Jeff Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur, innovator, and mentor to entrepreneurs all over the world. After being part of such well known startups as Priceline.com and uBid.com, he now serves as the Chairman of the Global Entrepreneurship Network, working with entrepreneurs in 180 countries.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Nolan Bushnell founder of Atari
- Steve Wozniak Co-founder of Apple
When business started difficulties overcame:
“The first one was ageism which normally refers to older people in the workforce. But I was only 20 something, maybe 25, and I couldn’t get credibility. Forget the business credibility the first part was when I said I have a good idea people were like you’ve had a job and you have been in the world for a couple of years out of school. And so people didn’t want to listen to me because I was too young. Then when I decided to start a company as a founder/CEO/leader that same credibility is hard to get when you are trying to bring people on a team. But it’s even harder when you go to customers and say I would like to do business with you and they are like you are a kid…”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It…and Why the Rest Don’t (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) by Verne Harnish
- Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City Book by Brad Feld
- Mark Victor Hansen Books
- The Alchemist Book by Paulo Coelho
Favourite Quote:
” Travel is fatal to prejudice”
Recommended Online Resources:
- Coursera Online Courses & Credentials by Top Educators. Choose your Course To Success! Learn online and earn valuable credentials from top universities like Yale, Michigan, Stanford, and leading companies like Google and IBM. Join Coursera for free and transform your career with degrees, certificates, Specializations, MOOCs in data science, computer science, business, and dozens of other topics
- SlideShare – Share and Discover Knowledge on LinkedIn SlideShare. Discover, Share, and Present presentations and infographics with the world’s largest professional content sharing community
- TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100 languages Ideas free to stream and download
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“While everybody is talking just take that first step. You have got to jump. there is a saying that says being an entrepreneur is like jumping off a cliff and trying to build an aeroplane on the way down. So my advice is if that frightens you and you are scared to death maybe you should consider a different career. But if they’re unknown thrills you because it’s a possibility of trying new things in new ways and learning things may be that no one else has ever discovered then you should just jump. We know you don’t have all the answers. Just jump.”…[Listen for More]
More About Jeff Hoffman:
Global Entrepreneurship Network
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Superior leaders are willing to admit a mistake and cut their losses. Be willing to admit that you’ve changed your mind. Don’t persist when the original decision turns out to be a poor one.” Brian Tracy
Other Quotes From the Chat with Jeff Hoffman:
- “you should never lose your sense of childlike wonder at how the world works”
- “I would have sat down and thought through the key principles of my culture. What are my values? What do I want the company’s values to be? How do we want to show up in the world? And I would have written them down at the beginning and I would have put them on the wall… I don’t start an interview by saying tell me about your resume or your CV, I start every interview by asking them a few cultural questions to assess what kind of person they are not whether or not they know how to use a particular business tool” I would have done that at the beginning if I had known that culture was going to drive our success as much as it did”
- “surrounding yourself with people smarter than you, I think that’s massively important”
- “never lose your curiosity, wonder about everything, explore things, take things apart figuratively and literally”
- “focus on results, not how they got there or whatever. Just focus on results. If people are getting it done that’s all you need to focus on”
- “make sure that you know what you are searching for. Why are you doing this? Why are we as entrepreneurs working around the clock and taking risks and incurring debt? What are you doing all of this for? There must be some life goal, someplace you are trying to get, something you are trying to achieve”
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