13 Entrepreneurs on the Best Business Advice They Ever Received

 by Patrick Stafford


A huge part of being a business owner is listening to others. Whether it’s good advice or bad, no one can do it on their own.

Great entrepreneurs have great mentors. They pick up tips along the way to make sure they don’t fall onto the wrong path. One of the first lessons a new business owner might receive is to find a mentor – and quick.

So we’ve taken some of the hard work out of that equation. SmartCompany contacted some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the country to find out the best pieces of business advice they’ve received.

Pay attention – you might just learn something.

1. Michael Fox – Keep focused on one core product

The co-founder of one of Australia’s most successful tech start-ups, Michael Fox has gone from strength to strength with Shoes of Prey. The company has even signed a deal with David Jones to have dedicated booths in stores.

His favourite piece of advice came from investors Mike Cannon-Brookes, (of Atlassian), and David Cunningham: “Keep focused on the one core product; don’t try to do more until you’ve nailed that.”

Plenty of entrepreneurs, such as Steve Jobs, have made their name on simplicity. Fox says success for him comes in the same vein.

“The few times we've been tempted to not follow that advice we've quickly realised our mistake.

“It's kept us on the path of staying focused on women's shoes only at Shoes of Prey and structuring Shoes of Prey and Sneaking Duck so they have two entirely separate teams.”

2. Dean Taylor – Always have a back-up plan

The online wine selling market is booming, and Dean Taylor is enjoying the ride. His business Cracka Wines is enjoying significant growth.

His favourite piece of advice is a crucial one for business owners, who always need to be prepared with a back-up plan.

“Never walk into a room that you can't walk out of,” he says.

“The person who said it to me was Brett Chenoweth, an old friend and the former CEO of APN. He swears by it,” he says.

“While you can easily apply the philosophy to much of life, it's primary relevance for me in business is in commercial negotiations. It's very easy to invest a lot of time and effort into an idea, deal or business opportunity, become emotionally attached and end up accepting unfavourable terms.

“Being prepared to walk away at any time might seem harsh, but it’s a heap better than finding yourself stuck in a role, partnership or deal that you later regret.”

3. Mick Liubinskas – Run the numbers

When Pollenizer founder Mick Liubinskas enjoyed a short stint at IBM, he met a friend – Kurt Bilderback – who told him to “always run the numbers”.
“Mick, you've got to run the numbers. Always. Not to get answers, but to know what the questions should be.”
It’s turned out to be a useful piece of advice – documenting your thought process can often lead to better ideas.
“Since then I've always done fast napkin testing with spreadsheets. I must have more than 5000. Some are worth millions. Most are worth nothing. But the process of thinking it through has been priceless.”

Read the full article from Smart Company. 

The 20 People Skills You Need To Succeed At Work-- From Forbes

Do you think you’re qualified for a particular job, fit to lead a team, or entitled to a promotion because you have extensive experience and highly developed technical skills? Well, it turns out that while those things are crucial to your professional success, it’s imperative that you also have great soft skills–more commonly known as “people skills.”

“People skills are, in short, the various attributes and competencies that allow one to play well with others,” explains says David Parnell, a legal consultant, communication coach and author. “While on the surface these may be summed up by notions such as ‘likeability,’ or having a ‘good personality,’ when you start to look at what makes one ‘likable,’ for instance, you’ve opened Pandora ‘s Box.” But more often than not, these attributes come in the form of effective, accurate and persuasive communication, he says.

Teri Hockett, chief executive of What’s For Work?, a career site for women, agrees. She says: “People skills come down to how people interact with each other, from a verbal and/or non-verbal perspective; they are non-technical in nature. When we think of people skills, words such as personality, empathy, and tonality come to mind.”

Having good people skills means maximizing effective and productive human interaction to everyone’s benefit, says Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant; How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job. “People want to connect on a humane level in the office; the alternative is a sterile environment with low productivity. So, the more you demonstrate these abilities, the faster your career will advance. It’s the ‘office diplomats’ with strong emotional intelligence who are most likely to be strong, effective corporate leaders. They realize that trusting relationships built on diplomacy and respect are at the heart of both individual success and corporate productivity. An ounce of people sensitivity is worth a pound of cure when it comes to daily human interaction and mitigating conflict. By developing these skills, you’ll reduce bad behavior in the office, and your positive approach will be contagious.”

Wise managers know that they need a team with strong people skills, she adds. “Given the choice between a savvy job candidate or, similarly, an employee seeking promotion – the one with excellent people skills and less technical ability will usually win the prize versus the converse.” Having good people radar is harder to teach than technical skills, but is a requisite for long term, effective leadership, she says.

