Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, knows a thing or two about business success. LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and sold in 2016 for $26B USD. Not a bad rate of return for “only” 14 years of work!
Prior to LinkedIn, Hoffman was involved at Apple, started SocialNet.com, and was an integral part of Paypal’s success and its subsequent sale to Ebay. Hoffman knows business so when he shares some of his husiness secrets, we should all take notes!
Recently, he spoke about 11 components to his success on Timothy Ferriss’ podcast (episode 248). Although he calls them commandments of start up success, they apply equally well to any successful business. I have been able to apply each of these commandments in any business that I have been involved with. Doing these 11 things well will definitely accelerate your business!
I have listed each of the 11 commandments below along with my brief commentary on each point.
– this is perhaps the best and most powerful productivity app that I use. OneNote started off as a PC based program that Microsoft sold that allowed the user to take notes and organize them in any way they desired. This includes graphics, pictures, sound bytes, emails, webpages, screen captures, etc.) The goal of OneNote is to replace your handwritten notebooks. It was turned into an app a number of years ago and I have the app installed on my iPad and my iPhone. The data is synched through the cloud so each device is always up to date. I have not used a paper based notebook since I installed the OneNote program on my laptop back in about 2005. OneNote allows you to take and file all your notes electronically so you can search on keywords and find all the notes you ever took on that subject. Comparing paper based notebooks to OneNote is like comparing a rubber raft to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier! Watch for a future post on how I organize my OneNote.