Linda Rottenberg: Close Doors and Live Lean

Are there any final words you would have even wanted to hear yourself when you were in school? I mean, imagine you had gone to Stanford, and you were sitting here in this auditorium and someone who was an inspiring entrepreneur came in. What could they have said to you that would have really had an impact at that formative stage?

I think there are a few things. I think one is that I was always told to keep doors open, to keep options open, and now what I tell people is close doors. I think you really cannot be one foot in, one foot out. You can for a little while, but at some point, you've just got to choose something and focus and do. You can always. You can pivot if it doesn't work out, but I find that people get paralyzed when they keep too many doors open. And that happens especially at institutions like, you know, like this, where there are so many options, you don't want to give any up. So that's one. Closed doors. The second thing I think of is this issue of keeping lifestyle expenses low. I really think that it is important. I think that student loans are a big issue when people come and they have a lot to pay off. But I think too many times, we actually could live on less than we think to get our ideas going. And we use it as an excuse because we've actually created these unsustainable lives. And I think that I wish I'd known that earlier, because I would have taken maybe risks even earlier than I did, because I had more ability than I thought I had. And the third thing was something that my daughters taught me, and this is later on, and they said I was getting ready to go to one of my trips. And one, she was about five, and Eden tagged on my leg, tugged on my leg, and said, just remember, you can be an entrepreneur for a short time, but you are a mommy forever.

Great.