50 Entrepreneurs share priceless advice

Do something that you are very passionate about and don't try to chase whatever the passion of the day is. People say that you should have a lot of passion for what you are doing and it is totally true and the reason is. It's because it's so hard that if you don't do it any rational person would give up, it's very hard and you have to do it for a sustained period of time, so if you don't love it and you don't have fun doing it, you don't really love it, you leave. to perform, so go and do it, try to learn from it, you know you will fail at some things, it is a learning experience that you need to be able to take it to the next experience. and don't let the people you respect and believe in know what they are talking about, don't let them tell you that it can't be done because many times they will tell you that it can't be done and it's only because they don't have the courage to try. .

I think people who are looking for great ideas to make money, you know, are almost as successful as those who say, okay, what do I really love to do? What excites me? What do I know something about you? knowing what is interesting and forcing it, it is very rewarding when you work on something that you think is going to make a big difference and yes, it is a little more difficult, but I think that the passion that one can bring brings much more energy. To say that you are more likely to succeed, you must have an emotional investment in what you are doing, if you don't love what you are doing, failure is practically guaranteed, success is by no means guaranteed, but failure is. .

It's more likely that if you don't love what you're doing, if you know exactly what you want to be, you need to spend as much time with people who you actually already know. One of the things I do is question a lot. of things and you can do it in a good way or a bad way, but hopefully, if you try to get people to motivate why they are doing something and their way of thinking, you know that the worst thing you can end up with is a situation where They tell you well, this is how it's always been, it's the worst thing ever, that's not an answer, instead ask yourself, you know, given everything you have today, is there a way we can make this better and, therefore, when we come up with ideas, you know that we always ask ourselves what kind of new market is it creating and then also what part of my day and what problem is it solving and that is why I have come to take a complete catalog of my day since the moment I like it.

I open my eyes and write down everything I do and then ask myself: is there anything here if you can't come up with ten ideas a day? That's why I have this. It doesn't occur to me when I'm filling up. This page every day so my idea of ​​muscle will atrophy and I started this in 2001 and I still do it every day like you have to think of ideas every day or the idea that muscle atrophies. The good news is that after about six months of doing that, you are like a machine, like people are surprised at how many ideas you could have anywhere, but you understand that naturally no one is interested in your idea, to the world They don't care, you have to persuade them and you have to prove that you are the only person who can do it when it comes to changing the world, what I learned from Steve Jobs is that if you believe in a Macintosh, if you believe in the iPhone, iPod, iPad , if you believe enough, you will see it because other people will believe.

In it, other people will create software, other people will create products, so you have to foster belief in what you're dreaming of for it to become a reality, which is very different than saying I don't expect anyone to believe it until they see it. I need people to believe it before they can see it, don't necessarily think you have to have the home run on the huge Apple computer on your first startup. I spent a lot of time in my life with skills just building little gadgets for fun, for fun. one of the key things because that leads you to think and think and think and do it better and better than you would if you were doing it for a company, building things at the beginning for yourself that you would want for a layoff.

You know, taking things to the next level or even surpassing your wildest dreams, there will always have to be an element of luck, but I think it's more important to put yourself in a business that can be ubiquitous than that Kim that doesn't really have it. limits because otherwise there will always be difficulties, but if the business can't be something that you can visualize using every business or every consumer, it will be difficult to scale it to be big enough or to have the perception. value you want an idea about what you can say I know it sounds like a bad idea but here's specifically why it's actually a great idea you want to sound crazy but you really want to be right because when you're trying to differentiate when you're trying to do something different there will be that moment visceral that visceral sense is right it's not right if it's not like that if you don't have doubts you're not pushing the limits enough don't think about how do I really understand how I can grow quickly?

That will happen if you actually build something super meaningful and super important, so don't think about knowing what's the quickest way to achieve success. Think about the best way to build something important. the world really needs this little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire where others don't allow me to define the terms very quickly every person every organization on the planet knows what they do 100% some know how they do it Will call it your differentiating value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP, but very few people or organizations know why they do what they do and why I don't mean making a profit, that's a result, it's always a result of Why do I want to? say what is its purpose?

What is its cause? What is your belief? Why does your organization exist? So when we see a kid running a lemonade stand, it's different than when we see a vending machine selling lemonade, even if it's the exact same product, because of the story around it. It's what people pay for, so when I meet small business owners the only thing I ask them is not what is their balance sheet, what is their story, why should I choose you, why do I care about what you are doing and if you start tell me all this. Baseball statistics on why you are 2 percent better than some other competitor.

