Billionaire Fireside Chat with Jeff Hoffman
How often do you get a chance to be mentored or coached directly by a billionaire?
What % of the ideas going into your brain are directly from someone worth $100M+ $1B+ or in the position you want to reach one day in some way?
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing billionaire Jeff Hoffman on stage at our Beverly Hills Super Summit; here are 10 takeaways from his talk.
You don't need to be THE leader of your company. As a leader, you need to spend less time leading and more time creating leaders. You don't focus on gathering followers; you spend time building leaders around yourself, and that is the only way to scale. Get out of the way.
Confidence is a requirement; arrogance is one of the 7 deadly sins. The problem is that the line between them is very thin. Trust your instinct or fast intelligence, as your instinct is the sum total of everything you have ever gotten wrong or right.
Too many people are blinded by their own brilliance. Everyone thinks their product or story is the BEST ever. People are often too sure they are exactly right, and they plug forward. Do not listen to experts or friends; listen to the end customers to see whether your solution is excellent or not. This is what Sam Walton did; he talked to farmers and spent time with customers. Spend your day in the life of your customer, and it can be life-changing.
Extreme focus on operational efficiency. Refine and dial in your focus. Everything you do should help us sell more hotel rooms if you are in the hotel business. Constantly ask each other how what we are doing is helping us sell more hotel rooms. Don't do anything that doesn't help us get to our goal.
Every January 1st - write down how you will define success when the year is over. Then, turn the paper over and write out what failure looks like. Sign both sides and have people know that if they do what looks like failure, they should fire themselves and leave the company; if they do what success looks like, there are rewards. This can be used with investors on future rounds of investing, or it can be used with teams or leaders. You have to have metrics to define success and failure, which are very specific definitions. If you are going to fail, you should try to fail fast.
Investor relations are constantly disappointing; often, there is no constant communication with investors. Spend time developing relationships with investors and actually get to know them before you need anything.
What is your employee's dream? What is important to them? Why do you come to the office every day? What is important to you right now in life? Are they worried about getting their mother out of a rusted trailer and into a house? Dig into that, and know your team and what moves them. it could be something big or small, something personal or business-focused. Make what is important to them your mission.
Share everything you have learned on your journey as often as you can to add value to other entrepreneurs.
Jeff took his daughter to lunch to apologize for working too much. Launching a fast-growing company is like bull-riding, but it is non-stop. His daughter asked about her favorite color, favorite book, what song cheers her up, and what story makes her happy. He knew all the answers, and she said you are so engaged with me dad, that is what I care about. That is the best series of questions anyone has ever asked him.
Do not focus on activity; focus on results. Working around the clock is not a badge of honor; it is a badge of inefficiency. Sometimes, you have to work hard but don't grind just to brag about working hard. Work smart, and do in 2 days what everyone else takes a week to get the same thing done. Sometimes, Jeff sometimes is not grinding hard because he automated something, and now he is on the beach while his competitors are working hard. Spend that time with your daughter or family instead.
These are 10 takeaways from my fireside chat with billionaire Jeff Hoffman!
Sebastian H. Amieva