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Business & enterprise

Small-business owners & operators

Operating knowledge that high-growth founder stories omit: first customers, thin margins, delegation, pricing, and community.

12 questions, 210 answers on the record, from 160 members. Every question is asked in FLAPSS wording — nobody answers as anybody else.

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Worth reading

How has a setback or failure set you up for later success?

George Lucas

Filmmaker; creator of Star Wars and founder of Lucasfilm

Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1999

Whenever you’re making a movie, especially when you’re writing, you always have self-doubts. I did the first location shooting in Tunisia.
August Wilson

Playwright; two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama

Recorded · The Paris Review, Issue 153, Winter 1999 · 1999

I was writing poetry. But I found the theater such an exciting experience that one day I went home to try.
Jensen Huang

Co-founder, president and chief executive of NVIDIA

Recorded · NVIDIA Blog · 2024

One setback after another, we shook it off and skated to the next opportunity. Each time, we gain skills and strengthen our character.
Read all 69 →

Every question in this questionnaire

  1. How did you earn your first customers, and what did they teach you that your plan did not? —
  2. What is one of the best investments you have made — of money, time, or energy? 42
  3. When did cash become dangerously tight, and what choice helped the business survive? —
  4. How did you learn what your work should cost, and when have you priced it badly? —
  5. What part of your job would surprise outsiders because it takes up so much of your time? 41
  6. What did hiring your first employee require you to stop controlling yourself? —
  7. Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? 2
  8. What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? 26
  9. How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? 69
  10. Which piece of standard business advice is least useful to a small operator? —
  11. What are you unwilling to optimise? 30
  12. What does your business owe the place and people that support it? —

Who has answered

Members with enough answers in this questionnaire to be worth arriving at — listed A–Z, not ranked by count.

  • Alice Waters

    Chef, restaurateur and food activist

    2 answers United States b. 1944

  • AW
    August Wilson

    Playwright; two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama

    2 answers United States 1945–2005

  • Barack Obama

    44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008

    3 answers United States b. 1961

  • Bill Clinton

    42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001

    2 answers United States b. 1946

  • BJ
    Bong Joon-ho

    Film director and screenwriter

    2 answers South Korea b. 1969

  • Brian Chesky

    Co-founder and chief executive of Airbnb

    2 answers United States b. 1981

  • Cathy Freeman

    Australian sprinter, 1990–2003

    2 answers Australia b. 1973

  • Charlie Munger

    Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023

    3 answers United States b. 1924

  • Chris Hoy

    British track cyclist, 1994–2013

    3 answers United Kingdom b. 1976

  • Daniel Kahneman

    Psychologist; laureate of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, 2002

    2 answers Israel / United States 1934–2024

  • DS
    Derek Sivers

    Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want

    3 answers United States

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