Here are 20 “people skills” and attributes you’ll need to succeed at work:

The ability to relate to others. “Having the ability to relate to others and their position or viewpoint is crucial in business,” Hockett says. “By having a well-rounded personality and set of experiences, it’s usually possible to relate to almost anyone.” Sometimes being able to relate to others simply means that you’re willing to agree to disagree with mutual respect; letting them know you understand their position.

Strong communication skills. This is the most fundamental people skill because it encompasses your persona and ability to get along with other colleagues, persuade others to listen to your ideas, and much more, Taylor says. “If you have a gift for the spoken and written word, you will always put your best foot forward. Being articulate is highly prized in today’s workplace, when time is at a premium and technology requires constant communication.”

Parnell says articulation is a very important “people skill.” “Illusory transparency refers to the notion that as we speak to others, we believe that they are of the same mindset as us, and are processing things exactly as we would. Even if this were possible – which it’s not – it would be incredibly challenging because of semantic ambiguity,” he explains. “Universal quantifiers for instance – all, any, every, etc. – are systematic violations of accurate communication in that they are rarely true in a literal sense, and leave significant room for translation. Effective communicators are very careful to understand these systematic violations, and avoid them or accommodate them when necessary.”

Patience with others. “If you’re patient with others and can keep a level head in stressful situations, it will definitely be noticed by management and perceived as a very strong asset,” says Amy Hoover, president of Talent Zoo. “When your boss is forced to deal with a situation where people have lost their cool he or she will certainly remember the troublemakers when the next promotion comes available.”

The ability to trust others. You can only accelerate your career if you’re trustworthy. “Without it, you can’t get projects done or get cooperation,” Taylor says. “No one can operate in a vacuum for long.”

Knowing how and when to show empathy. “Having the ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes is a key people skill,” says Ryan Kahn, a career coach, founder of The Hired Group, star of MTV’s Hired! and author of Hired! The Guide for the Recent Grad. It allows us to create relationships with others, provides insights into people’s motives and allows us to predict responses.

“Offer support, sympathy and feedback in your daily business life,” Taylor suggests. “It will bring you positive emotional returns – part of ‘corporate karma.’” If you contribute to a dehumanized company, both you and your employer will have limited growth potential, she says.

Hockett reminds us that things are not always black and white, and in order to have effective relationships with others we need to show compassion where appropriate. “In a perfect world there would be no hiccups, but life happens and knowing when to show compassion when others face challenges is important.”

Read the full article online. 

The Key to Business Success: A Mentor

Karen Finerman

I believe any aspiring financial and investment guru needs a mentor when she embarks on her career. No matter how smart you are, how good you are with numbers or how great the firm is where you find a job.
Why?

Because you don’t yet have a perspective on the full universe of where you work or might want to work. You don’t know whether you are being given a good assignment or whether you are meeting the best clients. You don’t know whether you are being compensated fairly. You don’t know who makes the real decisions, what the upward track is, or who you need to impress with your efforts. You lack the learning wisdom that time and experience bring. You haven’t yet been tested. You need someone who has been there and can impart insights and good judgment gained from her or his journey. You can also have more than one mentor.

How Do You Get a Mentor?

Rarely, but occasionally, one will identify and seek you out to support. More often, you have to find your adviser(s). Be observant. See who is respected. See who has a work style and ethic you want to emulate. Pick someone with whom you want to spend time and find a way to work with them, or seek their opinion on an issue. Talk to them in social settings when the opportunities arise. Create a relationship; it could last a lifetime.

One piece of advice: Don’t immediately go into the default position of seeking a female mentor just because she’s a woman. That’s reverse discrimination! Women mentors can be terrific, but there are fewer of them. I have also found, counter-intuitively, that sometimes certain women can be competitive. So look into their long-term track record with predecessors.

Don’t feel bad about having a male mentor. You’re going to have to work with an awful lot of men, so it’s important to know how they think and how to interact with them. Too often, young women can be held back in their careers by their failure to take risks, and a mentor can help teach where it is important. This sometimes seems to come more naturally to the guys. Young women also need to learn one rule that every male knows, and every female professional learns: Never cry, and never whine. To borrow from A League of Their Own, there’s no crying on Wall Street.

How Can You Best Use a Mentor?

Study and Learn From What Makes Your Mentor Admirable to You

It might be interpersonal skills; it might be technical expertise; it might be presentations and public speaking; it might be how he or she reacts under pressure; it might be good judgment; it might be her or his ethics and moral conscience; it might be decisiveness. If you have picked a great mentor, it is probably a combination of all these and more. A mentor is first and foremost a very special teacher.

