to not only talk about how good the year has been but to answer with an eye towards that bigger-picture understanding of the company--and why they want to be here."

Randy Garutti, Shake Shack CEO

2. When have you been most satisfied in your life?

"Except with entry-level candidates, I presume reasonable job skill and intellect. Plus I believe smart people with relevant experience adapt quickly and excel in new environments where the culture fits and inspires them.

"So, I concentrate on character and how well theirs matches that of my organization.

"This question opens the door for a different kind of conversation where I push to see the match between life in my company and what this person needs to be their best and better in my company than he or she could be anywhere else."

Dick Cross, Cross Partnership founder and CEO

3. If you got hired, loved everything about this job, and are paid the salary you asked for, what kind of offer from another company would you consider?

"I like to find out how much the candidate is driven by money versus working at a place they love.

"Can they be bought?

"You'd be surprised by some of the answers."

Ilya Pozin, Ciplex founder

4. Who is your role model, and why?

"The question can reveal how introspective the candidate is about their own personal and professional development, which is a quality I have found to be highly correlated with success and ambition.

"Plus it can show what attributes and behaviors the candidate aspires to."

Clara Shih, Hearsay Social co-founder and CEO

5. What things do you not like to do?

"We tend to assume people who have held a role enjoy all aspects of that role, but I've found that is seldom the case.

"Getting an honest answer to the question requires persistence, though. I usually have to ask it a few times in different ways, but the answers are always worth the effort. For instance, I interviewed a sales candidate who said she didn't enjoy meeting new people.

"My favorite was the finance candidate who told me he hated dealing with mundane details and checking his work. Next!"

Art Papas, Bullhorn founder and CEO

6. Tell me about a project or accomplishment that you consider to be the most significant in your career.

"I find that this question opens the door to further questions and enables someone to highlight themselves in a specific, non-generic way.

"Plus additional questions can easily follow: What position did you hold when you achieved this accomplishment? How did it impact your growth at the company? Who else was involved and how did the accomplishment impact your team?

"Discussing a single accomplishment is an easy way to open doors to additional information and insight about the person, their work habits, and how they work with others."

Deborah Sweeney, MyCorporation owner and CEO

7. Tell me how...

"I don't have one favorite question because I believe a great interview takes on a life of its own, becoming more of a conversation than a formal process.

"Ultimately we're looking for people who are motivated, disciplined, good spirited, possessing skills and passion, so I ask indirect questions about the creative process, about articulating and demystifying the process of creating great food and great service.

"Then I trust my instincts. Reading the eyes of the candidate is a final test I've come to rely on--because the eyes never lie."

Eric Ripert, Le Bernardin chef and co-owner

8. What's your superpower, or what's your spirit animal?

"During her interview I asked my current executive assistant what was her favorite animal. She told me it was a duck, because ducks are calm on the surface and hustling like crazy getting things done under the surface.

"I think this was an amazing response and a perfect description for the role of an EA. For the record, she's been working with us for over a year now and is amazing at her job."

Ryan Holmes, HootSuite CEO

9. Why have you had x amount of jobs in y years?

"This question helps me get a full picture of the candidate's work history. What keeps them motivated? Why, if they have, did they jump from job to job? And what is the key factor when they leave?

"The answer shows me their loyalty and their reasoning process. Do they believe someone always keeps them down (managers, bosses, etc.)? Do they get bored easily?

"There is nothing inherently wrong with moving from job to job--the reasons why are what matters."

Shama Kabani, The Marketing Zen Group founder and CEO

10. We're constantly making things better, faster, smarter or less expensive. We leverage technology or improve processes. In other words, we strive to do more--with less. Tell me about a recent project or problem that you made better, faster, smarter, more efficient, or less expensive.

"Good candidates will have lots of answers to this question. Great candidates will get excited as they share their answers.

"In 13 years we've only passed along one price increase to our customers. That's not because our costs have decreased--quite the contrary. We've been able to maintain our prices because we've gotten better at what we do. Our team, at every level, has their ears to the ground looking for problems to solve.

"Every new employee needs to do that, too."

Edward Wimmer, RoadID co-founder and co-owner

11. Discuss a specific accomplishment you've achieved in a previous position that indicates you will thrive in this position.

"Past performance is usually the best indicator of future success.

"If the candidate can't point to a prior accomplishment, they are unlikely to be able to accomplish much at our organization--or yours."

Dave Lavinsky, Growthink co-founder and president

12. So, (insert name), what's your story?

"This inane question immediately puts an interviewee on the defensive because there is no right answer or wrong answer. But there is an answer.

"It's a question that asks for a creative response. It's an invitation to the candidate to play the game and see where it goes without worrying about the right answer. By playing along, it tells me a lot about the character, imagination, and inventiveness of the person.

"The question, as obtuse as it might sound to the interviewee, is the beginning of a story and in today's world of selling oneself, or one's company, it's the ability to tell a story and create a feeling that sells the brand--whether it's a product or a person.

"The way they look at me when the question is asked also tells me something about their likeability. If they act defensive, look uncomfortable, and pause longer than a few seconds, it tells me they probably take things too literally and are not broad thinkers. In our business we need broad thinkers."

Richard Funess, Finn Partners managing partner

13. What questions do you have for me?

"I love asking this question really early in the interview--it shows me whether the candidate can think quickly on their feet, and also reveals their level of preparation and strategic thinking.

"I often find you can learn more about a person based on the questions they ask versus the answers they give."

Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and CEO

14. Tell us about a time when things didn't go the way you wanted-- like a promotion you wanted and didn't get, or a project that didn't turn out how you had hoped.

"It's a simple question that says so much. Candidates may say they understand the importance of working as a team but that doesn't mean they actually know how to work as a team. We need self-starters that will view their position as a partnership.

"Answers tend to fall into three basic categories: 1) blame 2) self-deprecation, or 3) opportunity for growth.

"Our company requires focused employees willing to wear many hats and sometimes go above and beyond the job description, so I want team players with the right attitude and approach. If the candidate points fingers, blames, goes negative on former employers, communicates with a sense of entitlement, or speaks in terms of their role as an individual as opposed to their position as a partnership, he or she won't do well here.

"But if they take responsibility and are eager to put what they have learned to work, they will thrive in our meritocracy."

Tony Knopp, Spotlight Ticket Management co-founder and CEO

Start-ups need a particular type of employee. Here's what you should be looking for.

If you have a great idea for a start-up, odds are good you can’t do all the work yourself. And that means that you’ll have to hire people to help you. Make the right decisions about whom to hire, and you boost your odds of success. But just one bad hire could bring your start-up to the brink of failure.

