Four For Friday For Entrepreneurs

Q1 - Inspiration: What was the inspiration for starting your current business?

Q2 - Hiring: What are the three most important things you look for when hiring new staff/employees?

Q3 - Personal Politics: Do the personal or political leanings of third-party vendors play a role in determining who you choose to work or partner with? For example, if you learned that a potential business partner was strongly opposed to a socially-charged issue that you were strongly in favor of (e.g., universal health care, gun control, abortion, etc.), would that information in and of itself be a determining factor in your potential or continuing business relationship?

Q4 - Dogfooding: When a business owner or leader says their company "eats its own dog food," what they mean is that the company and its employees use the company's own products and services in preference of or in replacement for like or competitive products or services. So for example, if you manufacture nutrition bars, the only nutrition bars you eat are your own. Or, if you're Microsoft, you use your own software in-house on a daily basis. To what extent do you go to encourage 'dogfooding' within your company?