EOH Is Going Live at a Couple Events -- Virtual and Physical
Entrepreneur Office Hours - Issue #245
I’m kicking off this issue of Entrepreneur Office Hours by sharing a couple events I’ll be speaking at. Sorry, in advance, for being self-promotional. But the events are free and for all of you, so sharing them here feels like it makes sense.
One event is virtual, meaning none of you have a good excuse for skipping it! The next one is in-person, and I expect to see every reader from within a 100 miles… 😁
The first event is the upcoming Medium Day extravaganza this Saturday, August 17th.
Medium Day is an annual event hosted by Medium.com — where, as you’ve probably noticed, I publish often. They bring together some of their most popular authors for a day of talks and conversations reflecting the diversity of content and topics on the site. You’ll hear about everything from cooking to leadership.
I’ll be one of the authors headlining the “entrepreneurship” track with a conversation titled “How to Leverage Social Media to Be a More Successful Entrepreneur.” It’s at 1:00 PM EDT this Saturday (tomorrow if you’re reading this issue the days it’s being published), it’s completely free, and you can register here.
The second event is for all my Raleigh-Durham area readers. On Tuesday, August 20th at noon, a masterclass at Sales HQ in RTP called “How Sales Professionals Use Social Media to Drive More Sales.”
By the way, are you starting to see a theme in what I care about these days? Simply put, if you want more customers for your business — which, of course, you do — then you need to learn how to leverage social media.
Anyway, the Sales HQ masterclass is also free, and I think the host is even providing free pizza. Just make sure to register here so you save yourself a seat and a couple slices.
I’m looking forward to participating in both events, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of you there!
-Aaron
This week’s new articles…
Do You Know the Difference Between a Customer and a Buyer?
Entrepreneurs get so focused on understanding target customers that they don’t always think carefully about actual buyers.
Apparently the World’s Top Schools Want More Entrepreneurs
The most common essay question for students applying to colleges is a question every entrepreneur should easily ace.
Office Hours Q&A
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QUESTION:
Hi Aaron,
I saw a recent Instagram post from you where you described a class you teach at Duke about Failure.
I personally struggle a lot with rejection and failure. I feel like I take it too personally. Would you share some of your favorite advice from the class on how you help your students deal with failure?
Hopefully I can be a student in one of those classes some day!
- Jamie
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Honestly, the biggest piece of advice I try to emphasize for students in my Learning to Fail class is to help them understand that failure = learning.
That’s pretty much the key.
In general, students don’t understand this lesson about failure precisely because school teaches the opposite. School basically teaches everyone that failure (i.e. failing a class) is what happens when you don’t learn. But any entrepreneur will tell you that’s ridiculous.
Entrepreneurs understand that the best way to learn anything is by screwing it up.
This is the mentality you want to take, too. If you’re struggling with rejection and failure, it’s because you’re treating those things as bad outcomes of whatever work you’re doing. But they aren’t bad outcomes. They’re inevitable outcomes and, most importantly, they’re educational outcomes.
Once you embrace this idea that failure is just another name for “learning,” scenarios where you might encounter rejection of failure will be much easier to tackle because you won’t look at them as challenges. You’ll view them as opportunities for something
Got startup questions of your own? Reply to this email with whatever you want to know, and I’ll do my best to answer!