I'm already baffled because that's not part of the way I see the world. I have to want this to exist in the world. I don't have to, so it's similar. The rule just says if this was successful and I had nothing and I didn't get it and I wasn't involved and I didn't get money or it wasn't what I wanted to do right and that's a big check, I think to know if you really feel good about the idea. and you can feel passion for it. One of the things I advise

entrepreneurs

to do is when they have an idea, so a classic entrepreneurial drive is to keep the idea close, you won't notice it because all the ideas are very special. that is almost always a mistake, go talk and ask why it is a mistake, it is a mistake, because your real real competitive advantage is not that you have that idea that you have stored in your closet, which may or may not be accurate, and not Do you have any idea which one? are your real competitive advantages if you are gathering intelligence around you does this idea work? what is the right team what are the right learnings and we are essentially moving the hardest thing to do is to start you have all these ideas and everyone has an idea but it's really about executing the idea and building it and attracting other people to to help you work on the idea, that's the biggest challenge, but the way to start is to get the idea out of your head, get it out, you know, talk about it. program it if you are a programmer or do it if you are building something, you don't have to be the best but you have to be dangerous, right? you have to learn enough to be dangerous to build an idea, conceptualize it and show it to the world and then it turns out that there are a lot of other people, including the 170 employees who work at Instagram, who are much better than me at doing all those things, but you would need Find people you know are attracted to. to the idea that you build it and then you end up taking it and making it, but yeah, one way to conceptualize what makes a good product is to know that good engineering is part of it, good design is part of it, but it's actually One way I consider is to at least maximize the likelihood that someone will show up at the front door of your store or your website or whatever and end up with a problem solved and often the best methodology is to start with the perfect experience. from one person, doing it well and then figuring out how to scale something great instead of scaling, I mean, not so great and then trying to make it better, that's really hard to do, so I think when you start a new business, uh no you want to go after giant markets, you want to go after small markets and you want to take over those markets quickly, you are constantly looking for criticism and a well thought out criticism of whatever you are doing is as valuable as gold and you should look for that from everyone you can, but particularly from your friends.

If you're not using an online community, then you're at a disadvantage: you can ask online communities what they think about your ideas or if they have any

advice

. What you are working on you will not only hear from people who are passionate about the topic, but you will also hear from people from all over the world, each with their own experiences and stories that can help you, and there are many people from all over the world. from whom we can learn a lot and I think, as you know, the only

advice

is not to underestimate anyone, you meet everyone, whether you know an administrative worker waiting for the bus or you help.

You are the waiter at the restaurant or a lower-ranking employee. I mean, the smartest leaders I've ever seen have always gone around the room and asked everyone's opinion, most startups that fail do so ultimately because they didn't do something that people wanted, they did something that, You know, they thought people would want it, but they denied it, you know, if it was actually good or someone else came along and did something that people wanted. Also, the best advice we have discovered is that we have followed the course of not letting other people distract you from what you are doing.

There are always enemies. I would say your idea is stupid. This idea will never work. to work, don't even bother doing it because someone else will do it before you and if we listen to all those comments, we live all the negative that we were never built, we are never a prototype of things and that's how we really got to where we are, We saw things we wanted to build, we just went out and built them. It turns out that when you build things you like to use, there's a good chance there are thousands of other people who want to use them. also, so it's not just about doing focus groups, it's not just about double checking your vision, it's really about embedding this concept of rigorously testing our ideas throughout the entire product development process and the marketing process. , even as we expand, but what?

What you really need to do is think about what is the smallest possible test that I can run for this idea for this concept for this theory, get it out there and get customers to use it because your customers will be the ones who will tell you if it really works or not, like there's almost just an expectation that you have to have in your mind this kind of I'm going to change the world, somehow make a dent in the universe, a kind of ambition, right, but it's actually okay from the beginning. just solve small problems in layers until you get to a point where you have the ability to do it.

This all comes down to doing something exceptional for your users, whether in community, connection, or design. Our big advantage as a startup is that we can get our way, we can make this the core part of why we do business. I think you should spend your money on teaching and sharing, and that might mean hiring a writer too, maybe instead of a marketing person you know, and start writing and start making people listen to what you say. You can't talk about yourself all the time because no one is going to come back for that, we can talk. about things that are relevant to your industry or ideas that you have and start building that audience.

