Tips | Timmy Hendrickson

So this is just kind of a knowledge dump of lessons I've learned throughout my own career. It's all random, and I couldn't think of a great title for it. I could have named it something like, oh, my own life experiences, but that's kind of boring. So I just wanted to go with something random, Taylor Swift. Say/do. This ratio should be as close to 1 in 1 as possible. If you say something, do your best to actually do it. If you say, hey, I'm gonna get you that contract by Monday, do your best to actually have it by Monday, not email them first thing Monday morning saying, hey, actually this is gonna be postponed till Friday. Make sure that ratio of say and do is 1 to 1, or as close as possible. 2, data wins. Whether you're reporting quarterly results, you're in a brainstorm, make sure you have the right data. Because it always wins. If you can speak to your numbers, then you will always be, not necessarily, I mean, people might not think you're right, but you will be right. 3, move to Cincinnati, Ohio. Not actually, I'm not sitting here as an ambassador of Cincinnati, Ohio, but I did it. I was born and raised in California, went to a great Southern California school where I could be at the pool in January. catching a tan. But when I was graduating college, I had 2 job offers, one in San Francisco inside sales, one in San Diego, I think it was Clear Channel sales for billboards and radio ads, or 3, Red Bull out in Cincinnati. And I said, well, I could work the 8:30 to 5:30 grind, wear khakis and some polo I bought from TJ Maxx. and live in cities that I wanted to, San Diego, San Francisco, or I could move to Cincinnati, Ohio, work for a brand not only I knew, I loved, and do actually meaningful work. So if you're gonna start your business and Silicon Valley isn't necessarily where your target market is, move to that target market. Be successful enough where you can move back to where you want to, whether it's Silicon Valley or warmer climates, whatever, but don't be afraid To move to somewhere where it's not necessarily ideal just because, you know, or just based on geography. Adapt. When I moved out to Cincinnati, I did not know a single soul. I didn't know quite too much about the city itself, but I've always been someone who can adapt quite well, fortunately, and you have to make sure you do the same. You will be stressed, you'll be learning a lot, but take it as a learning experience. Also, don't compromise your ingenuity. If you start your own business and— or if you're going to help someone start their own business and they want you to act or come up with ideas a certain way, that shouldn't be why they hired you. They should have hired you for your own original thoughts. You should be doing your own original thoughts. And when you compromise your ingenuity, then it's not your ethics or morals, I'm not going down that road, but your whole kind of passion towards your career might change. And I was in a role at Uber, unfortunately, I compromised my ingenuity. I was doing things the way they wanted me to. I was kind of getting stuck and I just, I wasn't as productive as I once was back at Red Bull, 'cause I wasn't necessarily enjoying it. Uber is a great company, obviously providing a lot of A great service to a lot of people throughout the world. I think they just hit 2 billion rides recently across the world in 6 years, which is insane. But I just wasn't having fun anymore. You will be thrown under the bus. There will be times where your coworkers will say, oh, actually, you know what? Emily or Craig did this, and it wasn't my fault. And that's not true at all. Make sure you have the right, not necessarily data, but the proof to show that you weren't the one in the wrong, whether that's emails. Try and get everything in writing because it might come back to haunt you. And getting into this, oops, you will get screwed. And it happened to me. I was living in Newport Beach working for Red Bull. And then I started interviewing with Uber. And they said, hey, we're looking for a territory manager of Orange County. We want you to come in, interview. You could still live in Newport Beach and only come up to LA, Santa Monica, where the office was, once or twice a week. Unfortunately, I didn't have that in writing, so my first week they wanted me in Santa Monica every day. 2-hour commute from Newport Beach to Santa Monica. And it's only like a 45-minute drive, but with Southern California traffic, it was like 2 hours. And on my third day, they said, oh, you know what? And I had told them I did not wanna move to LA, nothing was for me there, I didn't wanna start a career there, didn't wanna continue my career there. On my third day, they said, you know what, we want you to move up here and do our college marketing program. My own fault for not getting all that in writing, 'cause it was all verbal, that I was gonna Live in Newport Beach and stay there and continue my career down there. And I got screwed. Switching gears, only host