What Is the Best Business Advice You Have Received?

Every time DPHA members get together and talk about the benefits of being an association member, the conversation inevitably turns to relationships they have made with fellow members.

 

There are a number of members who opine that DPHA has helped make their business successful and that joining was one of the best business moves they have taken in their career.

 

Recently, Inc. magazine asked successful entrepreneurs what was the best piece of advice they received to help their business. Here's a sampling:

• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. When you start your own company, you have to get used to learning how to do things that you don't know how to do. You also need to learn how to take risks and be okay with not knowing what the next stage is going to bring.

• One CEO said that your opportunity is set up like a graph. On one axis, it's what you do and the other axis, who you tell. "If I think about some of the career mistakes I made at my last company, it was really not doing enough telling about my accomplishments."

• Look at your outbox and see who you are emailing. Usually your emailing is related to who is supporting you. If you're not emailing people, they probably are not supporting you.

• Someone once told me that when people are arguing, they usually argue about the what and the why. For example, if there is a team that wants to make a website blue and another team that wants to make it green, they may argue forever about which one is better, but they are never going to agree on the color if they don't agree on the goal.

• There was a period of time when I didn't have control over things and I felt badly about the things that were happening. I was talking to one of our investors and she said, "when you stop acting like a jerk, you'll stop feeling like a jerk." Basically, when you are ready to take full responsibility of all things that are going on, you're going to stop feeling like you are in a position to feel like a jerk all the time. It stuck with me, because it was basically saying control the things that you can control. 

What's the best business advice you have received?  Please share your thoughts with us on the DPHA Facebook page or with our LinkedIn group.