As a proud member of the crazy ones (entrepreneurs who run businesses and have families), I have seen my share of chaos. Yet raising a family comes with a sense of purpose different from anything else I have experienced. While I try to teach my son, he teaches me just as much in return. Here are ten things a toddler can teach you about running a business.
1. Communicate with short, clear messages
When a toddler learns to talk, you don’t teach them long, complicated sentences. You start with the basics. The funny thing is, you can communicate most critical messages with very few words. You don’t have a five page reason for why you buy Apple products (they’re simple and beautiful), eat at McDonald’s (it’s cheap and convenient), or shop at Zappos (they have great customer service). So don’t give a five page answer for why somebody should buy your product, work at your company, or invest in you. Keep your messages short and clear, that’s what makes them powerful.
2. Create a fun environment
Kids quickly take on the vibe around them. If you’re mad and stressed, they’ll be mad and stressed. If you’re happy and excited about life, they’ll have high spirits and everything becomes easier. I can’t claim that they’ll want to sleep when you want to sleep (parents only wish), but you absolutely set the tone. The same thing goes at the office. Too many companies seem intent on creating workplaces where people are miserable. Make things fun, lighten up the mood, and take care of your team. Everybody will be happier AND more productive.
3. Repeat yourself ad nauseam
Repeating yourself as a parent gets old, but if you’re ridiculously consistent you’ll generate the right habits over time. BMW is “the ultimate driving machine” and I don’t know that because they told me once, twice, or three times, I have seen it and heard it everywhere for years. Now I can’t forget it (notice that the message is short and clear). It sounds silly, but repeating your messages constantly, everywhere, is what ingrains your branding in people’s minds so that you become unmistakable.
4. Reward people frequently
Wall Street bonuses are probably the worst way to reward performance. They are giant, unpredictable lump sums paid at the end of the year. There is little transparency, lots of politics, and no loyalty to stay the day after the deposit clears. Would I reward my son after 3 weeks of good behavior? Goodness no. He should be rewarded right away. Adults really aren’t any different. Here’s the secret, the rewards don’t have to big! Take your team to an awesome lunch, buy them iPads, congratulate them in front of their peers. Sometimes it’s simply the act of rewarding people that matters, not the dollars that change hands.
5. Have a plan for everything
After having a kid, I became a lot less capable of flying by the seat of my pants. I used to wake up 20 minutes before leaving the house and as long as I showered, dressed and grabbed my wallet everything else would fall into place. With kids, you plan ahead for everything, coordinate schedules, and make contingency plans. That mindset holds well for running a business. Identify what you need to accomplish every day, week, and quarter. Discuss the opportunities and potential road blocks and plan for all of them. If you practice audibles with your team then you simply need to call the right play during the game and everybody knows what to do.
6. Understand that nothing will go as planned
Plans are wonderful and you should make them. But…life’s never that simple. There’s a balance between making plans and quickly adjusting when everything changes. Successful stock traders win not because they make better bets, but because they recognize their mistakes quicker and minimize losses. Top football teams win because they have a solid game plan and then make the right in-game adjustments. Treat your business as a game in progress. Your work is never done and you’re always ready to adjust when necessary.
7. Practice what you preach
Don’t feed somebody grilled chicken every day and talk about a nutritious diet while you eat french fries. It’s simple and extremely easy to see. Lead or don’t lead. But if you choose to lead, lead with your actions first.
8. Be authentic
Faking it doesn’t work. Kids are very perceptive and remind you to stick with your true personality. This should carry over into your professional life as well. Forge a career that you are truly passionate about and work at a company where you fit the culture. Otherwise you’re stuck faking it and that never leads to long-term success or happiness.
9. Build true loyalty and it will not be broken
Few bonds are as strong as a parent and a child. People will do anything for the family members they love. Build that relationship stronger and stronger over time and nothing will break it. The same is true for building teams. If your team is full of people who think of themselves first and have no loyalty, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It’s the tightly knit teams that stand up for each other and win the tough battles. Loyalty isn’t built overnight and it doesn’t come free – you have to earn it. So earn it.
10. Remember that shi$ happens
That’s right, it happens. As a matter of fact, it happens all the time! Sometimes you have to clean up after a mess and move on without letting things bother you. Don’t take yourself too seriously. That’s one of the secrets to life.
“Learn in your 20′s, earn in your 30′s” is a simple mantra that I love. The specific ages are not important, but the message is. By focusing on learning now you can exponentially change your ability to earn down the road.
