14 Leaders Share Their Inspirational Advice on Starting a Business

This story appears in the June 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
Starting a business is no easy task, and there's a lot of advice out there. However, who better to look to than some of the most successful people in the world? From thinking visually to finding balance to taking control, business leaders like Jeff Bezos, Sheryl Sandberg and Warren Buffett share their advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.
Related: 10 Ways to Stay Inspired for Life
Here's what you can learn about starting a business from 14 though leaders.
Live for Day 1
-- Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, in his 2017 shareholder letter
Focus on what machines can’t do
-- Author Tim Leberecht in his TED Talk “Four Ways to Build a Human Company in the Age of Machines”
AI will create the new super-rich
-- Mark Cuban
Mine life stories
-- Elon Musk, on the question he asks every job applicant
Think visual
-- From Sprint, by Jake Knapp
Anxiety will show you the way
-- Tools of Titans, by Tim Ferriss
Just say it
“Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings… Managers wait too long to break the news that people are being fired.”
-- Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg
The future is golden
“I’ll repeat what I’ve both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.”
-- Warren Buffett, in his 2017 letter to shareholders
There’s plenty to go around
-- Olivier Scalabre, in his TED Talk “The Next Manufacturing Revolution Is Here”
People > capital
-- Time, Talent, Energy, by Eric Garton and Michael Mankins
Unplug
“If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to email, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration… Put another way: Trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day.”
-- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport
Finding balance
-- Truth at Work: The Science of Delivering Tough Messages, by Mark Murphy
Hit pause
-- Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas L. Friedman
Take Control of Your Free Time
—Laura Vanderkam, author, in her TED Talk “How to Gain Control of Your Free Time”