meaningful meetings. Some startups love to have meetings just to have meetings. And it's a waste of time. Make sure they're meaningful. Make sure you come prepared. Make sure you give people a heads up of what that meeting's going to be about so they can be prepared. But don't just host a meeting. To put a deck together, stand in front of a group, and talk. Because that's just, it just, it kind of breaks up the day, it breaks up people's flows, it's not fun. Be on time. It takes very little effort to be on time, but it's one of the most annoying things when you're not on time. I was interviewing back last August with another startup, and I I had about 3 phone interviews with them, and all 3 interviews, the people I was supposed to be talking to didn't call me on time. They didn't give me a heads up that they were going to be running late or that they were going to be calling later. It was very annoying. I just said, you know what? After the 3rd phone interview, I said, this just isn't right for me. If this is how they are doing interviews, I wouldn't want to know how they run their day-to-day operations. And then be present. When you come to these meetings or when you host meetings, make sure you're there and 100% committed. Don't be on your phone. Don't be looking up BuzzFeed articles on your computer. Make sure you're listening to what people are saying. That way you can fully contribute. And again, it takes very little effort to be present. Only stay out late when you can afford it. So as young individuals living in Silicon Valley or if you're gonna move down to LA, San Diego, whatever, you will be invited to happy hours, you will host happy hours, you'll have dinners, and sometimes you'll be swayed into, hey, let's do shots of tequila. And really, that's fine, it's fun if you can control yourself, but you have to make sure that if you're doing this on a Tuesday, that the next day you don't necessarily have a large load on your plate. There are plenty of young professionals who Like to go out late and they like to stay out drinking and then when they show up to the office at 9:30, 10 o'clock, bags under their eyes, they start getting a little less credible. It gets a little annoying and then you can't really rely on them. So really, I mean, these nights will happen. Make sure it's once, when you can afford it. Empower your employees. If you're gonna start your own business, you're gonna be a manager, make sure you not only hire the right people, but that you're empowering them. And it's your job to figure out how your employees will be empowered. For me, I like to work autonomously, you know, with very little overhead or little management. I work well, I'm very productive on my own. I like to have a lot of responsibilities. I like to set my own hours. That's just how— And luckily, Minibar and back at Red Bull, they gave me that freedom. You know, you set your own schedule. get your stuff done when you need to get it done, and that's fine. That's when I'm most productive. Make sure you find ways to empower your employees the same way. Delegate. Some business owners and some startup founders like to really take on all the projects when really they should be delegating to their subordinates. As much as, as a business owner, as much as you wanna have your hand in almost everything, you have to trust your employees That they're gonna be the ones to do it, they're gonna do a very good job of doing it, and then trust that they'll do it on time. Balance. I'm sure you've heard the people who try and start their own businesses and they say, oh, I'm working 16, 18-hour days, 6 days a week, getting very little sleep. It's just, you're gonna have burnout. So make sure, I mean, and I'm not gonna tell you like I haven't spent 20 hours at the office, I have. It's not a regular thing. But there will be weeks or days where you just need to hunker down, focus on a project, and get it done. But if you're doing that, like I said, 5 weeks in a row, you're gonna have burnout. You're gonna become less passionate about what you're working on. So make sure you have a good balance of work life, personal life. And for young professionals, it is a little hard. And I mean, I'm 27. And I still struggle with balance, but I'm getting better at it. And I mean, this is probably something you've heard before, work-life balance. But it's so important that I wanted to just briefly touch on it again. And I think this is the last slide I have. Don't blindly accept advice. There will be people like me who just talked for 30 minutes on Giving you advice, don't blindly accept it. Question it. Really, you know, think about how it can relate to you, because maybe something I said isn't necessarily going to resonate with you, and that's fine. But don't just— I mean, and there will be other people who will give you advice throughout life. Don't just accept it as a truth. Challenge them on it. Ask them questions. That way you can like really dig deep and see how it can relate to you. Thank you.