Forums Search

Question: What unrelated hobby has taught you the most about business?

Marathon Running

“Running involves discipline and a lot of hard work. You can’t fake it when it comes to finishing 26.2 miles. You definitely get out of it what you put in. Not only does it involve physical toughness, but a considerable amount of mental strength and focus as well. Comparisons can be drawn to business when it comes to knowing your capabilities, working hard, using your wits and not giving up.”

— Michael Quinn
Yellow Bridge Interactive
@ybinteractive

Poker

“Poker is a game of incomplete information. You know what cards you have but are making educated guesses and playing odds based on your opponent’s cards. Business is similar. You can collect data all day...

"I'm seeing these events and groups popping up everyone asking me to network with other Founders, other marketers, devs, growth hackers, or anyone else in the startup community.

Between all the events, conferences, groups and whatnot — should I be spending my valuable time network or just focusing on my startup?"

If you have to ask, the answer is "No"

Most networking is a waste of time.

That's not because having a useful professional network isn't helpful, it's because how we often go about it is really unfocused.

Avoid random networking events

Sure, it's possible that if we go to SXSW we might happen to run into someone that can somehow be useful... someday...maybe.

But wouldn't it make more sense to put that time and expense toward set...

Sometimes the best way to grow our startups is to spend some time doing stuff that has nothing to do with our startups!

It sounds easy to do and yet so many of us have a huge issue with getting outside our own startup bubble.

But what if we knew that time away was the key to actually making our startup grow faster?

The problem with "startup all the time"

Aside from the obvious challenges around things like burnout, being focused exclusively on our startups prevents us from getting some new perspectives that we would have otherwise missed.

Whether it's that passing thought during meditation, that interesting point another Founder made at dinner, or the inspiration we got when we were sitting on a beach staring at the sun — our time away fro...

“If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business,” a reasonable claim from Simon Sinek, renowned author of Start With Why, at the beginning of his talk at last year’s 99U conference.

Sinek explains that companies like Apple have been able to build a fanatical following because they understood that business is done through people. People who are looking for connection and meaning.

Simon argues that trust is the foundation of any and all relationships, and that if business fail to create that bond with customers — they will fail to succeed.

Founders who have successfully built a true following have done so by surrounding themselves with people who believe what they believe, and spreading an honest gospel about those values — at...

80% of Resolutions Fall Short in the First QuarteR

Usually, after the third month of the year your crisp new running gear and fitbit has been designated to the back of the closet as a guilty reminder, and you are counting your steps to the subway station as your day’s exercise. You are not the only one. In fact, according to U.S. News, nearly 80% of resolutions fall short by the second week of February

While Millennials are better than their parent’s generation at sticking to new year’s resolutions, their frantic work and social lives make it hard to stick to plans on the long term. Millennials are ‘experience motivated’ and take up new hobbies and regimes with great intentions, but according to Statistic Brain only 8% achieve their resolut...

We've been working around the clock on our side hustle with the dream that one day it'll be our full-time gig.

But now that we're getting some traction, the real question is, when do we go all in?

The best Investor — our current paycheck

There will never be a more equitable investor than our current paycheck.

Full funding, no pitch process, and market compensation from Day One.

Compare that to when we try to actually raise money in a grueling pitch process, spend months with no income, and have to work for half of what we made last year.

While our current investor (our paycheck) has a lot of hours and distractions, it has some really important benefits: it's predictable, it's consistent, and if shit hits the fan, we just focus on that.

The blended workforce is made up of people who work full-time and part-time, as well as temporary workers, freelancers, and contract workers.

The so-called “gig economy,” or the rise of popularity in freelance work, that took root with the recovery from the 2008 recession and expanded with the advent of the Affordable Care Act is making the blended workforce the workforce of the future and the workforce of today. Around 40 percent of today’s labor force is made up of non-traditionally working people, including freelancers (sometimes referred to as agile talent, 1099s, consultants, contractors, etc.), temporary workers, and self-employed workers.

As with any labor force, the blended workforce offers advantages and disadvantages. Though compa...

Being a Founder doesn't imply one is a good manager. It just means we were around when the company was formed!

Sometimes Founders do grow into great managers — and sometimes they were great managers already. But the real question is: "Do Founders need to be good managers?"

Ideally, yes. But it's not a requirement.

We can fake it for a minute

In the formative years, when we only have a small team, we can usually get by without being great managers.

That's because the team is still small, and mostly operates in a flat "team" structure without a lot of management to be had. That's also why Founders often don't realize they are shitty managers until later on because they ran for so long in an unmanaged structure.

Eventually, though, it catch...

Seven months after filming an episode for season six of ABC’s hit television show “Shark Tank,” I finally received the email I had been waiting for: my episode had an air date, and it was only 18 days away!

My immediate thoughts were relief and terror, in that order. Relief because it was the end of an almost year-long waiting game since producers had first contacted me with an invitation to appear on the show, and terror because I suddenly realized that I had absolutely no idea what my business—or my life—would be like in 30 days’ time.

Moments after receiving the email, I shared the “Shark Tank” news, along with my feelings of excitement and uncertainty, with a friend, Colin McGuire. After a short congratulations, he said something that r...