Best entrepreneurship advices

Barbara Corcoran | Shark Tank Investor, Business Expert Image Credit: abc.com Best Advice? “You will never succeed without me!” My boyfriend and business partners prediction when I ended our business partnership, after he announced he would marry my secretary. Biggest Failure & Lesson? My fabulous new idea to put all our apartments for sale on videotape so customers wouldn’t have to go out to see them. I pissed away my first profit of $77,000 and it was dead on arrival. In an effort to save face, I put them on this new government thing called the Internet. It was 1989. We had two sales out of London in the first week. I registered all of my competitors URLs under my name. One by one they called. Definition of Success? Feeling proud of yourself got trying. Guy Kawasaki | Chief Evangelist at Canva, Co-Founder of Alltop Image Credit: thefullsignal.com Best Advice? Never ask people to do something I wouldn’t do. This is a very good test for how you treat your employees and customers—assuming you’re not a sociopath. Biggest Failure & Lesson? My biggest failure is that Macintosh did not achieve 100% market share of the PC market. I learned that the best gizmo doesn’t necessarily win. It’s taken 30 years, but I’ve gotten over this. Definition of Success? First, that you made the world a better place. Second, you don’t “have to” do anything. Gary Vaynerchuk | Author & Founder of VaynerMedia Image Credit: Entrepreneur.com Best Advice? Early on in my career, my dad taught me that when I committed to buying cases of any given wine, I was in for them no matter what. It didn’t matter what transpired between commitment and delivery, I would take the merchandise because word is bond. That’s been the single biggest influence on my success, and something that might surprise a lot of people given my showmanship. Biggest Failure & Lesson? In 2009 I had founded VaynerMedia, purchased Cork’d, and was involved in about half a dozen other business ventures. I tried to do everything, and ended up not doing anything. Since then I’ve learned how to focus much better, and I’ve built up a team around me that allows me to do just that, so let’s see if I’ve learned anything. Definition of Success? I define success by how many people show up to my funeral. Christiane Lemieux |Founder of DwellStudio Image Credit: CrainsNewYork Best Advice? I’ve made every mistake and received all forms of advice; from things that are valuable to ideas that are totally off the wall. I’ve tried most. But the single best piece of advice is to “stay focused.” As a serial entrepreneur—I have a very bad case of “shiny object syndrome,” I am distracted and seduced by new ideas, concepts, business models and opportunities. My path to success has been a jagged line. A straight line meets milestones much more quickly. Biggest Failure & Lesson? The biggest mistake I made was not seriously vetting an investor I had in the business. Not all money is helpful or strategic, and all money has strings attached. Sometimes theses strings become a noose. Be very careful—ask all the right questions, vet your investors very seriously. It’s a marriage and you want a healthy and sustainable one to get you through the ups and downs of business. Definition of Success? Success for me is defined by how my business touches the people I work with. My greatest joy, and hopefully my most enduring legacy has been all of the lives I’ve touched both here and overseas through the jobs I’ve created. When I think about my employees in New York who have great healthcare, or my partners in Vietnam sending their kids to school—it makes the hard work, travel and constant forward motion worth every single minute. Grant Cardone | Entrepreneur and Creator of Whatever It Takes Digital Network Image Credit: WitNation.com Best Advice? The best investment you will ever make is in yourself. (Grant’s mom told him this). Biggest Failure & Lesson? I should have gone 10X bigger from the get-go. The lesson learned was, it’s the same amount of work to stay small as it is to go big. Building a $100 million dollar company is no more work than building a $1 million company. Definition of Success? Success for me is the attainment of the gap between my current reality and my potential. Jack Canfield | Creator of Chicken Soup For The Soul& Success Coach Image Credit: simplereminders.com Best Advice? When I was in my twenties, W. Clement Stone, who was my boss and mentor, told me to always dream big, ask boldly for what I wanted, and to take action on an idea immediately. It was that advice that ultimately led to the creation of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which now has over 500 million copies in print in 47 languages around the world. Biggest Failure & Lesson? We spent a year attempting to create a new human potential oriented internet portal, and we never got it off the ground. What I learned was to stick to our core business—writing and training. I also learned the importance of having adequate funding for the marketing needed to pull off such a huge venture. We were ignorantly going up against AOL at that time, and they were spending millions advertising everywhere. Definition of Success? I believe success is fulfilling your soul’s purpose. I believe we each have a purpose to fulfill in this lifetime. Mine is to empower people and organizations to live their highest vision in a context of love and joy and in harmony with the highest good of all concerned. I believe everything works better when it is done in the spirit of love and joy rather than fear and greed, and that if we’re always looking to create win-win solutions rather than only pursuing our own selfish interests (as in the case of the recent financial meltdown caused by a handful of bankers and investors), the world would function much better. Mark Cuban | Shark Tank Investor, Owner of Dallas Mavericks Image Credit: abcnews.com Best Advice? Today is the youngest you will ever be, live like it. Biggest Failure & Lesson? Lots of failures, but I haven’t had my biggest one yet. Definition of Success? Waking up every morning with a smile on my face knowing its going to be a great day. Alexa von Tobel | Author & Founder of LearnVest Image Credit: LearnVest Best Advice? Financially, never overspend on your home. By underspending here, it can give you a lot of room and flexibility throughout your entire budget. I also love the motto “get up, dress up, show up.” By this I mean get up ready to go, dress the part, and show up with your best attitude and energy to tackle all that your day will bring. Biggest Failure & Lesson? As an entrepreneur, I believe you have to be OK with failure. If you’re not failing, you’re likely not pushing yourself hard enough. The important thing is to figure out how to accept these failures, and then get back up and keep going. “Fail fast” is a concept we tend to encourage at LearnVest— don’t be afraid to try something, but be ready to learn from it and move forward. Definition of Success? To me, success is working towards a goal I can believe in. My life’s mission is to make financial education and advice accessible to people nationwide. If we can help people make progress on their money, then I’d say all of this work has been worth it.