Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? What can you learn from the most successful entrepreneurs in the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ll likely endure many challenges on your path<\/a> of entrepreneurship. A true entrepreneur embraces these obstacles and works tirelessly to find solutions. If you ever feel defeated, just know that the most successful entrepreneurs overcame these same problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Below is the best advice from entrepreneurs that you\u2019ll ever receive, from business magnate Warren Buffett to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Peter Thiel is a billionaire entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal and was one of the first outside investors in Facebook. With an estimated net worth of $7.19 billion, it\u2019s undeniable that he\u2019s one of the top entrepreneurs in the world. In 2014, he revealed the secret to success in the book Zero to One<\/em><\/a>, co-written by himself and Blake Masters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book, he asserts that the selection of your partners and employees is the most important decision you\u2019ll make when starting a business. We\u2019ll look at Thiel\u2019s advice for building a strong team<\/a> by carefully selecting the right partners and employees that will abide by your company\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Theil equates choosing a co-founder for your start-up company to choosing a marriage partner<\/a>, claiming that the same issue of personal compatibility applies, and the consequences of incompatibility are just as severe. As an example, he recounts the tragic story of a company founded by Luke Nosek and an unnamed co-founder whose personality and ambitions were incompatible with Nosek\u2019s. Thiel was an investor in the company, but he lost his investment when the company failed due to the founders\u2019 incompatibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When bringing on partners and\/or co-founders, Thiel claims that you need to consider how strong your corporate structure is\u2014how founders, investors, and employees work and interact with each other. Some people advise against imposing structure on an organization, saying that this will stimulate creativity<\/a> by giving your team members greater latitude to implement their own innovative ideas. Thiel concedes that in a perfect world, full of perfect people, that would be true, but argues that in the real world, real people need some amount of structure to work together constructively. If you partner with people who won\u2019t abide by your company\u2019s structure, then you shouldn\u2019t work with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Employees are an essential part of your business, so you have to be careful about who you hire. As you build your startup\u2019s talent pool, Thiel advises hiring only full-time, on-site employees<\/strong>. He acknowledges that part-time employees, remote employees, and consultants paid as contractors are cheaper to hire, and that startups must generally operate on a tight budget. However, in his experience, the less intimately people are connected to the company, the more they tend to focus on looking good in the short term, rather than building the company\u2019s future. As such, even if you have to hire consultants to get the necessary talent, bring them on as salaried employees rather than contractors. And don\u2019t even bother with part-time help or remote hires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thiel says your employees need to be unified by a zeal for your company\u2019s unique mission<\/strong>. By way of illustration, he says there\u2019s a fine line between a successful startup and a cult: Usually, cults are built on an idea or ideology that\u2019s wrong, but that their members zealously support. Successful startups are built on an idea that\u2019s true, and that their employees are zealous about, but that the rest of the world thinks is wrong, because the truth of the idea is not yet widely known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, as you hire additional employees, Thiel emphasizes the importance of articulating your company\u2019s mission to them. He advises hiring people who find your company\u2019s unique mission compelling, and want to work with the kind of people who are already on your team\u2014not people who are just looking for money or special perks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Hire people who want to see your company succeed in the long term. Create a healthy work culture<\/a> that embodies your company\u2019s mission.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Billionaire investor Warren Buffett may not represent the traditional definition of an entrepreneur, but his work as a business magnate and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is a modeling example of what entrepreneurs should aspire to be. The Snowball<\/em><\/a> by Alice Schroeder demonstrates how Buffett uses his success for good, and why you should too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Entrepreneurship means being a model leader, which Buffett has proven to be through slow perseverance and integrity. In the field of high finance, Warren Buffett stands alone as a man not driven by appearances, ego, or the quest for the quick, easy dollar. Instead, Buffett embodies the old saying that \u201cslow and steady wins the race.