The founders of eight successful companies, from Amazon to Microsoft, unveil their secrets to start a successful business.
Reid Hoffman: “Attend the right people, you will become like them”
“The people you frequent are the ones you will become.” It is convinced by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn (sold to Microsoft for $ 26 billion), investor with great flair (he is currently a partner of the venture capital company Greylock), and a failed professor. Hoffman believes that the fastest way to exercise change on oneself is to hang out with people who are on the path to becoming what we ourselves want to become.
Richard Branson: “Always put yourself to the test: life is like doing university”
“Life is like a long educational experience, every day you can learn something”. This is the concept of “University of life”, explained by Richard Branson, who, like other successful entrepreneurs, and has never attended university. “Studying the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) is very important for the links they have with the business. But if a young person has a good idea and a strong entrepreneurial spirit, it is not wrong to immediately jump into the real world without going to university”. Some name of who did the same? Larry Page, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg.
Jeff Bezos: “Do not regret not trying”
“I have always preferred to throw myself out so as not to have regrets at the end of my life.” It is the theory of regret minimization framework by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon. “From an early age I saw myself projected at the age of 80, looking back and feeling calm and having few regrets. I wanted to try to get into this new revolution that is the Internet, because I knew it would be a great opportunity and that I would not have regretted it”.
Ryan Allis: “Write down your goals: the unconscious activates to realize them”
Ryan Allis, 33, serial entrepreneur (currently president and cofounder of Hive Digital), author of The Startup Guide, he began to put his goals on paper when he was 16 years old. The first one who wrote: “Build a company that comes to bill a million dollars before I turned 21”. He did it, founding in 2005 iContact, a startup sold in 2012 for 170 million dollars. “Writing your goals is a very powerful tool to achieve them. When you do, your subconscious is activated to find solutions to bring into your life the people, resources and knowledge you need, “explains Allis. “When you know what you want to do in the world, your mind naturally begins to filter opportunities to find the ones that fit your goals.”
Arianna Huffington: “Face your fears: train the muscle of courage”
“Courage is like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.” It is the opinion of Arianna Huffington, writer, journalist, founder of the Huffington Post, which in one of her books resumes the thought of Socrates, who says that courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to manage it. It is learning to know what we must not be afraid of. “We can never completely eliminate our fears, but we can ensure that they do not stop us from daring, from taking risks, from thinking about new things, from failing and then starting again,” writes Huffington. “The more we feel at ease when we fall, the less worried we will be of what people think, the less we will judge each time we make a mistake, the easier our journey will be.”
Tony Hsieh: “Understand your sector”
“Do not enter a sector that you do not know to the end, even if you see that many are making money.” It is the advice of Tony Hsieh, who led the Zappos.com shoe e-commerce for 15 years, and then sold it to Amazon in 2009 for 1.2 billion dollars. Hsieh has always motivated its employees to provide the best customer service to their customers. His motto is “to deliver happiness”.
Bill Gates
”Dissatisfied customers are the greatest source of knowledge for an entrepreneur”
Steve Jobs: “Give yourself time”
“If you look deep, most of the successes that seem immediate took a long time to become such.” Steve Jobs in the course of his life has often stressed how difficult it is to bring a business to the top and how much time should be spent. Nobody succeeds immediately, everyone at the beginning we are beginners and we can not achieve success from day to night. Do not be scared if you have to invest time in your business.