Picture two college classmates, let’s call them Bob and Sally. Bob is fairly successful and is making $150K/year by the time he is 35. Sally is extremely successful and is making $1.5M/year by the time she is 35. What was the difference in their career trajectories? It did not matter that Bob made a 20% higher salary out of school. Sally sacrificed on starting salary to learn, grow, and find the place where she could succeed over the long haul. This happens all the time. Being on the best long-term track is soooooo much more important than the size of your current paycheck, especially when you are young.
Why do most career services offices have this backward? I have nothing against career services offices or the people that work there, but they are stuck in a bind. It is very difficult to measure the long-term happiness and success of your graduates. It is easy to measure your graduates’ employment rate and first-year compensation. So that is what people measure and it is the key metric used in magazine rankings every year. Students are naturally pushed to take jobs when they are available and to think about pay in a stronger way than they should.
To maximize your long-term success, you need to identify what you truly want and then pursue it with a vengeance regardless of what people tell you. Sometimes you have to accept advice from various sources and then draw your own conclusions and pave your own path. Greatness has never been achieved by following rules and proceeding in other people’s footsteps.
Entering my second year of business school, I turned down a job offer at a consulting firm where I interned during the summer. I wanted to start my own company and decided there was no time to look back. I not only turned down the job offer, but took one of their employees with me. A manager from the firm ended up quitting his job to join my startup. I then proceeded to graduate and make $25K/year as we got the business off the ground and searched for funding. Let’s just say I didn’t earn a gold star in the recruiting category for that move. But I am exponentially more prepared to succeed now that I have experienced the adventure of launching a business. I have learned how to build a team, how to hunt down customers and earn credibility, how to raise funding, how to build a scalable product, how to deal with tricky management issues, how to work in a rapidly changing market, how to build successful partnerships, and ultimately how to create and run an organization.
Regardless of my personal financial outcome as a result of Seamless Receipts, I am confident that this experience will pay huge dividends throughout the rest of my career. But it was tough at the beginning. I had to think different and resist outside pressures. I encourage you to do the same. Don’t suffice for a good career. Shoot for greatness. Throw your starting salary out the window and do something awesome regardless of the compensation. You’ll be better off for it no matter what happens in the short-term. You may not make it on your first shot, but in my opinion subscribing yourself to a lifetime of mediocrity is the biggest risk you can take. Pursuing a passion on the other hand, I don’t see much true risk in that.
Today was the official announcement that Cornell and Technion have won the bid to build an engineering campus in NYC that could literally change the future of New York’s economy. While it will generate jobs today, start coursework in 2012 for masters and PhD students, and boost the technology ecosystem immediately, the program also looks out as far as 2040 to support a future of innovation and job creation as the industries in New York (and everywhere) continue to be disrupted.
As a technology entrepreneur in NYC (Founder and CEO of Seamless Receipts) and a proud holder of two Cornell degrees (Engineering and MBA), I’m clearly biased. But I’m more excited about this partnership than anything I’ve heard about in awhile. Good technology and startup ecosystems need four key components to be successful: a superb pipeline of talent, a culture that promotes idea generation and risk-taking, an ecosystem of partners and mentors, and access to capital. Stanford and Silicon Valley have mastered this model and Cornell is going to launch a giant spark into an already thriving startup ecosystem in New York. Cornell will bring to New York a $150M venture fund to support early stage companies, 20K jobs to build the infrastructure, 8K sustainable jobs for faculty and staff, and top talent from around the world who will be encouraged to start and grow companies in New York City. The future of our economy clearly relies on innovation and the proliferation of new ideas. Nothing will support New York City’s future and optimism more than building the next Facebook or Google in Manhattan.
Looking at New York City, all of the components of a startup ecosystem exist today (talent, culture, ecosystem, and capital) but talent is clearly the piece that holds NYC back from being as transformative as Silicon Valley has been for the past 50 years. Cornell will inject a pipeline of talent that will generate new businesses and drive the growth of current companies (who are all desperately trying to hire engineers). Bloomberg expects the program to increase the number of engineers finding jobs in NYC by 85%.
In return, Cornell has all the components of an entrepreneurial education except the ecosystem. There is an honest disadvantage to starting a company in Ithaca (ice hockey games are great, but the number of successful alumni who have built and sold companies in the Finger Lakes region is definitely limited vs. New York or Silicon Valley). Trust me, I’ve done it. So putting a permanent program in New York City will bring to Cornell the one missing piece in its entrepreneurial endeavors – a subway to New York so students can visit Google, Facebook, tech entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists on a random Tuesday afternoon. The 50K Cornell alumni in New York City will serve as a perfect launching ground for the program’s ties to the New York economy.
I see the partnership between Cornell/Technion and New York City as a perfect marriage. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future and I look forward to taking part in the initatives that will come.