That’s what was on the mind of Christine Marcus, a 2012 graduate of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, who co-founded Phoodeez, a Cambridge-based start-up that she claimed in a recent interview is "reinventing catering to make event eating easy on diners and the environment.

When an event planner places an order, Phoodeez contacts a local restaurant to make sure it can fill the order and deliver it at the requested time. Neither the event planner nor the restaurant uses a phone during the entire transaction.

Marcus' co-founder, Sal Lupoli, is an MIT classmate from a Boston restaurant family -- it operates Salvatore's Italian restaurants that cater MIT events -- serving "awesome pizzas." In 2011, Marcus and Lupoli developed Phoodeez working with MIT event planners and Salvatore's to assemble "a basic web site that offered simple packages and the right amounts. It worked and took on a life of its own -- word spread across MIT," said Marcus.

Based on her experience, Marcus is building her start-up’s team based on “culture, values, and the kind of company we are building. And we look for team members who fit those elements in addition to the technical skills.”

Here are Marcus’s four principles for building a winning start-up team:

1. Identify your start-up’s mission and core values.

The first step to building a team is to know why your start-up exists and what it stands for.

Marcus wants Phoodeez to make a difference for employees and local businesses. Here’s what she means by that: “Our Company is about building a successful venture that disrupts a very lucrative industry to level the playing field and give the best local businesses a larger piece of that pie. For us it is about essentially changing people's lives by driving more business to local restaurants than they ever thought possible. This creates jobs that support families, and the local communities in a way that improves numerous lives.”

To build your start-up’s team, you have to start with a statement with that kind of clarity so you can make sure the people you hire will fit with its mission and core values.

2. Know how your start-up outpaces the herd.

Start-ups have a nasty habit of failing most of the time. If you want yours to have a chance of beating the odds, you have to know what will make it better than everyone else in your market.

Marcus decided that Phoodeez would compete by delivering better customer service. Even though the start-up is in e-commerce, she hopes “customers come to us is because of our customer service that takes the stress of event planning and catering off their plate. Many people start such a company with the first hire being a technical cofounder/web developer. Our first hire was a customer service concierge.”

Before you decide whom to hire, make sure you know what skills your start-up needs to win and how well the people you hire can perform those critical activities.

3. Only hire people who are willing to work long hours.

One of the most remarkable skills of a successful entrepreneur is the ability to attract and motivate people who will work killer hours and do lots of different jobs for very little pay. And since start-ups don’t have the cash flow to pay loafers, one bad hire can sink the entire team.

Marcus is very careful to make sure everyone she hires has the right work ethic. To do that, says Marcus, “We look for team members who are willing and have demonstrated a track record that they are willing to do what it takes in terms of supporting the rest of the team.”

Given the cost of a bad start-up hire, I urge you to follow her example on this.

4. Fill your team with people who believe in your start-up’s mission.

The reason it’s possible for winning start-up CEOs to hire people willing to work so hard is that its mission and values are a form of valuable emotional currency. They’re also a great way to screen people who will fit well with the rest of your team.

As Marcus noted, “We look for team members that understand at our core what we are trying to accomplish, and that are not merely looking for a quick return from a future exit or IPO. While of course those monetary returns are desirable, team members must be able to see beyond that and must be motivated by the more fundamental values of making a difference first.”

This is a key principle of Hungry Start-up Strategy, and I urge you to apply it.

After burning through $48 million, the Fab.com founder learned a key start-up lesson: Be ready to turn on a dime.

Jason Goldberg pulled off one of the most successful pivots of all time when he turned Fabulis.com, a failed gay social network, into Fab.com, a fast-growing flash-sale site that raked in more than $100 million in sales last year. But Goldberg might never have changed gears so quickly had his first company, Jobster, not been a total failure.

With Jobster, we were going to help companies recruit employees using their social networks. The problem was that the product never really delivered on that promise. We hired 165 people and raised $48 million on my watch. We put ourselves on a path of going bigger and bigger before the product was ready.

We crashed really hard. I cut the staff to fewer than 50 people. Eventually, we brought in someone else to try to save the company as CEO, and I left.

It was tough. I was the poster boy for wasting investor money, and I knew it. But to me, it was never a question of whether I'd start over again. For me, the question was, How can I do it better next time?

I started Socialmedian immediately. It was just me and a couple of developers. I went to some investors and said, "I have an idea for a service where people get the news based on what their Facebook friends and Twitter followers are reading. You'll give me a maximum of $50,000, and I'm going to spend a year proving this idea. If I haven't proved it, we'll shut it down." Socialmedian got big quickly. We sold it in 11 months for $7.5 million.

When I started Fabulis, I used a similar strategy. I had a hunch that we could launch a social network around the gay community. After a year, we'd built an interesting service, but it hadn't ever taken off. So I told my investors we were going to pivot.

Knowing that I should have changed course sooner at Jobster is what really saved us at Fab. I learned that a sales pitch isn't enough if you don't have the best product. Even though we have 600 employees today, not a pixel gets on Fab's website that I haven't looked at. It's that pixel-perfect mentality that sets you apart.

First job: Clinton White House aide
Age when he launched Jobster: 32
Products sold on Fab since 2011: 4.6 million

Want your tweets to reach more potential customers? New research offers plenty of simple suggestions you can implement today.

Social media is an awesome way for small businesses to connect with potential customers, but it's only effective if people are actually listening and sharing your content. A presence isn't enough—what you need is followers.

How do you get them?

There's about a million self-described gurus out there that will offer suggestions for a price, but if you're the type that's more convinced by concrete numbers and scientific analysis, than Big Think suggests another resource for you: a recent study that analyzed over half a million tweets, trying to find out what practices are correlated with high numbers of followers and which annoying practices will get you unfollowed.

The article lists four definite Twitter turn offs to avoid uncovered by the researchers, as well as an impressive baker's dozen of research-backed suggestions to improve your follower count. Some, such as "write tweets that get retweeted" aren't particularly shocking or actionable, but among the ideas are simple, practical things you can start doing today, including:

Spread information and share links: In this study "informational content" was described as tweets containing a URL, RT (retweet), MT (modified tweet), HT (heard through) and tweets containing "via"-- all indicators that information is being shared... the positive effect of informational content was thirty times the (negative) effect of tweets people wrote specifically about themselves.

Have a detailed profile: Users with a longer profile description gained more followers.

List a URL: Users with a link to a website ended up gaining more followers.

Go on tweeting sprees: Users with a high level of 'burstiness' gained more followers... I read this as implying that interesting people can't always fit everything they want to say into 140 characters and interesting people get followed more, again--just a hunch.

Be positive: Users who used positive language gained more followers.

Be eloquent: People who used longer (real) words gained more followers.

Give up your location: People who gained the most followers listed their location in their profile.

