If you’ve read my Bio, you’d know I dropped out of college to start DaytradeTeam. I finally went back to finish up my degree a couple years later. Although the classes really didn’t teach me a thing, one teacher in particular did. He taught my entrepreneurism class. Of course I was the only student in there who actually had a business, so he took a special interest in me. By the end of the semester we were exchanging stories, lessons learned and strategy. Here are a few key points I learned from him:
“If two people exchange $100, they are both even. If they exchange an idea, they are both richer.”
Yes this one is a little corny, but when it comes to starting new businesses and pooling resources, it helps you to realize that you cannot ignore ideas as a resource. Put me, Andy, and 3 other creative guys in a room–I guarantee we walk out with a great business idea in a few hours.“Some customers are too expensive to keep.”
This lesson is illustrated by a great SouthWest Airlines company story. Mrs. Jones flew on SW and wrote a letter afterward to complain. They appologized and gave her some travel vouchers. She flew again, and again wrote to complain. This time she was transfered one level of management higher. He appologized and gave her travel vouchers. This happened again and again until she reached the CEO. His response was quick and simple:
“Mrs. Jones, we will miss your business.”“Hire based on characteristics, not on experience.”
This one is solid gold. Experience can be taught. Intelligence, work-ethic, honesty and team-mentality cannot–at least not in a few months. When we hired our all-star Nick Fenton for DaytradeTeam, we put him through about 5 hours of testing–all to assess these unteachable qualities. He knocked each out of the park, then we learned he also knew stocks and technical analysis, so he was a no-brainer. But I would have been comfortable hiring him had he had no market experience. He had the characteristics we needed, the rest could have been taught.
Another great example of this is our development team for mytrade.com. They work so hard for mytrade. The whole team recently put in over 100 hours each in a week to meet a deadline–and no, we’re not paying hourly rates or overtime. They just want to do the job right. You can’t teach that.
