Driven
Learns more from screw-ups than wins. Don't bite hands that feed while building.
businessAs for employee compensation in general, my approach is to keep it simple and follow the rule that average employees are paid at average income levels and exceptional people earn exceptional salaries.
AQ's take: Pays for results. Kept my stars, lost the meh.
Oct 12, 2022you will always overestimate what you can achieve in one year and underestimate what you will achieve in ten years.
AQ's take: Year hype kills me. Decade truth saved my sanity.
Oct 12, 2022Start with the customer, because the farther you are from the source of an event, the more diluted will be the facts you are fed.
AQ's take: Customer truths got diluted through my teams. Learned the hard way.
Oct 10, 2022when the bullets are flying and the bombs are dropping, the ability to zig and zag is far more valuable than the capacity to figure out the calibre of the bullets and what kinds of planes are flying overhead.
AQ's take: Zig-zagged out of startup fires. Analysis would've buried me.
Oct 10, 2022“Trust everyone but verify everything” is my motto.
AQ's take: Trusted blindly once. Partner stole everything.
Oct 7, 2022why create mediocrity if you can copy genius?
AQ's take: Reinvented wheel for years. Copying genius now.
Oct 7, 2022Entrepreneurs don’t worry about making great decisions as much as they do about making fast decisions.
AQ's take: Impulsive decisions saved my ass repeatedly.
Oct 7, 2022Not giving yourself a fallback position if things don’t go as planned takes a good deal of confidence and commitment, which is just what you need when starting a business. The less commitment you give it, the less chance you have of succeeding. Be prepared to burn your ships.
AQ's take: Safety nets trapped me small. Burned them.
Oct 7, 2022When he was retiring, former U.S. Army General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked to name any errors he had made in his distinguished career. “My biggest mistake,” the general replied, “was to keep people I personally liked in positions where they were incompetent. The cost of that mistake was human life.” If a tough soldier who watched people die on a battlefield couldn’t overcome his personal feelings when dismissing someone who wasn’t up to the job, you probably won’t find it any easier to fire an employee.
AQ's take: Kept deadweight friends in key spots. Cost lives? Ouch.
Oct 7, 2022When something bursts into flame among a group of MBAs, their reaction is to look for a means of extinguishing it. Not entrepreneurs; they look for marshmallows to roast.
AQ's take: MBAs kill ideas. I used to. Now I roast marshmallows on mine.
Oct 7, 2022If the toughest competition you face is your own high standard, you will inevitably become better at your game, whatever the game may be.
AQ's take: My own high bar beats any competitor. Finally explains my endless tweaks.
Oct 7, 2022The first is that successful entrepreneurs treat businesses like commodities—or, in a slightly different analogy, like farmers raising crops. You buy or plant the business, you grow it until the price is right, and you sell it to the highest bidder. You don’t become emotionally involved with it as an entity, even to the point of calling it your “baby,” as I warned about earlier.
AQ's take: Called my startup 'baby.' Sold it regretting emotions.
Oct 6, 2022the ability to imagine a goal, and believe in the likelihood of reaching it.
AQ's take: Believing shrinks the gap between dream and done.
Oct 6, 2022Everybody will offer you free advice, but the only good thing about free advice is the price.
AQ's take: Free advice nearly sank me. Price was right.
Oct 6, 2022Not every fortune is made from an original idea alone. Some of the biggest successes in business were the result of taking a proven idea and massaging it a little to make it more attractive or more profitable.
AQ's take: Copied successes after originals bombed. Smart move.
Oct 6, 2022If you lack a creative sense, you may be a highly effective manager, but you will never be a successful entrepreneur.
AQ's take: No creativity? Explains my manager fails.
Oct 6, 2022To succeed in business, you have to do three things: work your butt off, be extravagant with your dreams but practical with your expenses, and avoid thinking about failure.
AQ's take: Work ethic check. My Achilles heel.
Oct 6, 2022That’s where big profits lie—not in the way things are today or were in the past, but in the way they will be a year or more from now.
AQ's take: Always chase yesterday. Future profits call.
Oct 6, 2022The best opportunities and biggest profits are not waiting outside your window as you read this book. They are eighteen months down the road, which is the perfect timeframe for you to assess the opportunity and gear up to meet it, starting today.
AQ's take: Reacting, not anticipating. 18 months ahead hurts.
Oct 6, 2022Nothing of any consequence was ever achieved without enormous passion and total dedication, not to the goal of making money but to the objective of becoming nothing less than the best. Those who lack the necessary passion, or never search for it deeply enough in their souls, risk wasting their potential. And here’s the gold at the end of the rainbow: when you become great at something you love, the money always follows. Even if you’re a baker.
AQ's take: Half-assing kills joy. Need full passion fire.
Oct 6, 2022Lesson One: you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Venture capital is simply too difficult to obtain, especially when it’s accompanied by a sincere interest in helping entrepreneurs succeed. Lesson Two: Do not assume that every business idea you have is worth a million dollars on its own. Because it is not. Life is more complex than that. In addition, do not believe that academic training, as valuable as it might be in the right context, is more valuable than practical experience, especially when it involves launching, building and managing a business.
AQ's take: Burned early bridges with VCs. Now I kiss the hand that feeds.
Oct 5, 2022Without the ability to visualize a goal and believe it will be reached, nothing of substance will be achieved.
AQ's take: ADHD brain ignores this. No vision, no motion.
Oct 5, 2022we often learn more from our mistakes than from our successes.
AQ's take: My flops taught more than wins ever did.
Oct 5, 2022Money travels to two places: to where it is wanted and appreciated, and to where it is likely to return with an acceptable profit.
AQ's take: Explains my bad investments. Chased shiny, not smart.
Oct 5, 2022Successful businesspeople retain a quality most others not only lack but often fail to comprehend, and that’s the unrelenting drive to convert a vision into reality.
AQ's take: I've got vision. Drive? That's my weak spot.
Oct 5, 2022The measure of success is not that you fail, but how you get up after you’ve been knocked down.
AQ's take: Knocked down often. Getting up defines me.
Oct 5, 2022