One of the most important things you can do is build an ecosystem of people around you who want to see you do well. That might be making appropriate introductions or providing mentorship or introducing others to key hires over time. It's not just what you can learn at your job before you set out on your own, but also thinking about how you're cultivating that ecosystem and keeping in touch with that group around you.

As an entrepreneur you are often failing as much as you are succeeding. You are falling on your face as much as you are stepping up and moving forward. You need resilience to get up, re-gather, think of what you are going to do next, not letting that misstep pull you down. Next, you cannot be afraid of looking stupid or not being perfect. You have to be okay with sticking your neck out, being willing to fall down, and knowing that you are more measured over time about how you are getting back up.

I always have to add to a team someone who is a highly tactile, list-oriented person who keeps us on track. And call them a COO or executive all-star, or whatever. I need to balance myself with people around this table who are much better at organizing, which is certainly a blind spot of mine.

As an individual, you know what you are good at and what you're not good at, so over time as you are hiring, you should be hiring for the skill requirements as the rule, but you should also be thinking, "What am I less good at?" and knowing you need to hire those people to create a stronger team. Different personalities are good at different things, but as a leader and and entrepreneur, it often has to start with you and building around your shortcomings.

Eventually that's where you want to be really scrappy as an entrepreneur when you're first getting your business up and running: hiring the right people, partnering the right way, getting feedback on what you're doing.

When I came right out of college I remember someone pulling me aside and telling me how to exactly fit in. How to wear my hair, what clothes I should wear, even how I should talk and wave or not wave or hold my hands. I wish I never had that conversation. It held me back for like two years and it took me a while to learn this myself, but the idea that you are your own brand, and you are your own person.

If I am forced to come up with organizing tips, I use my iPhone and I have my to-do list that I keep there, and I try to go in weekly and have at it. I am never going to get through that entire list, so I have to weekly, as I check in, push up the priority and the three or four things that I absolutely have to get done, and constantly reorder the list. If anything, I feel like I have gotten more comfortable with that fact: knowing that what is really, truly important will get done and then being comfortable when other things fall by the wayside.