For many more dos and don'ts, as well as more information on the study and commentary on the findings, check out the complete article.

What's your top tip for getting more twitter followers?

How to lead your company through the four phases that inevitably accompany any major change.

Creating change in any organization is a slow, rocky process requiring support from many people. It’s very rare to see one person suddenly become the Lone Ranger, inspiring an entire business to change gears without any resistance, or foot-dragging.

In order to make sure their new ideas become reality, leaders must understand the four acts of every change agenda.

The action begins in Act I as the protagonist (that’s you) prepares energetically for change. In Act II, the protagonist initiates change in the face of mounting resistance. As Act III starts, the protagonist is hard at work putting change in place, but privately frets as to whether it will succeed. Finally, in Act IV, the protagonist attempts to stabilize his or her change agenda and ensure its survival.

I argue that the change leader is doomed to fail in every stage unless he or she has a coalition on his or her side. Let me explain:

Act I: Preparing for change

No matter what change you’re proposing, there’s always some risk. As a leader you need to accept this fact, and hedge your risk. The best way to do this is to share the risk with others. Get the key players involved right at the beginning, and to make them part of the planning process.

By building a coalition around your fledging proposal for change, you not only gather support for your new idea, but you create a­­ group that will share the risk that inevitably comes with it.

Act II: Initiating change

There is power in numbers. Once you’ve got a coalition behind your change initiative, it’ll be much easier to overcome pockets of resistance.

More importantly, a coalition will confer legitimacy on the changes you want to make. With more people on your side, you’ll have more people to defend and explain the logic of your change agenda.

Act III: Putting change in place

Many leaders can get their change initiatives all the way to Act III without a coalition. But they often become players in a tragedy if they attempt to put their agenda into place without help from anyone else.

Coalitions help you avoid sabotage. No matter what you do, some people will resist your change agenda--either overtly or covertly--and will try to derail your project. It’s impossible to look for, spot, and fight resistance alone. You need coalition members to keep a watchful eye.

A coalition will also weaken the resolve of resistors and potential resistors. Confronted with a large coalition, they’ll be more tempted to throw in the towel.

Act IV: Stabilizing change

Even as your change initiative becomes part of your business culture, it will still be vulnerable to resistors and criticisms. Coalitions help deflect long-term attacks and perennial reproaches.

Leaders need to remain vigilant and make sure their coalitions remain intact through periodic checkups and meetings. Not only will shoring up your coalition strengthen your your change initiative, but it will make it easier to propose more adventurous changes in the future.

Epilogue

All change efforts follow these four acts without fail. Sometimes the drama will unfold in a matter of months; sometimes it’ll take years. It’s your job as a leader to keep your coalition engaged, active, and supportive through the ups and downs of your change agenda-;no matter how long it takes.

Hadi Partovi wants to expand computer science education. Here's how he got Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and a few other famous friends to spread the coding gospel.

For entrepreneurs, the "aha moment" can come in the unlikeliest places: in a deli, at the movies. For Hadi Partovi, it happened over dinner with the president.

It was December 2011, and as a respected angel investor and tech entrepreneur, Partovi had been invited to one of President Obama's technology roundtables in Washington D.C., where the likes of Sean Parker and Shervin Pishewar, had been invited to discuss how technology could help government and how government could help technology. When conversation turned to what could be done about unemployment in this country, Partovi piped up to suggest computer programming education as a solution. Coding, he told the president, isn't as hard as most people think, and it's certainly more fun than calculus. Plus, he explained, there are free online tutorials that teach people to code for free. For people with the know-how, Partovi said, there are high-paying, in-demand jobs to be had.

"As I was saying that," he remembers, "all that was going through the back of my mind was, 'This really is a great solution to our country's problems. Why am I talking instead of doing?'"

A little over a year later, Partovi and his twin brother Ali have become crusaders for the cause, launching a non-profit called Code.org, which recently released a hugely popular video on the importance of computer science education, complete with testimonials from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey, among others.

The goal is to spread the gospel of coding, a skill that Partovi and many of his contemporaries believe is the solution to national problems like inequality and unemployment.

"This isn't just a tech problem. It's an America problem and an America opportunity," Partovi says. "If you're worried about the gradual decline of the American dream, the way to fix that is education."

The Backstory

Education, Partovi says, is in his blood. His father founded one of the top technology universities in Iran, and even stayed in the country during the dark days of the Iranian Revolution in order to keep the school afloat. "It was important for him to stay in the country, but it was very difficult for our family, because a totalitarian Islamic government isn't exactly where you want to grow up," Partovi remembers.

After moving to New York in 1984 and graduating with computer science degrees from Harvard, both Hadi and Ali went on to achieve tremendous success in business. Hadi was on the founding team of the voice recognition software company TellMe Networks, which sold to Microsoft for $800 million. Ali, along with Tony Hsieh and Sanjay Madan, was a co-founder of the ad banner network LinkExchange, which also sold to Microsoft for $265 million. Together, the twins sold iLike, a music app for Facebook, to MySpace for $20 million, and have made wise investments as angel investors in Facebook, DropBox, Airbnb, and more. But in a family that places a premium on education, big exits and smart investments have never been enough. Hadi says, "I have cousins who tell me, 'Great job on your business success, but when are you going to do something useful like your dad did?'"

Code.org, he says, is that something. He'd been kicking around the idea of filming a public service video about coding for a few years, but the meeting with the president is what inspired him to act. Something else also happened in late 2011 that Partovi says was eye-opening. Steve Jobs died. "I realized I need to get off my ass," he says. "I'm enjoying my life. I'm wealthy, but I wasn't serving any purpose anymore."

Promoting the Cause

Partovi decided his first duty would be raising awareness because, he says, "You can't solve a problem until you realize you have one." The fact is, every year there are roughly 150,000 new jobs in computer programming, and two-thirds of them can't be filled. Meanwhile, only one in 10 high schools in the country actually teaches computer science. It's not for lack of teachers or funding either, he says. There are 6,000 full-time computer science teachers in the country today, but among advanced placement math and science teachers, roughly three quarters of them took computer programming in college. "Computer programming isn't the most important thing in the world," he says, "but it's a practical way to fix some of the top problems in our country: unemployment and inequality. It touches both problems and doesn't take billions of dollars to do it."

Thanks to their deep list of contacts in the tech industry, getting the stars of Silicon Valley lined up for the film was easy for Hadi and Ali. Drew Houston of DropBox and Square's Jack Dorsey were the first people Partovi approached, and they were on board within 30 seconds, Partovi says. That gave him the confidence to ask Bill Gates, who joined the film's cast in less than a week. Mark Zuckerberg followed.

