Entrepreneur Magazine September 2022

KEEP TRACK of the questions people ask you. It could be the most valuable data you ever get. Why? Because when people ask you questions, they’re really telling you this: “Here’s how I think you’re valuable to me.” Now you know how to serve them. There is no greater superpower than that. In fact, this single insight changed my career—and led me to write a book that comes out in September. It’s called Build for Tomorrow, and it’s full of stories and exercises to help you thrive in changing times, and to find new opportunities. I would be honored if you bought it. Now I want to explain where it came from, and how it was born from this realization I had about questions. I want to inspire you to listen closely to the…

Usually, founders travel to meet investors in coastal cities. But in 2014, Steve Case and his team of investors began an annual bus tour, traveling to meet founders where they lived. It was the next step in a longstanding goal of Case’s; following his work as chairman and CEO of America Online, he’d founded an investment firm called Revolution, with an eye toward empowering entrepreneurs across the country—not just in clusters like Silicon Valley and New York. The bus tour, complete with a pitch competition, targeted places like Detroit, Chattanooga, and more. “It was not clear what we’d find when we hit the road and rolled into town,” Case writes in his new book The Rise of the Rest, which shares the same name as the bus tour. But after more…

1/Ask for help (and acknowledge you need it). “Last year, I was really stressed about our performance and felt like I was in it alone. During a meeting, I was very vulnerable and told my team I needed support and solutions from them. I also acknowledged that I had not always been open to receiving that support and external feedback, and I would change my behavior to make others more comfortable taking on more of a leadership role.” —AMIRA RASOOL, founder and CEO, The Folklore Group 2/Speak with purpose, not just emotion. “When we tested our new e-commerce platform, we were hit with a six-hour site outage. The next day, in a team meeting, I said the outage felt like a gut punch. Afterward, our head of HR pulled me aside and urged me…

Kevin Lee and Kevin Chanthasiriphan are first-generation immigrants, which to them meant a similar kind of childhood. “We both grew up with extreme humility,” Chanthasiriphan says. Their parents insisted on thriftiness and self-reliance; they never wanted their kids to brag or show off. “It really encouraged us to always work hard and really helped us cultivate what I call ‘quiet confidence,’” he continues. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of loneliness and pent-up stress. One of the things we’re focused on is finding balance.” That’s because they’d eventually become cofounders of a startup, where quietness is not always useful. The two met in 2013 as product managers at a gaming company, then discovered a shared background, love of noodles, and a family history of diabetes and high blood pressure.…

The term “direct marketing” is often synonymous with “mail order.” It comes with set-in-cement success principles dating to the turn of the century, which might make you think: Why would I ever think of applying that to my local brick-and-mortar retail business, service business, or professional practice? Here’s why: Because direct marketing—actual, good direct marketing—is a misunderstood, best-kept secret in many categories of businesses. It offers you a real competitive advantage. But you must do it right. To show you how small details make the difference, I’m taking one single advertisement…and then picking it apart. This is a real ad, with just a few things blurred to protect the almost-innocent. And when you see why this one ad failed, you’ll see why most direct marketing misses the mark. But before we talk about…

Like most entrepreneurs, my days were once a scattered mess. Now they’re productive. For example, as I’m writing this, it’s 5 p.m. and I have triumphantly crossed four things off my to-do list, taken two Zoom meetings, and grabbed lunch with a client-turned-acquaintance—not to mention that I woke up when my alarm went off this morning (no snooze) and put on clothes with buttons (miraculous in a post-Covid world!). How did I reach this braglevel state of achievement? Have I inhaled the teachings of Tim Ferriss and created a four-hour workweek? (I wish!) Maybe I meditated so hard that I became laser-focused? (Still working on that.) No, the truth is far more boring: I was able to accomplish so much today because of what I didn’t do. I have yet to log in…