Seek Your Mentor’s Counsel

Bounce ideas off him or her about work. Let him or her know about what you are working on and with whom. Share your longer-term goals and objectives.

Let Your Mentor Be Your Advocate

Mentors can help smooth the way through advice, and sometimes through action, to help you get the clients or assignments or promotions that you should.

Establish a Lifetime Relationship

In the process of learning from your mentor, you also build a friendship based on trust and support—one that can help sustain you both as you start out in your career and as you advance. Who knows? She or he might end up one day as your business partner. I’m not kidding. It’s how I found mine.

Read more from LearnVest online. 

Giving advice to college graduates is extremely important to me because I was one of them and even though the economy was better back in 2006, it took me eight months to find a marketing job. I succeeded because I started six months before graduation, collected eight internships, seven leadership positions on campus and graduated with honors. I failed because I didn’t know how to build and leverage relationships. Either way, I learned a lot about what it takes to build a successful career over the years. Good career choices are extremely important early in your career because you can set yourself up for success later on. Even though you might end up in a completely different career, the skills you acquire and the people you meet, are what will open the doors for you. I dedicate this post to the class of 2013, a group of optimistic millennials who have a lot to offer to the world!
The job market is still tough for more graduates, unless you’re an in-demand engineer or accountant. Two-thirds of college students have debt and 39 percent live with their parents. In 2012, 284,000 students graduated into minimum wage jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies only expect to hire 2.1 percent more graduates this year than they did in 2012 and 66 percent of recruiters believe that college graduates aren’t prepared for the working world. Although there are clear obstacles to finding work, there are also a lot of big opportunities that students can take advantage of. The following are ten things that new graduates should do to get ahead in their careers. Of course, older generations can benefit from these too.
1. Think of your career as a series of experiences. The most optimistic and intelligent way to look at your career isn’t how long you stay with one employer or that you focus on what you majored in at college. You need to collect experiences throughout your careers, whether that be with five employers or ten, with one business function or five or in one country or three. The idea is that you need to be a lifelong learner if you want to make an impact, succeed and feel accomplished. The experiences you have expand your world view, give you new perspectives and make you a more interesting person.
2. Don’t settle for a job you’re not passionate about. A lot of people are pushing college graduates to just get a job to pay the bills and that isn’t the greatest advice because research shows that you won’t last long there if you do. Furthermore, no smart company is going to have someone who is only there to make money because there’s always someone else who wants it more. When you’re passionate about your job, you’re excited, you work longer hours and end up accomplishing much more. Life is too short to settle for a career that you hate!
3. Focus on making a big impact immediately. The quicker you make an impact in a company the more attention and support you will get. Millennials understand this well because they won’t want to wait five years to get on a project where they can make this type of impact. Starting on day one, you have to learn as much as possible and start mastering your job so you can latch on to the bigger projects faster and prove yourself. By doing this, you will explode your career and become more valuable in your company, which will increase your pay, title and you’ll get to work on better projects.
4. Take risks early and often in your career. One of the important lessons this economy has taught us is that not taking risks is risky. There is so much out of our control and if we just keep doing what we did yesterday, we can’t get ahead. By taking a risk, you are putting yourself in a position to learn, whether you succeed or fail. You’re also showing to your management that you’re willing to put your reputation on the line to make things happen. As we become an ever more entrepreneurial society, those that take risks, both inside and outside of the corporate walls, will become more successful.
5. Spend more time with people than with your laptop. Students are plugged in and don’t understand that he strongest relationship are formed in person, not online. I constantly see students looking down at their iPhones and iPad’s instead of at people’s faces and it’s a missed opportunity. Soft skills will always become more cherished in companies so it’s important to drop your technology and actually communicate with people. People hire you, not technology and you have to remember that!
- See more at: http://danschawbel.com/blog/my-10-best-pieces-of-career-advice-for-college-graduates/#sthash.DOGfgNS7.dpuf