"Once we had Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, it's a snowball effect, and it was less about asking people and more about letting them in," says Partovi. "There's a very common life story for people who go into computers, which is: I learned this awesome thing. I got a great job. I'm making more money than I thought I would. Wouldn't that be great to share it with people?"

The video went live Tuesday, and within two days had received 5 million hits on YouTube and Facebook. On Code.org's website, 4,000 teachers signed a petition to bring computer science to their schools. Another 13,000 programmers signed up as volunteers.

Now What?

Now, Partovi's working on what to do with the information. It will require facilitating after-school programs in schools around the country, lobbying for states to accept computer programming as a math or science course, and screening the abundance of tech talent willing to volunteer their time to teach coding in schools. Most crucially, though, it'll require a campaign to get kids interested in the first place. That's what excites Partovi most about the project, the fact that some 3 or 4 million kids will be shown the video in their classrooms.

"I've sat in classrooms and shown it to kids, and when the teacher asks, 'How many of you want to take a computer class?' more than half the class raises their hands," he says. "That's the goal."

The old, boring elevator speech is dead. Finally. Use these four tips to create a pitch that doesn't sound like an outdated sales speech.

Since the 1950s, sales trainers from all over the planet have pushed the elevator speech as the secret to business networking. That was yesterday.

"The elevator speech is dead, or at least it should be," says Cliff Suttle, author of The Anti-Elevator Speech. "Elevator speeches are too long, too boring, and too pushy."

An elevator speech is a pre-planned 30-second-to-two-minute response to the question "so what do you do?" Business people today have become hyper-sensitive to commercials. If anything even hints at being sales-y or fake sounding, people tune it out. "The goal of networking is not to gather sales leads, but to start business relationships and that begins with a conversation, not a sales pitch," says Suttle.

Suttle has created a system that replaces the old, worn-out elevator speech with a new approach that, he says, will have people clamoring to speak with you. I spoke with Suttle on my podcast, The Million Dollar Mindset, recently. He shared a number of thought-provoking insights about the old, worn out elevator speech. Here are some highlights from his four tips to supercharge your networking.

1. Start with a hook.

When someone asks, "what do you do," start with a short statement designed to peak their curiosity. This statement should be confusing and not lead the listener to any preconceived notion. It should not include any details about how you do what you do. So a car dealer may say, "I get you were you need to go." A realtor may start with "I make sure you have a warm place by the fire." An investment counselor might begin with "I help you sleep well at night." Notice that none of these mention how they do what they do, but they will all lead the listener to ask "what do you mean," which is the beginning of your conversation. Focus on delivery here--because you really don't want this statement to sound too contrived.

2. Stop Talking.

After you deliver your hook it's important to shut up. Don't just do something, stand there. You need to give the listener time to contemplate what you just said, get confused, and want to know more. When they ask, "what do you mean," they've invested in the conversation giving you permission to give them more details. Without the silence the hook won't work.

3. Reel them in.

After a successful hook, don't launch into a sales pitch or commercial. Your hook does not give you permission to blast them between the eyes. Ease into the next part of the Anti-Elevator Speech with what I like to call the reel. Begin to tell how you do what you do, but don't give away the show. No good mystery movie starts out with, "the butler did it." The movie keeps you in suspense until you're dying to know. You want to do this too. I ran a custom software company for over 20 years where I used this hook/reel combination--Hook: You dream it up, we make it happen. Reel: We make your computer do what you bought it to do in the first place. A hook/reel combination like this will normally lead to the question, "what do you mean." Now you've earned the right to give them details.

4. Serve, don't sell.

If you have crafted a good hook and reel you should now have them securely in a conversation. However, I always coach people to have the mindset of "how can I serve you," not "what can I sell you." Remain focused on your listener's needs, not on your needs. The more you give to the world, the more the world gives back.

Now practice! How can you deliver an Anti-Elevator Speech instead of the old, boring commercial that's come to be expected at networking events? Share your new approach with us here, or on Twitter or Facebook.

Here are four simple ways to ensure that every business conversation is productive.

Everybody knows how to have a conversation because they've been having them since they were toddlers. However, most people develop bad habits that almost guarantee that their business conversations will sometimes be meaningless wastes of time.

Here's a simple four step process for making certain that every work conversation that you have is both meaningful and worth having.

Every conversation must have a point, or there's no point in having it. With friends and family, the "point" is often to simply enjoy each other's company. You already know how to do that. Hey, relax and have fun.

In business, though, there's always an agenda to every conversation, even if it seems as if the conversation is only to "get to know" you better (or vice-versa), until such time as your co-worker becomes a friend or a family member.

Therefore, whenever you start a conversation with a co-worker (and this includes customers, bosses, colleagues, and the guy who empties the trash), have an explicit goal in mind. That way you're less likely to waste time and energy.

Similarly, if somebody opens a conversation with you, it's worthwhile to wonder why the conversation is happening and why now. It's not worth obsessing about, but if you've got a sense of the "why" it's easier to get "where" the conversation needs to go.

The ancient Chinese believed everyone has a "monkey mind" that jumps from thought to thought, like so:

• What is she thinking about me?
• Will I make a sale?
• What if I can't pay the mortgage?
• Gosh, that wallpaper is ugly.
• I've got to get the airport in two hours.
• Etc., etc., etc.

This constant mental noise pulls your attention away from the customer and towards your own perspectives, priorities and goals.

If you listen to your "monkey mind," you'll only hear a percentage of what the other person is saying. In all likelihood, you'll misunderstand and misremember what was said.

When the other person has finished speaking, re-describe, and characterize what the other person just said. This confirms that you were really listening to the other person, rather than your internal dialog ("monkey mind").

It also prevents you from continuing the conversation based upon a misunderstanding. The restatement gives the other person an opportunity to correct your perception or elaborate as necessary to make sure that you "get it."

Pause a moment to consider what you heard and have echoed back. Respond with a statement, story, or question that adds to the conversation and moves it closer to its point and purpose.

Having this kind of conversation is both difficult and easy. It's difficult because some people's "monkey minds" are the size of King Kong and chatter so loudly that they can't hear anything else.

However, once you've learned to ignore the chatter, this way of listening, reflecting, and talking quickly becomes second nature. And that's the easy part.

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Yes, your health-care-benefits costs are going to go up. But if you play your cards right, you may have more flexibility than you think.

If you're one of the many small business owners uncertain about the affects of the Affordable Care Act, take heart.

You'll probably have more flexibility than you think when the ACA goes into effect in 2014, according to a study released Monday by benefits and payroll services giant ADP, of Roseland, New Jersey. Much of the flexibility comes from managing costs carefully around the newly covered employees.

ADP's survey set out to answer one of the most important questions employers face, and that's to what extent their newly eligible employees will participate in employer-sponsored health plans versus the state health exchanges.