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, his patience paid off and Buffett became one of the most influential investors in the world. Just as Buffett\u2019s wealth grew throughout his life, so did his reputation. Buffett\u2019s growing influence gave him a path to push for change through political activism and his role as a publisher, and (once people saw him as a titan of the Market) to advocate for equitable fiscal policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the \u201960s, Buffetts\u2019 net worth had risen so high that his wife Susie suggested that he should shift his focus from making money and start giving back to the community. In particular, Susie was a civil rights proponent, while Buffett (like his father before him) was intent on preventing another World War. However, Schroeder argues that Buffett saw himself as an \u201cidea man,\u201d rather than an active philanthropist. Making money was his gift, and he intended to do so, earning as much as he could in his life before giving it all away at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, Buffett and Susie both became active in politics and civil rights issues. While Susie worked heavily with the African American community, Buffett took personal steps against the antisemitism prevalent in Omaha\u2019s elite. Despite his father\u2019s staunch Republican leanings, Buffett became involved with the Democratic Party, actively supporting candidates in the 1972 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While not every entrepreneur is required to become an activist, philanthropy shows customers that you care about important issues that aren\u2019t related to your company. When people see that you care, they\u2019ll be more inclined to support your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Use your wealth and reputation to advocate for good causes that have nothing to do with your business. Be a figure that people look up to.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazon is the largest Internet retailer in the world, and it increasingly penetrates our everyday lives, from being the first stop for our online shopping to interfacing with our physical world through Echo and Alexa. It all couldn\u2019t be done without Jeff Bezos\u2019s management techniques<\/a> based on his frugality and desire to break away from tradition. With the advice found in Brad Stone\u2019s book The Everything Store<\/em><\/a>, your business could become the next Amazon<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff Bezos is famously frugal. Unlike technology companies that dote lavishly on their employees, Amazon is stingy. It believes that in the cutthroat low-margin world of retail, it needs to push for every possible advantage to reduce prices for customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Bezos once said, \u201cFrugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If Bezos is content with managing Amazon<\/a> with frugality, then you should be too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even among groundbreaking technology companies, Amazon is lauded for its continuous innovation and breakthrough ideas. Bezos\u2019s advice for powering this is a constant push to rethink how things are done, never accepting the status quo without further questioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Amazon\u2019s leadership principles<\/a>, \u201cLeaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by \u2018not invented here.\u2019 As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Take every step to save money to set the lowest prices possible for customers. Additionally, think outside the box and encourage innovative ideas from everyone in the company.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, was a guiding force in the electronics industry, from the development of the first home computers in the 1970s to the world-shaking impact of smartphones and tablets. One of the lessons up-and-coming entrepreneurs can learn from Jobs is the value of quality over quantity<\/a>. In other words: deliver the best product possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Walter Isaacson\u2019s biography Steve Jobs<\/em><\/a>, the entrepreneur\u2019s motivation went beyond maximizing<\/a> profits. Jobs was motivated to deliver the best product possible. He pursued this by focusing on Apple’s core essentials of craftsmanship, simplicity, and quality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jobs infused his passion for delivering great products into the development teams he brought together. <\/strong>He wanted everything his companies created to be more than useful; they had to be works of art. Isaacson recounts that Jobs directed his teams as if they were artists, whether they were working on operating systems, circuit boards, or apps for phones and tablets. As artists, he told them not to compromise, not to be afraid to break the rules if they had to (much like Bezos\u2019s philosophy), and not to stop working until their projects were done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if your start-up isn\u2019t a technology company, it\u2019s still worth treating your products as art and your employees as artists. It not only motivates them to create the best product in your field, but it gives your employees a greater purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Stress quality over quantity. Consider your products like works of art and the employees as the artists.