Misc Wisdom for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners

Today I had lunch with Joel Peterson (wildly successful real estate and private equity investor) and later had a dinner with two more recent entrepreneurs and classmates: Jenny (owner of a wildly popular midwest desert chain) and Erik (founder of a series of popular - and profitable - e-commerce web sites ).

Some interesting tidbits from both events:

• Both Joel and Jenny listed "confidence" as the number one trait of a successful entrepreneur. Jenny went into some more detail, labeling herself as an "insecure egomaniac." She is confident she can do anything, but is always paranoid about what might go wrong. I thought that was a great phrase.
• Jenny's keys to hiring great retail salespeople: 1. Make sure your shop is the best place in town to work (her company is inundated with resumes every week). 2. When hiring high schoolers, find the ones who lead clubs, team, etc., at school. Also look to see what colleges they are applying to.
• Erik's unorthodox hiring tip: Take a look at the state of the inside of their car. If you are hiring for non-creative, execution-style positions don't hire someone who's interior is a mess.

Comments

[kareem]

dude i just finished listening to the STVP podcast with Joel... one of the best podcasts i've ever heard.

[Raj Mehta]

Matt:

Read your blog above. Very insightful. I wonder how much of entrepreneurship can be boiled down into simple rules. Many books on the subject tend to do that. Whereas the wildly successful entrepreneurs of the last generation were folks that dropped out of school, and only had their common sense to rely upon.

I don't wanna belittle the learning one can get from Joel P's talk. I am a b-school student and love the lessons that I received.

Keep learning ;-)

Raj

[Baron Turner]

As a regular on chess.com and a regular user of chess computers and retailer of chess products - well done Eric. Can't quite see how you're monetizing it currently, but I'm keeping an eye out.