Jess Mah - Entrepreneurship Lessons from a Unicorn Breeder
May 1, 2023
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Entrepreneurship lessons from Jess Mah, founder of billion-dollar businesses. Starting young, seeking mentors, and embracing challenges. Insights on mindset, growth, and optimism in the competitive entrepreneurial world. Exploring future innovations in longevity and biosciences, rapid progress in medical advancements, and the impact of outsiders on industries. Optimistic outlook on America's future highlighted.
Starting young in entrepreneurship can lead to long-term success and recognition in the industry.
Embracing challenges and learning to delegate efficiently are crucial for managing a growing business effectively.
Deep dives
Entrepreneurial Journey from a Young Age
Starting her first business at the age of 13, Jess Ma highlights her early entrepreneurial drive to avoid traditional jobs and delve into creating her ventures. From hosting web servers for gaming to managing a high school business, her journey began with a passion for tech and a desire for financial independence, leading to recognition by Forbes and Inc. magazines for her entrepreneurial skills.
Challenges and Growth in Entrepreneurship
Despite early success, Jess Ma faced overwhelming stress managing business, school, and a personal life simultaneously. Handling customer demands, working full-time, and attending school exemplified the challenges she navigated without prior experience in delegation. Through this ordeal, she learned the importance of time management and the essential skill of delegating tasks efficiently to alleviate workload pressures.
Mindset Shift from Employee to Entrepreneur
Transitioning from an employee mindset to an entrepreneur's perspective involves embracing ownership, radical self-reliance, and unyielding optimism. Jess Ma underscores the need for a positive outlook and a proactive mindset, emphasizing that entrepreneurs must cultivate continuous self-improvement, focusing on personal growth, and integrating work and life seamlessly instead of seeking a traditional work-life balance.
Embracing Lifelong Learning and Adaptability
Jess Ma's entrepreneurial journey extends into uncharted territories, like delving into biosciences, highlighting the importance of being a perpetual learner and embracing curiosity. Through her bold leaps into unfamiliar domains, she finds inspiration in disrupting biotech with outsider's perspective and leveraging advancements like precision medicine and AI to propel medical innovation and longevity research.
Jess is the founder and executive chairman of inDinero, a business that runs thousands of companies' tax, accounting, and finance operations. She is also the Co-Founder and Chair of Astonishing Labs and founding partner of MahWay. This venture builder creates innovative, industry-changing billion-dollar businesses that improve the world. She earned her Associate of Arts from Bard College and her Bachelor's in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is in the Harvard Business School President’s Program and a Young President’s Organization (YPO) member. She enjoys flying her commercial multi-engine pilot's license in her spare time with an instrument rating. She started her first business in high school and was has been on the cover of Inc Magazine and was recognized on both Inc. and Forbes Magazine's "30 under 30" superstar entrepreneurs. Her combined companies have a value of over one billion dollars.
Show Notes:
Jess's entrepreneurial journey started at 13 because she knew she "did not want to work for anyone else."
She started a business to solve her own problem and then used it to solve others.
Barnes and Noble was her first mentor as she was pulling books off the shelve to learn about business. She realized early how important it was to learn and grow and later get mentors and coaches to help her build her business.
(11:45) Business got easier as it got larger and scaled. The hardships of the early days will not last forever.
(14:30) Don't compare yourself to others...you are in competition with yourself. Focus on your "next step" and your journey!
Jess likes the ratio of focusing 80% on the next 45 days, 10% on the next quarter, and 10% on the next one to five years out.
(15:50) "People consistently overestimate what they can get done in the next 30 days but underestimate what they can achieve in five to ten years."
(17:15) Entrepreneur communities are super important to support each other on your journey.
(18:45) The real challenge is our mindset and attitude. Most entrepreneurs have an understanding of what needs to happen next.
(24:25) The greatest growth comes from taking advantage of the latest trends! How are you going to leverage AI?
(26:10) Time blocking is a productivity hack that people can use to accomplish more. Elon Musk does this.
(30:00) What is the difference between the entrepreneurial vs. employee mindset? First, the biggest difference is you have to have a sense of ownership. Everything starts and ends with you. Second, you have to be optimistic at all times. This also bleeds over to your personal life. Third, you need to grow yourself constantly. How do you evolve as a person and leader?
(32:15) "There is no such thing as work-life balance. As an entrepreneur, your business is part of you. You don't have spouse life or child life balance...they are a part of your life."
(37:00) How do you have an optimistic attitude when things are going wrong and during a crisis?
(41:00) If you have never taken a leap in your career or life, you are probably not pushing the boundaries enough.
(43:00) When Jess moved from software to biotech, she knew it would be a ten-year investment and she had to be willing to be uncomfortable and start all over. Being an outsider allows you to see things that others may miss, push the boundaries, and be innovative.
"The more you learn, the more you are able to learn new stuff and it becomes exponential." Examples are Steve Jobs and Elon Musk
(48:00) Jess gives insights she has about the future based on her research and investments.
(51:45) If Jess had the ability to give a State of the Union Address to the American people what would she say?
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