My mother always said, “Learn something new from every experience, even if you felt like you lost out”. Now, granted Madmen is a winning situation – awesome tv with great quotes every couple of minutes, so how could one not learn something from it? Throughout the several seasons of watching, I grasped quite a few entrepreneurial lessons from Madmen, and here are the 5 that I actually assimilated or saw assimilated by other startups.

If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation

The most successful startups throughout the last few years were those that went out and changed the status quo.

Air BnB changed the way we think about going on vacation.

Dropbox completely changed file-sharing, and the list goes on and on.

With social media allowing all of us to sound our tune, and a growing worldwide startup community, it’s time to stand up for what you want.

Attract Customers that Respect you

First of all, this does not mean that you should turn down customers that don’t respect you, however you should be taking time to target campaigns toward finding those people that respect your company/brand. Why would you go out of your way to do that? It’s proven that even if you make a mistake at some point in time you are more likely to retain that user because of the respect.

Gain respect with: authentic customer service, engaging content on social media, being active in the community, treat employees with care – basically avoid bad PR.

See this study put together by USC on consumer attitudes – and you’ll understand that respect from clients directed towards you is a huge plus.

Advertising is based on one thing, happiness

Stop focusing your marketing efforts on telling people to buy when they are on Twitter and Facebook. When was the last time a person signed up to use social media so he/she could be sold to?

The average Joe is on social media to have a good time – if your content helps him/her achieve that, then you’ll see positive results from your advertising.

But that’s life. One minute you’re on top of the world, the next minute some secretary’s running you over with a lawnmower.

Couldn’t that be the catchphrase for all startups? One day you feel like it’s the big day and everyone is going to want to invest, and the next day you’re asking yourself why you left your last job for this dream.

An entrepreneur has to understand this concept and conquer inner daemons in order to have a chance at staying on top of the lawnmower, because you don’t want to be underneath it.

You want some respect? Go out there and get it yourself.

So you started a startup, and now you think you are a big shot? We at BizzVenue too often run into students or colleagues at events and Meetups who think that now they are big shots as part of the startup club. Reality check – you want some respect – go out there and get it yourself with results and not status.

A bonus clip for true bizz experts.