I think one thing that's important, especially if you're a founder or a technical founder, is to realize that you can't do everything. and even if you can, you shouldn't, you should find a great partner, no matter what you're doing, and you should look for someone who has high intelligence, high energy, and very high integrity, and you need all three. you can't compromise any of them, otherwise you'll end up with someone who isn't smart, which you know is good, or someone who isn't a hard worker and doesn't have it either, or at worst, you end up with the intelligent and hardworking Thief who ends up working against your interests and integrity.

Something that takes a lot of time with someone to discover is that the most important thing when you work with people from the beginning is that you align with their goals. That sounds really basic, but you can totally do it. It may be okay, you may want to build a small business that makes money and you don't have to go to an office every day oryou may want to build a great company, you may want to build Google, but I think you have to be really really aligned on that, when a lot of corporations do that, they might call them core values ​​or guiding principles, etc., but the problem is they usually sound very lofty. , they read like a press release the marketing department puts out, they sound like your competitors, and you may find out about it on your first day on the job, but then it becomes a meaningless plaque on the lobby wall.

Well, we wanted to come up with committable core values ​​and by committable meaning, we are willing to hire or fire people based on those values ​​are completely independent of their actual job performance, the definition of values ​​is that they are the behaviors or principles that you adhere to. adheres religiously within his company. Annoying, say religious, I mean no amount of data will deviate you from those principles and The degree to which you have the courage to maintain your conviction around those ideas is the degree to which you are going to be successful in the long run.

A company is simply a group of people and as a leader of people you have to be a great listener and you have to be a great motivator, you have to be very good at praising and looking for the best in people and you know that people are no different. of flowers if you water the flowers they bloom if you praise people they bloom and that's a critical attribute of a leader so I like to half jokingly say that a lot of people say you know my job is basically to be the assistant from the rest of the company, that my job is to make sure you like them. you got what you need and you basically got everything you need to kick ass like that's my job if you don't let me know because I'm not doing my job you know there's a lot of things that are.

Outside of your control, many external circumstances will depend, such as determining the success of your idea, whether you know the market timing is right for this new type of service, or whether the people you know if a client likes the right economics for your business. right type of service, whether you know the right people who will finance your company, many external circumstances are out of your control and will affect the outcome, and if you have to accept it, another quality that I think is important is something like Being of flexible or open-minded. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a vision for your idea or your product, but you should be open to change.

A lot of things go wrong when you start a business and I often think. People ask you: do you know what mistakes you should avoid making? And you know my answer to that question is: don't even bother trying to avoid mistakes because you're going to make a lot of mistakes correctly and the important thing is to learn quickly from any mistakes. what you do and you don't give up, and I mean, there are things every year of Facebook's existence that could have killed us or made it seem like moving forward and making a lot of progress seemed intractable, but you just bounce back. you go back and you learn and nothing is impossible you just have to keep running through the walls the two things we really focus on in a person are two things that sound simple they are not very difficult courage and genius courage is the one we talk about a lot because it's what people can learn from, you know, courage, courage, meaning not giving up in the face of adversity, you know, just being absolutely determined to succeed, you know, it's something that you can, like, strive for. doing it can be very painful, you can force yourself to do it, the genius part is a little hard to force yourself to do it.

Courage without genius may not get you where you need to go, but genius without courage almost certainly won't and I think the reality is, you know, it's not that glamorous, there's no point in being an entrepreneur and, More importantly, what you're really spending your time on is a lot of hard work, I already mentioned this, but you're basically sitting at your desk, head down, focused, answering customer support emails, doing sales, solving difficult engineering problems, so it is very important that you like to go with your eyes wide open. Optimism has a place but I think even more so for the first time entrepreneur you need to be pragmatically pessimistic, what I mean by this is you need to define all the worst case scenarios in terms of financial loss, loss of time etc., note what you will learn if that happens, accept and come to terms. that before we start, if you don't do that and you go straight into fighting the world trying to conquer the world with rose colored glasses, the first time you have a big setback you will get very demoralized and you will quit.

If you don't love it, you won't be able to get through the long period of pain that is inevitable, so make sure you take care of yourself during the process. Make sure you take care of your mental health and physical health while you're there. We are doing it because it is a long road.