Answering that question is a crucial step to figuring out how much health care will cost your business in the years ahead. It's also key to understanding how businesses should construct health benefit plans in advance of the new regulations--or whether they should offer them at all.

"The small business with the right approach [to ACA] will develop a leg up," says David Marini, vice president and managing director of strategic advisory services for ADP, which examined data on 300 businesses with 1,000 employees or more.

In case you're wondering, employers who offered health care paid $7,225 per enrolled employee in 2012 on average, ADP says. And generally speaking, the costs of health care will rise by a percentage equivalent to the increase in the percentage of covered employees.

Come 2014, there will be between 5 million and 15 million newly eligible employees, says Chris Ryan vice president at SHPS, a healthcare benefits solutions provider, and author of the paper.

"The biggest cost in 2014 is the increase in the size of the eligible population," Ryan says.

But the majority of new health-care participants will also be low-wage workers, ADP says. And the ACA's trickiest provisions, including employer penalties and taxes, revolve around the affordability of your plan.

Currently, only 37 percent of workers making between $15,000 and $20,000 annually participate in employer plans, compared to 81 percent of employees earning more than $45,000 annually. One reason for lower participation rates of low-wage workers is that health-care premiums can eat up between 5 percent and 10 percent of such workers' disposable income, ADP says.

But if your business has 50 employees or more, the ACA says your health plan must cost no more than 9.5 percent of disposable income for single self-insured employees, or you'll pay a penalty of $3,000 per worker buying coverage from an exchange.

Across ADP's entire study population, only 8.6 percent of single full-time employees paid 9.5 percent or more of earnings for coverage. And only 1 percent purchased self-only coverage. The remaining 7.6 percent purchased coverage for dependents as well.

Under a recent IRS rule, called the W-2 safe harbor, it turns out that business owners can take advantage of a loophole for unaffordable family coverage. As long as they offer family coverage, along with affordable coverage for the insured employee, the employer won't pay a tax penalty for uncovered employees.

"The best option may be to offer [affordable] self-only coverage," Ryan says.

The rule, however, is controversial since it was passed by the IRS, not Congress. Plus, critics have said it does away with a central tenent of the ACA, which is to ensure affordable coverage for individuals and their dependents. While the loophole may prove to be short-lived, workers who want more affordable family coverage will likely seek it from the exchanges.

Unfortunately, it's unclear whether every state will offer dependent coverage. It also means tax-payers will have to foot the bill. (But hey, you pay taxes too.)

Remember, though, if you don't offer minimally acceptable coverage for your employees, meaning that their coverage pays for at least 60 percent of their health care costs, and you have 50 workers or more, you'll be on the hook for $2,000 per uncovered employee, minus the first 30. Even for a business with just 50 workers, that comes out to $40,000 annually.

While some businesses will want to manage toward part-time workers to avoid paying for coverage and to avoid paying penalties, Marini says, that may be a short-sighted strategy. Offering great benefits, including a good health care plan, is one way of attracting better employees.

"There has been an evolution in thinking and cooler heads are prevailing, and many small businesses are wondering, can I do a better job at managing this than my competitors," Marini says.

In the last 15 months, the investor has acquired 28 daily newspapers. Here's why--and what you might learn from the strategy.

Warren Buffett opened his annual letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway--where he serves as chairman of the board--with a disclaimer: “A number of good things happened at Berkshire last year, but let’s first get the bad news out of the way.”

He apologized for the lackluster gains of 2012, noting, “When the partnership I ran took control of Berkshire in 1965, I could never have dreamed that a year in which we had a gain of $24.1 billion would be subpar. But subpar it was.”

Buffett then went on to describe several deals and acquisitions from the past year that had him excited. Among them, surprisingly: newspapers. Berkshire Hathaway has acquired 28 daily newspapers in the past 15 months at a cost of $344 million.

“This may puzzle you [as] I have long told you in these letters and at our annual meetings that the circulation, advertising and profits of the newspaper industry overall are certain to decline,” he wrote.

Why, if newspaper sales are going down the tubes, would one of the world’s most recognizable serial entrepreneurs invest in them?

There are a few reasons, Buffett explains. And you might learn something from them.

The product is something people will always want.

“News is what people don’t know that they want to know,” Buffett quips. He believes that people will seek out the news--or information that is of particular importance to them--no matter what.

The trick, he says, is determining how to provide news to consumers in a way that is immediate, easy to access, reliable, comprehensive, and cheap. Oh yeah, and still make a profit doing it. He thinks that can be done.

The industry has evolved--but the product still has value.

According to Buffett, the word “news” used to mean what we think of as “breaking news.” In other words, news meant highly exclusive information delivered to the public in a timely manner. That’s all changing now, he says.

“Stock market quotes and the details of national sports events are old news long before the presses begin to roll,” Buffett says. But people still rely on old-school papers for the delivery of local news--an argument that has been reinforced time and again by the continued growth of the so-called "hyper local" news market.

“Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents," Buffett says.

Great innovators embrace challenges.

“Even a valuable product can self-destruct from a faulty business strategy,” writes Buffett. This, it would seem, is how he categorizes the advertising-dependent business model of traditional newspapers. The time is ripe for a new strategy, he contends, citing pay models like those adopted by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

But will the public pay for small town news? Sure, Buffett says. He's seen it done.

He cites the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette as the "main exemplar for local newspapers." The Democrat-Gazette adopted a pay format early on, he says, and has been able to retain circulation “far better than any other large paper in the country.”

Berkshire Hathaways's newspapers, Buffett says, have only just begun exploring pay arrangements in the past year--but he's hopeful.

Whatever pay model works best will be copied--and widely, he says. Of course, Buffett is still a pragmatist. And he does not approach the newspaper business with naivete. Berkshire Hathaway, he says bluntly, "will not continue the operation of any business doomed to unending losses."

Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey talks about his new company, Tully's Coffee.

Just days after he acquired Tully's Coffee, Grey's Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey was already fielding customer service requests. "I walked into a store, and a woman came up to me who wasn't very happy, because there was no fresh lemon," he says, laughing.

Tully's, a 21-year-old Seattle-based coffee chain, filed for bankruptcy in October and was put up for auction. When Dempsey heard potential bidders might close some of Tully's 47 stores and cut jobs, he jumped to keep the brand alive. The actor's $9.2 million bid for the company was accepted in January.

Once he irons out Tully's finances, Dempsey wants to give the stores a face-lift and possibly pursue B Corporation status, a certification for companies with a social mission. "We need to think about recycling, fair trade, and giving back to the community," he says. Though Dempsey is optimistic about the future of Tully's, he admits he's a bit anxious. "My lack of knowledge scares me most," he says, "but I think in life, you are always beginning."

