The most valuable startup wisdom doesn’t always come from the places you’d expect.
Most entrepreneurship advice (including the advice I tend to share) is about building and running companies. It usually covers things like finding product-market fit, fundraising, customer acquisition, hiring, networking, and other day-to-day, operational tasks.
At first glance, this type of practical advice is exactly what entrepreneurs want. After all, why wouldn’t they want to learn the operational skills necessary for running companies?
But the best advice in the entrepreneurial world has nothing to do with logistical tasks and structural processes. The best advice is the advice that reminds us how, in order to succeed as entrepreneurs, we need to be fundamentally good and thoughtful human beings.
While that kind of advice should seem unnecessary, we all occasionally get so caught up in day-to-day entrepreneurial struggles that we sometimes forget, and we need a reminder. In fact, that’s what happened to me just last week when I was being so insufferably selfish that the mechanic changing the battery on my car gave me a piece of advice that simultaneously humbled me and made me a better entrepreneur.
I suppose, for the sake of honesty, the guy who gave me the advice wasn’t the mechanic physically changing my car’s battery. He was the boss of the mechanic changing my battery.
I’d woken up early that morning because I wanted an opportunity to go to the gym before starting an unusually busy day of meetings and business building. I kissed my family goodbye, got into my car, pressed the ignition switch, and… click, click, click, click, click!
The dashboard lights turned on, but the car didn’t start.
I tried again: click, click, click, click, click! Still nothing.
One more time.
Nope.
A few minutes later, with an assist from my wife’s car and a set of jumper cables, I was on the road to the…