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.
Alexis MaybankA career is measured over the course of the years, not moments. Over good decisions, over successes, not moments, failures, missteps, or bad comments. I learned that I needed to take a step back and look at my career not in that one moment that made me feel really bad, but what I had done not even in the past one or two years or last one or two hires, but that that career is built over many, many, many, many successive quarters and years and good decisions - never, ever made in that one moment where you felt really bad.
Alexis MaybankIf 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.
Alexis MaybankOne 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.
Alexis MaybankIf you recognize how you are most effective - whether it's how you present yourself or whether it's how you speak, how you convey enthusiasm - when you realize what makes you feel like your most confident self, that's when you are going to be your best. You just have to figure out what makes you effective in your environment. As long as you get that right, they are always going to remember you a lot more!
Alexis MaybankAs 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.
Alexis MaybankA lot of people want to be an entrepreneur, so it's important to know that there's a lot of ways to be an entrepreneur. One of the ways is to go about and start your own business. There are also ways that you can gain experience in the context of a larger business, like raising your hand to helm a new office. As you are gaining your skills to run your own business successfully, the first way is to think about how you can do so based on where you already are.
Alexis Maybank