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hailed as this one of this generation\u2019s most innovative entrepreneurs, Elon Musk has built several industry-disrupting businesses, and he\u2019s known for shooting for the moon\u2014or more literally, Mars. One management method that helped Musk succeed throughout his entrepreneurial career is setting ambitious deadlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all of his companies, Musk set deadlines for both himself and others. He told employees, consumers, and executives that certain tasks or products would be completed faster than anyone thought possible. In her book Elon Musk<\/em><\/a>, technology journalist Ashlee Vance said she believes he wasn\u2019t setting an arbitrary timeline\u2014this was genuinely how long Musk believed it would take to complete certain tasks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Employees soon understood that if Musk said something would take a day, it would actually take a few days or a week to do. They also learned to create daily\u2014and sometimes hourly\u2014schedules that included bathroom breaks. Employees understood the consequences of not meeting these deadlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although setting these extreme deadlines put a lot of pressure on Musk and his employees, this habit is a large part of Musk\u2019s success. Musk rarely met these deadlines, but by creating an extremely ambitious schedule, his teams achieved impressive results in a faster time frame than anyone else thought possible. For instance, NASA took about a decade to build a satellite; Musk\u2019s original goal was to launch a rocket into space in a year and a half. Given NASA\u2019s timeframe, Musk\u2019s deadline seemed impossible. It took SpaceX six years to successfully launch the rocket. While SpaceX didn\u2019t meet the original goal, completing the rocket in six years was still faster than anyone in the industry had predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Set deadlines that push your employees to work harder and faster.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Wal-Mart is the largest retailer on the planet. It exceeds $600 billion in sales\u2014over 2x the size of Amazon\u2014and runs about 10,500 stores worldwide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This retail titan began in 1945 with founder Sam Walton managing a single store in Newport, Arkansas, a town of 7,000 people. In this small town, Walton learned the retail and management strategies that became the foundation of Wal-Mart\u2019s staggering worldwide growth, which he shares in his book Sam Walton: Made in America<\/em><\/a>. Many of these management strategies coincide with those of other entrepreneurs, such as building a team and being frugal<\/a>, but one thing that set him apart was his encouragement to have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walton felt it was important to not take things so seriously. He didn\u2019t want him or his employees to walk around scowling all day \u201cpretending you\u2019re lost in thought over weighty problems.<\/strong>\u201d He preferred a \u201cwhistle while you work\u201d philosophy. People should know that they\u2019re supposed to have a good time working. This spirit was inherited from his small-town roots: a love of parades, cheers, songs, and celebration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the early days, this was a way to attract attention<\/a> in small towns\u2014the carefree spirit made Wal-Mart the best entertainment you could get in the area. The big shopping day for the family was Saturday, and stores needed to attract customers<\/a> to their stores above others. Walton\u2019s stores employed a host of promotions, such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This love of fun spilled over into general management practices:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Advice to entrepreneurs: Have fun. Show enthusiasm. Build spirit and excitement. Capture your team\u2019s attention and keep them interested, making them guess what\u2019s coming next.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tony Hsieh was the former CEO of the online clothing retailer Zappos and was known for instituting a happy work culture at the company. Company culture<\/a> was of the utmost importance at Zappos, but customer satisfaction was also at the top of Hsieh\u2019s priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Providing great customer service<\/a> is a vital component of a successful business<\/a>, according to Hsieh in his book Delivering Happiness<\/em><\/a>. Great customer service is being so supportive and adaptable in every customer interaction that you have a positive emotional impact on the customer.<\/strong> This positive emotional impact is the first step toward forming a healthy and profitable long-term relationship with that customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPeter Thiel: Build a Strong Team<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Choosing Partners<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Recruiting Employees and Consultants<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Creating a Culture<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Warren Buffett: Lead by Example<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Bezos: Be Frugal and Break Away From Tradition<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jeff Bezos\u2019s Frugality<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Amazon Breaks Away From Tradition<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Steve Jobs: Deliver the Best Product Possible<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Elon Musk: Set Ambitious Deadlines<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Sam Walton: Don\u2019t Take Things So Seriously<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Tony Hsieh: Provide Great Customer Service<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n