Giving advice to college graduates is extremely important to me because I was one of them and even though the economy was better back in 2006, it took me eight months to find a marketing job. I succeeded because I started six months before graduation, collected eight internships, seven leadership positions on campus and graduated with honors. I failed because I didn’t know how to build and leverage relationships. Either way, I learned a lot about what it takes to build a successful career over the years. Good career choices are extremely important early in your career because you can set yourself up for success later on. Even though you might end up in a completely different career, the skills you acquire and the people you meet, are what will open the doors for you. I dedicate this post to the class of 2013, a group of optimistic millennials who have a lot to offer to the world!
The job market is still tough for more graduates, unless you’re an in-demand engineer or accountant. Two-thirds of college students have debt and 39 percent live with their parents. In 2012, 284,000 students graduated into minimum wage jobs, according to the Wall Street Journal. Companies only expect to hire 2.1 percent more graduates this year than they did in 2012 and 66 percent of recruiters believe that college graduates aren’t prepared for the working world. Although there are clear obstacles to finding work, there are also a lot of big opportunities that students can take advantage of. The following are ten things that new graduates should do to get ahead in their careers. Of course, older generations can benefit from these too.
1. Think of your career as a series of experiences. The most optimistic and intelligent way to look at your career isn’t how long you stay with one employer or that you focus on what you majored in at college. You need to collect experiences throughout your careers, whether that be with five employers or ten, with one business function or five or in one country or three. The idea is that you need to be a lifelong learner if you want to make an impact, succeed and feel accomplished. The experiences you have expand your world view, give you new perspectives and make you a more interesting person.
2. Don’t settle for a job you’re not passionate about. A lot of people are pushing college graduates to just get a job to pay the bills and that isn’t the greatest advice because research shows that you won’t last long there if you do. Furthermore, no smart company is going to have someone who is only there to make money because there’s always someone else who wants it more. When you’re passionate about your job, you’re excited, you work longer hours and end up accomplishing much more. Life is too short to settle for a career that you hate!
3. Focus on making a big impact immediately. The quicker you make an impact in a company the more attention and support you will get. Millennials understand this well because they won’t want to wait five years to get on a project where they can make this type of impact. Starting on day one, you have to learn as much as possible and start mastering your job so you can latch on to the bigger projects faster and prove yourself. By doing this, you will explode your career and become more valuable in your company, which will increase your pay, title and you’ll get to work on better projects.
4. Take risks early and often in your career. One of the important lessons this economy has taught us is that not taking risks is risky. There is so much out of our control and if we just keep doing what we did yesterday, we can’t get ahead. By taking a risk, you are putting yourself in a position to learn, whether you succeed or fail. You’re also showing to your management that you’re willing to put your reputation on the line to make things happen. As we become an ever more entrepreneurial society, those that take risks, both inside and outside of the corporate walls, will become more successful.
5. Spend more time with people than with your laptop. Students are plugged in and don’t understand that he strongest relationship are formed in person, not online. I constantly see students looking down at their iPhones and iPad’s instead of at people’s faces and it’s a missed opportunity. Soft skills will always become more cherished in companies so it’s important to drop your technology and actually communicate with people. People hire you, not technology and you have to remember that!
- See more at: http://danschawbel.com/blog/my-10-best-pieces-of-career-advice-for-college-graduates/#sthash.DOGfgNS7.dpuf

How to Develop an Effective Team- from Levo League

by Alexandra Moncure

What industry has a $100 billion dollar annual spend and is controlled by 2.3 million women? Weddings. Kellee Khalil is thefounder and CEO of Lover.ly, the world’s first visual search and commerce engine revolutionizing the weddings industry. Lover.ly allows brides and grooms to search, save, shop, and share all things wedding in one place through beautiful, curated images from targeted vendors and partnerships.

Khalil began her career in finance before joining her sister’s wedding industry focused public relations agency. While working in the bridal industry and simultaneously helping her sister plan her wedding in 2010, Khalil experienced first hand the difficulty of making a wedding come to life.

On the hunt for the perfect wedding elements—from dresses, shoes and accessories to event decor and wedding vendors—she was also overwhelmed by the millions of pages of wedding content on Google. It was then that Khalil decided to create an all-in-one resource to help brides and grooms discover, search, shop, and share wedding ideas and products in a simple, streamlined, fun and tech-savvy way.

However in order to accomplish this, Khalil needed to build a team that understood her vision and possessed the skills she lacked from a technology perspective to make the vision a reality. She understood that it was important that she not only hire people who possessed the skills she needed, but would also  be a good fit for the company culture she was hoping to build. When building her team, she focused on hiring people who had tremendous amounts of passion, creativity, and interest in the problems that they’re working to solve.

“I think especially in early stage companies, the culture is derived from the founders and the CEO,” Khalil said. “I tend to surround myself with people with skill sets that are far beyond mine. One of my core strengths I think is that I’m good at finding people who are better at things than I am and bringing them around me.”


Read the full article and other articles from Levo League online.