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Upstart
Business Journal
The
Bukowski adherent: 'Find the thing that you are intensely passionate
about'
It’s
graduation season, and as those with an entrepreneurial bent pick up
diplomas, they might be asking “what now?” To help with their
inspiration, our partners at the Young Entrepreneur Council share
these stories from some recent graduates (and a few who skipped
college altogether to focus on business).
D
anny Boice, 34, is the co-founder and president of Speek, a
conference call startup based in Dulles, Va. that lets users do group
calls with a simple link (speek.com/YourName) rather than using phone
numbers and PINs. Boice attended Harvard, is an adjunct professor at
Georgetown University and was recently named a Tech Titan by
Washingtonian Magazine. You can find him on Twitter @DannyBoice or
LinkedIn here.
Who
is your hero?
Lemmy
from Motorhead.
What’s
the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you
are as an entrepreneur today, and why?
“Find
what you love and let it kill you.” – Charles Bukowski
I
take this quote to mean that you should find the thing that you are
intensely passionate about first and foremost. Once you have found
that thing then spend the rest of your life working your a*s off to
be great at it.
What’s
the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you
learn from it that others can learn from too?
Only
get in bed with people you really like. This applies to co-founders,
partners, you name it.
When
my first company was acquired I was heavily incentivized to join the
management team of the company that acquired us. I really did not get
along with the founders of that company and we rarely saw eye to eye.
I felt marginalized and believed that my talents were
under-appreciated. It was an absolutely miserable experience for me
and I spent a couple years being unhappy. It’s just not worth
losing years of your life.
What
do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?
I put
together a to-do list for the day using todoist. Then I get myself to
inbox zero. I like starting the day with a conscious plan of what I
want to get done and I don’t like checking email throughout the day
because it is a barrier to getting things done...
Read
the rest of the article at Upstart Business Journal
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