Entrepreneurs: Get Advice from those have done it before
- Careers
Being a successful entrepreneur frequently involves a series of missteps and mistakes before finally nailing the right idea or business.
The difference, for many, between giving up and persisting through the toughest times can be getting advice from people who have done it before — and being smart enough to listen.
These entrepreneurs share their stories and advice to the other aspiring and young business minded people.
Restaurateur Jon Taffer: See every detail of your business.
Years ago when I was very young," recalls Taffer, the host of TV show "Bar Rescue" and a former business owner, "a VP of Hyatt looked at me and said, 'You look, but you don’t see.'" Taffer learned to look not just at the big picture, but also at every place setting, light fixture, and customer exchange. "See every crack, every detail. I learned to really see and not just look at my business," he says
Advertising entrepreneur Sara Rotman: Being comfortable is the enemy
"The best advice I ever received was from my first accountant when I was discussing the launch of my company," says Rotman, founder of ad agency MODCo, which has clients like Vera Wang, True Religion, and Tory Burch. "We were speaking about my business plan and how much money to borrow to launch. She wisely said, 'Only have enough cash on hand to barely survive; never so much that you are comfortable. It's important to stay scared in the beginning.'"
"While I prefer to describe that feeling as staying hungry rather than scared, I thought it was indeed great advice," she says. "I have found this hunger to be an incredibly important motivator during my entire career. Being comfortable is the enemy. Staying hungry forces you to push yourself to continue to survive, grow, and evolve."
NewsCred CEO Shafqat Islam: If you're not being told 'no' constantly, you're not pushing hard enough.
“Multiple people have told me this, and I don't know if I can credit it to a single person, but one thing that I think about is if you're not getting told ‘no‘ enough times a day; you're probably not doing it right or you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough," Islam told Business Insider.
"I think that's a good piece of advice for anybody building a company because you hear 'no' so many times," Islam adds. "And I think that's normal, that's a good thing that you're trying to trying to do something that's disruptive, that's groundbreaking, that there's going to be naysayers."
SumAll CEO Dane Atkinson: Learn to say 'no' and focus on what you do best.
"One thing that I've slowly come to realize is that focus is so critically important," Atkinson told Business Insider. "Saying 'no' to great ideas is necessary to get to the brilliant ones. At every step of the way you have to cut towards one path. It's such a hard thing to do as an entrepreneur because you don't really have the confidence in where you're going yourself."
"You see these little companies building out service brands because they want to have account executives who work with customers," Atkinson adds, "so they try to spin their products into serving three different groups in the first couple of years, and that's a very adverse situation to get into. We all expect services to do one thing right, allow you to search the world or enter 140 characters or post pictures of your friends. It's a very simple formula that you just repeat and rinse all the way to success."
SOURCE;
http://www.businessinsider.com/entrepreneurs-best-advice-2013-12?op=1#ixzz3KFdQ3n1h