In an exclusive Inc. video interview, Branson relives one of his favorite publicity stunts: attacking Coke. With a tank. In Times Square.

Video Transcript

00:12 Eric Schurenberg: Another crucial element of the Virgin brand is fun, of course, as everybody knows. And the marketing for Virgin properties have included balloon trips across the Atlantic and airships towing signs saying, "VA can't get it up". Where did that genius marketing come from? Was it organic? Was it advice from the outside? And can you offer advice to entrepreneurs who would like to imitate some of that?

00:40 Richard Branson: Well, the advice originally came from somebody called Sir Freddie Laker, who was... Who ran a... Was the first person to come in with a low, low cost airline, and British Airways drove him out of business. And I had lunch with him, and said look, "You know I'm thinking of stepping into your shoes, how can I avoid the same things that happened to you happen to us?" And he basically said, "Look, I would try to create the best airline in the world. Don't just go after the backend of the plane, try to make sure it's the best quality airline. And you're never gonna have the advertising spend to outspend British Airways. Use yourself to get on the front pages of the papers, rather than a little footnote on the back pages. And if it means making a fool of yourself, for God's sake, make a fool of yourself." And believe it or not, I was actually quite shy in those days. I mean, a lot of people would wryly smile when they hear me saying that. But I had to overcome that shyness and learn how to use myself to put Virgin on the map. And the first inaugural flight, where we had one plane, you know I turned up dressed up as the captain and we had a blast and we had a lot of fun. And we ended up on the front pages rather than the back pages. And I started learning the art of using myself to get the Virgin brand out there and over the years we've had a lot of fun doing it.

02:34 Schurenberg: My favorite Virgin stunt was your driving a Sherman tank in the Times Square to launch Virgin Cola and pointing the gun at the big Coca-Cola sign. What was your favorite?

02:44 Branson: Well, I'll just finish that story. 'Cause it was before 9/11, and therefore you could get away with things which you certainly would be unwise to try today. So the night... We'd launched Virgin Cola. It was taking Britain by storm. And we were outselling Coca-Cola, we were outselling Pepsi Cola. People loved it. We were getting front page headline stories. And so we thought, now it's time to take Coke on in their home base of America. So we arrive in America with a Sherman tank. We drive into Times Square. We had these Coca-Cola, tons of, about three tons of Coke stacked up in the middle of the square. The night before, we had actually had pyrotechnics sneak up onto the Coca-Cola sign up, which was having over and above Times Square, so it was all wired to look like it had exploded. And then so we turned the turret of the tank onto it. And the police just thought we were just going to pretend to fire at this thing. As we went over, we crushed all these Coca-Cola cans and the Coke was spurting everywhere, I fired the barrel of the gun, the whole Coke sign looked like it had exploded in front of us. It was wonderful looking at these policemen's faces [chuckle] Anyway, good laugh had by all, no damage done. The Coke sign didn't really go up...

A new breed of apps takes a holistic approach to an age-old conundrum.

Like most people, I struggle with time management. Among other bad habits, I stay up too late at night and take too many coffee breaks during the day. I've tried time-management apps in the past, but most of them focus on how many hours you spend on websites or work-related projects. Now, there's a new breed of apps that takes a more holistic view of how you spend your days and nights, both online and off. I tested two of them, Lift and Chronos, to see if they could help me use my time more wisely.

Lift, a free iPhone app with Web and Android versions due out this year, lets you set daily goals and track your progress. After downloading the app on my iPhone 4S, I browsed a list of "habits" and checked off the ones I wanted to work on, including "Scan my business receipts daily" and "Sleep eight hours a night." I also typed in a few custom goals, including "Drink only three cups of coffee a day" and "Spend only one hour a day reading blogs."

Each time I completed a goal, I had to remember to open the app and press a corresponding check mark. To nudge me in the right direction, Lift sent daily email reminders. I also received "props" from other users when I completed goals--a fun feature that helped me stay motivated. The app charted my progress by displaying stats in bar graphs. After three weeks, I was drinking less coffee and getting more sleep.I was even scanning my business receipts regularly.

Lift was a big help. But I worried that manually checking off my activities would grow tiresome. That's where Chronos comes in. The free iPhone app uses your phone's accelerometer, GPS, and other location services to track your activities for you. After installing it, I adjusted sliders to indicate how much time I wanted to spend on various activities, including sleep (eight hours a night) and hanging out at a local coffee shop (two hours a week).

Chronos went to work right away. When I visited the coffee shop, it noted my location and how long I was there. The app figured out how much I was sleeping by noting when I set my phone down for a long period at night. Much like Lift, Chronos features progress reports in graph form. You can also view a map to see how much time you're spending at various places. Unlike Lift, Chronos does not send daily email reminders or encouragement from other users, which I missed. Still, after two weeks, I had cut my time at the coffee shop to half an hour per week and was sleeping eight hours a night. Not bad.

My verdict? Lift is the ticket for people who need external motivation. Don't want the hassle of tracking your activities? Try Chronos. If you're like me, the last thing you need is a time-management tool that takes up time.

Texas is enjoying a rapidly growing and evolving entrepreneurial sector and it has nothing to do with the Lone Star state's famous brisket.

Deep in the heart of Texas, many would tell you that when it comes to "big and bright," that's exclusively the realm of the stars at night and the lights that shine down upon Friday clashes on the gridiron.

However, the leaders gathered at the Houstonian for Inc.'s celebration of Texas entrepreneurs rightly put the rapidly growing and evolving entrepreneurial sector alongside the state's revered stars and brisket.

Sound like a little bit of Texas bravado? They've earned it.

Texas has close to 400 companies on the 2012 Inc. 5000 list. And since 2008, Texas has skyrocketed into the top 10 of the State Entrepreneurial Index rankings, passing 26 states in the process. Texas entrepreneurs are creating their own wells of success that show no signs of running dry anytime soon.

So what is it about Texas that has these entrepreneurs enjoying such fantastic growth? What are these leaders doing that you can emulate for your own company? Here are three reasons our event panel thinks Texas entrepreneurs are kicking their competition all over the place and what you can do for your own business to not fall behind:

With a state legislature that goes into session on a less frequent basis than their counterparts, businesses get a chance to live and breathe without constantly readjusting to new regulatory guidelines.

Panel tip: Do your research. Put yourself in an environment that supports your business efforts. Yes, that might mean moving your business.

To paraphrase Jerry Lasco, Houston-based entrepreneur and CEO of Lasco Enterprises, the friendliness of people in Texas translates directly into how his team works together and delivers an amazing experience for his customers. Building great cultures is easy when you have people willing to invest more than just their skills into it.

Panel tip: Prioritize culture. Communicate your values clearly. When you bring in good people, they'll attract more good people. As Lasco said, "Be a great fit for 1 percent of applicants instead of an okay fit for 50 percent."

