Products, profits, and paychecks are not enough anymore. These days, society cares how you treat your own workers. Customers want to know you promote the same values inside your walls as you do outside; job hunters want to know you care about them before they send in an application. Your culture is your brand. You need to create an organization where your employees believe in what you do.

You can't rock the boat without being told you're off your rocker. Entrepreneurs' greatest asset is their contrarian way of thinking, their tendency to zig when others zag, to go in a new direction. But many people don't give themselves permission to get going for fear that they will be called crazy. I say not only is crazy a compliment, but if you're not called crazy when you start something new, then you're not thinking big enough!

In my experience, some of the biggest obstacles to becoming a successful entrepreneur aren't financial or structural - they are internal and psychological. It's important for dreamers to believe in themselves and their ideas, to fend off the skeptics and find others who will share in their dreams. Once you understand that being called "crazy" is a compliment, you realize that you can get beyond other people's opinions and zig when others zag.

One of the biggest lessons when it comes to working with friends and family is to have the confidence to fire your mother-in-law if need be. The way to keep issues with loved ones out of the boardroom is to create what I call a start-up prenup, a document that puts the rights and responsibilities of each partner on paper. It's OK to start a business with those you love, but make sure you have a plan if the love goes away. But too often I've seen the dreadful alternative. My advice is formalize your partnership agreement.

Agile leaders encourage their teams to adjust and experiment constantly. In today's age of oversharing, the best leaders also have to be more open and accessible. To be effective, you also have to be aware of how others perceive you and cop to your flaws every now and then. One of the lesson to successful leadership may be quite challenging but very important. Expose yourself. Allow yourself to be vulnerable - less super and more human. These "Leadership 3.0" practices, as I call them, are critical to being an effective manager when you're getting started in today's world.

A lot of people will tell you the first step to starting something new is to have an idea. But to me the first step starts long before that. The first step to acting like an entrepreneur is to look not at the writing on the wall but at the spaces between the writing. It's in the gap between what's being said and what's not being said that entrepreneurs thrive. The way to get going is to find the courage to take your dream out of your head and put it to the test in the real world. Don't just think it; act on it.

Crazy is a compliment.