Woodrow Levin is the Founder and CEO of Extend, an API-first solution company that allows any merchant to offer extended warranties and protection plans on the products they sell to their customers in order to drive incremental bottom line net income, increase purchase conversions, and create more loyal customers through an elegant customer experience
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
Woodrow’s father
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I think in the beginning it’s trying to figure out what you don’t know. It’s those problems that will arise that you don’t even know are there – it’s the unknown unknowns… Before I was an entrepreneur I think it was just trying to figure out how do you even start? How do you go about incorporating a business? When do you need to do that? How do you raise money? What does a deck look like? What do you wear to the meetings? I learned all of these things”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream Book by Paulo Coelho
- Sam Walton : Made in America My Story Mass Market Book by Sam Walton
- That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix by the first CEO and co-founder Marc Randolph Book by Marc Randolph
- Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (The Purpose Driven Life) Book by Rick Warren
- Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values Book by Robert Pirsig
- EBoys: the First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work Book by Randall Stross
- The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years As CEO of the Walt Disney Company Book by Robert Iger
Favourite Quote:
- “if you don’t try you can’t succeed”
- “if you don’t try you can’t fail” Larry Levin
Recommended Online Resources:
- Marc Andreessen blog
- Google News is a news aggregator and app developed by Google. It presents a continuous, customizable flow of articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available on Android, iOS, and the web.
- Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“ask yourself what drives you? Why do you want to build this company? Is it because you want to help a family member? Is it because you want to grow a business? Is it because you want to become rich? And there is nothing wrong with that. What motivates you? Because you are true to yourself and you are honest with yourself about why you are doing this then you can really move towards success. If you say you are doing it because you say you want to help people but all you want to do is make money then how you go about it is going to be misaligned. You need to figure out what drives you and use that in order to drive business and your team forward”…[Listen for More]
More About Woodrow Levin:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.” Christopher McDougall
Other Quotes From the Chat with Woodrow Levin:
- “there’s no substitute for hard work, there’s no substitute for persistence, there is no substitute for admitting when you don’t know something and asking for help. These are the things that are important. You have to keep yourself healthy, you have to work hard, you have to work smart”
- “being an entrepreneur is never a straight line”
- “there’s so many people who have great ideas out there but it’s getting them to get up and actually take action to move it forward. And that’s the most challenging thing”
- “People will say ‘oh wow that’s so fast, that’s amazing’. And it is Neil but it’s so fast and so amazing after 20 years of putting in the reps and taking chances and failing and learning and iterating”
- “Everything in life is scary until you’ve tried it. And I think a lot of the time afterwards you are like oh that wasn’t that bad”
- “you have got to get up and have got to go for it”
- “you have to craft your own journey. It’s where do you do research, where do you find thought leadership in order to push you forward”
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