For as much as Texas has always been a bit of an independent entity, that same spirit lends itself to creating great entrepreneurs who want to build the business on their own and enable their fellow Texans to do the same.

Panel tip: Control your own destiny and don't be afraid of the lessons that come from failing on your own. As panelist Nina Vaca, chairman and CEO of Pinnacle Technical Resources said, "When my company was on the brink of bankruptcy, I bought out my partners. Things were dire, but I was in control of where we went from there. That's a powerful place to be."

So remember, while Texas still has unbearably hot summers and fire ants to deal with, it's a tremendously supportive and enabling place to build a business. No cowboy boots or spurs required.

Do more than give everyone on your team a warm, fuzzy feeling. Feed their brains.

Now I get it; I'm here as an agent provocateur.

The setting of this insight was a company-wide conference at which I was the opening speaker. I had been very carefully briefed by the company's chairman who had read my books and was quite clear about what he wanted me to cover. That's great; a good brief is always welcome. But at the reception the night before the conference started, I realized that what he wanted me to discuss was counter to that company's culture and well outside the comfort zones of the attendees. That's why I was there.

Essentially the chairman believed that there were a number of issues within his company that weren't being addressed. In some cases, this was because the topics felt unthinkable; in other cases, it was because everyone was far too polite to raise them. He needed someone to shake up the troops. When I saw the full slate of speakers, I realized that that was what we were all there for: to change the agenda.

A lot of conferences are feel-good events, with motivational speakers, and lots of networking. There's nothing wrong with that and every conference should have a social purpose. But they can do more.

This chairman wanted his people to think differently. He appreciated that if the new ideas came from him, everyone would position themselves around him; agreement (or disagreement) would be political, not real. The way to shift an agenda was to import some difficult and dangerous thinking.

I wonder how many companies use their educational meetings this strategically. After the motivational ra-ra, the cheerleading and the networking, how meaningful are these events? Conferences are expensive--in time and money. So here's a different way to think about them:

1. Dig Deeper

Ask yourself: what are we not talking about that we should talk about? Where can I find the ideas and data we need to provoke debate?

2. Open New Networks

How do we get people who usually don't talk to each other to do so? Arrange breakouts and seating so that friends can't just hang together.

3. Think Laterally

Bring in historians, artists, musicians, people who do hard work of a kind that is different from yours--but also difficult, collaborative, and successful.

4. Brain Up

Feed the minds of your people and stretch their thinking. Avoid the stale cliches of athletes, and heartwarming stories of overcoming heartbreak. Discomfort is more creative than comfort.

A new study shows that being more positive--and less self-involved--could translate to more Twitter followers

It’s advice that’s frequently given to children, politicians, and the lovelorn, and now research shows it also applies to those seeking Twitter popularity: accentuate the positive.

Oh, and don’t talk about yourself so much.

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology showed that Twitter followers can be better caught with honey than vitriol.

Rather than being funny, critical, or self-aware, researchers said, those who prioritize positivity and useful information ultimately got a higher volume of followers.

To identify these dynamics, C.J. Hutto, Sarita Yardi, and Eric Gilbert studied the online behavior of more than 500 Twitter users over the course of 15 months, in what they believe, is the first study of this kind.

Here's how to avoid being a Twitter-sphere Negative Nancy, in a few easy steps:

Be more positive. Simple enough, right? “Expressing negative sentiment has an adverse affect on follower gain,” stated the report.

Be an informer, not a “me-former.” Provide your followers with information they can use—rather than updates about yourself—and you’ll attract more of them. Research showed that those users identified as “informers” had nearly three times more followers than “meformers.” According to the report: “Informational content attracts new followers with a relative impact that is roughly 30 times higher than the impact of ‘meformer’ content, which deters growth.”

A few extras pointers:

Facebook self, meet Twitter self. Don’t reserve different platforms for different parts of your personality. Your social media "selves" should be congruent—and accurate.

Fill in the blanks. Completed Twitter user profiles, including biographical details and geographic locations, signal stronger identity—and gain more followers.

Network, network, network. Don’t just grab followers—interact with them. Re-Tweet, follow-back, and don’t just “broadcast”—direct some of your Tweets at specific audiences.

Most of the people who work for you wouldn't dare admit that these incentives don't work nearly as well as you think they do.

Through the ages, managers have tried tactics that were meant to motivate their employees to try harder--and through the ages those tactics have failed miserably. Often, they make matters worse.

In more than 20 years of writing about business management, I've seen many well-meant strategies backfire. Most of the people who work for you won't ever dare tell you what I'm about to. Here are four ways you're trying to get employees to work harder that may well be having the exact opposite effect:

1. Money

Financial incentives are unquestionably a good way to motivate anyone working for you, and especially anyone whose job involves sales or finance. But if extra money is the only motivator it won't work for long.

Peole never put their best effort forward if the only reward for doing so is a few extra dollars. There has to be something more--a feeling that they're doing important work; that your company is a family and the work they do benefits that family; the knowledge that their work will be recognized and acknowledged by someone they respect. You have to provide employees with at least one of these--along with financial incentives--if you want them to do their best for you.

2. Fear

Scaring employees into trying their hardest by either berating them or threatening them can sometimes work... for a while. But there are lots of drawbacks. You won't have their loyalty when you need it. And a terrified employee is not an innovative employee, and certainly not one willing to take risks or try out new concepts. Worse, those who have the option to move to a different company will likely do so, which means your most talented people, or the ones with the most sought-after skills will be the first ones out the door.

3. Competition

Can you work faster than the person in the next cube? Can you sell more product than the other salesperson? Can you finish your customer service call more quickly? All these challenges might seem like good ways to get employees working harder and they might be, in the short run. In the long run, though, wouldn't you rather have them working together than against each other? Don't you want your salespeople sharing leads, your team members covering for each other and helping each other out? Focus on competition--sure--but only with the other companies in your space. Never inside your own team.

4. Praise

Giving praise to the people who work for you is, of course, an essential part of being a manager. But do it when they've done something special, or finished a big task, or gotten through a particularly difficult day. Lavishing generalized praise on all employees indiscriminately will just make your good opinion seem cheap--kind of like Tallulah Bankhead calling everyone she met "darling." Give people specific praise when they've done something specific to deserve it and resist the temptation to make empty blanket statements like "You're the best team in the whole country!"

Think back to the times that you won high marks from someone who never handed out meaningless compliments. It meant a lot, didn't it? Your employees will feel the same way.

The Minnesota Society of CPAs surveyed its members and provided a list of ridiculous tax deductions. Don't try them.

That April 15 tax deadline is fast approaching, which might have you scrambling to to cram in a couple extra deductions--but don't get too creative.

The Minnesota Society of CPAs recently surveyed its members, asking them for the most creative deductions they've seen their clients try to file. Here are the seven most ridiculous.

(Don't try them; they won't work.)

1. A farmer tried to write off the food and veterinary expenses for his "guard dog." It was a toy poodle.

2. One woman tried to deduct her gambling losses. She claimed them as donations to charity.

3. A professional piano player tried to claim their manicures as business expenses.

4. One filer tried to declare their children as dependents in order to receive the associated tax break. They didn't have any children.

5. A ballerina tried to deduct her tummy tuck as a business expense.

6. One woman tried to deduct her Botox procedure as an "image enhancement" expense.

7. One client tried to deduct the expenses associated with installing a swimming pool, claiming it was a medical expense.

In an exclusive Inc. video interview, Sir Richard reveals the secret of Virgin Group's brilliant brand positioning

Video Transcript

00:12 Eric Schurenberg: What does the Virgin brand stand for across all those companies?

00:16 Richard Branson: Well, I think the Virgin brand is synonymous with a number of different things, depending on what kind of companies, but I mean, I think, people see the Virgin brand as not taking itself too seriously. It's a fun brand, an adventurous brand. It generally offers great quality at great value. It's a people brand. So I think that its a challenges... A challenger brand. And then we take on organizations much bigger than ourselves, so we like to play the David versus the Goliath role and it's a lot more fun being David than Goliath. Sometimes, you end up flattening your face as a result because Goliath has very, very big feet, especially in the case of someone like Coca Cola. On other occasions, we manage to succeed.

01:14 Schurenberg: I would say that customer service is a key part of that brand and you focus an awful lot on that. So much so, in fact, that when Virgin took over NTL Telewest, the cable and broadband provider in the UK which did not have a good reputation with customer service, you kept the Virgin name off that company until you had brought it up to your standards. Could you walk us through how you managed to improve the customer service end at that company?

01:39 Branson: Yeah, I think there are two set of examples, actually. One, where we actually changed the brand straight away, which... Where we took over a dilapidated chunk of Britain's rail network from British Rail and we called it Virgin Trains despite the fact that the track was still broken, the trains were still broken. And we went out there to educate the public that we were gonna do something about it and that we were going to buy high-speed tilting trains, and that we were going to turn it from the worse into the best. And it was hard work. I mean for four years, people would be sitting on broken down trains with a Virgin brand on it. We were in danger of damaging the Virgin's reputation. But somehow, by educating them, by doing lots of conferences showing the new trains being built, and then delivering spectacularly, we brought the public with us. And the end result was when the government actually chose to take our franchise away last year there was an absolute outcry in Britain. So it was a risky strategy, but ultimately it pulled off.

03:05 Branson: With NTL Telewest, they had a dreadful service and didn't seem to care about the customer at all. And on that occasion we decided not to brand it until we'd actually sorted out all the back-room customer service issues or as many as possible. And so when we actually did brand it, we had most of those issues sorted out. Two different approaches. Somehow it worked with Virgin Trains, perhaps it would've been better for us not to have re-branded for the first three or four years, but people would've known ultimately it was us, so... So hopefully, we did the right thing. With Virgin Media, we had the luxury of obviously having fantastic people in all, a lot of Virgin companies, and so being able to bring to the best marketing and customer service people in from other Virgin companies to imbue the company with the Virgin culture. And ultimately, it came true.

Here are ten traits that any great employer should recognize and reward instantly.

As a longtime employer of dozens, I was always grateful to have good employees. It takes a lot to recruit and maintain top talent. Every once in a while special employees come along that just really seem to get it. They drive the entire company forward in ways that were unimaginable. Advancement and reward is never an issue for these rock stars because they understand the power of cause and effect, and only a worthy company can retain them and afford them.

Here are 10 things amazing employees seem to do effortlessly. Here's how to help your great employees be even more amazing.

They understand they're part of something bigger and more worthwhile than just their job. They look to learn other areas of the business and be fluent in finance and management so they'll positively impact multiple areas of the company.

What you can do: Invest in material and seminars on business basics like accounting, marketing, and management so all employees have easy access to learn and grow.

They treat the company as if it were theirs. They look to make prudent decisions about expenses and opportunities with the long-term future of the company in mind. They easily assess risk vs. reward, selflessly when making decisions.

What you can do: Be transparent in your business. The more you share your financials and philosophy, the easier it is for employees to make the right decisions.

You don't have to be in sales or marketing to help a company grow. Strong networkers from all divisions see company growth as a collective effort and constantly keep their eyes open for ways to more than pay for themselves.

What you can do: Make sure all your employees understand your value proposition and can easily identify opportunities. Then reward them openly for their efforts.

My favorite days running companies are when I notice positive change in procedure when I was totally unaware of the need for change. Amazing employees are always looking to improve systems proactively, and they do.

What you can do: Communicate a clear written vision of where the company is going and encourage initiative so people feel safe and empowered to make change.

Amazing employees understand that hiding bad news helps no one. They find kind ways to bring uncomfortable information to the surface, but they DO bring it to the surface. They tell people what's necessary before major damage is done.

What you can do: Foster an open communication environment where people are not only given permission to tell the truth, but also absolutely required.

I always feel relaxed when I can trust an employee to perform a task to the same high standards I would expect from myself. Not all can do this without constant attention or difficulty. Amazing employees quietly drive their own high standards.

What you can do: Set the example and the tone for high performance with minimal drama. Publicly reward those who can execute in the same manner.

They not only drive their own career but they inspire others to do the same. These employees lead by example in how to advance without creating animosity or resentment. They see and create their perfect future, and also bring others along.

What you can do: Encourage personal development and peer growth through dedicated group time and learning for career advancement.

No employer expects people to know everything. In this fast changing world, I choose employees who will learn over those who know. The best employee proactively explores options, takes action and then improves without direction from the top.

What you can do: Invest time in exploration and expansive thinking. Encourage people to explore deep visionary projects with time and reward for the findings.

Amazing employees aren't always sunshine and roses. They do know how to keep it real. But they understand the dynamics of people, stress, and the blend of work, life and friendship. They are self-aware and able to direct their own path that brings out their best with family, friends and career. They exude positive energy even in stressful times and share it around, making for a happier office.

What you can do: Create an environment where people can openly express themselves. Encourage them to work hard in fulfilling ways and achieve their dreams.

Amazing employees make me grow as an employer. They self-confidently get their value and help me get mine. They make me want to be worthy of working with somebody of such high caliber, without ever saying it directly of course.

What you can do: Make effort to genuinely show appreciation for any of the behaviors above so people feel their value and will grow to full potential. Then they will do the same for you.

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