Buffett, Bloomberg, Dorsey, Oh My!: My Graduation From Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Small Businesses

Oh no!

I’ve got a comfy office--across the hall from my team. According to Michael Bloomberg, that’s a limiting setup.

I’ve got a system for how to avoid excessively high maintenance clients. According to Warren Buffett, we might consider moving toward them instead--and working even harder to astonish their pants off (not in those exact words).

Yesterday, this was some of the live advice that these billionaire luminaries gave to a packed house at my too-good-to-be-true graduation ceremony from Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses (10kSB). Because they had once each owned a small business, I’d say they know what they’re talking about.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey rounded out the panel, led by Savannah Guthrie. Before handing us our diplomas, the formidable quartet honed in on “people” as the overriding key to business success.

This was auspicious. After all, people were what had made my own four-month experience with the program so astonishing. Being surrounded by a “cohort” of like-minded, like-sized entrepreneurs is like mind-melding into a giant 34-armed octopus. Strangers at the start, there was something magical about the way 15+ class sessions, unguarded sharing and extracurricular drinks had brought us rapidly closer, leaving us with a familial affection, separation anxiety and nonstop group emailing. It didn’t hurt that our particular experience had culminated in an afternoon of pitching to--and being coached by--a roomful of the most senior Goldman executives, including Blankfein. We were battle buddies, and we could now support each other through the next intensive phase of our growth.

Both the pitching and our special graduation were products of our placement in the program: the 20th graduating cohort of the flagship New York City location. As for the bonding, I’d imagine that some 6,200 10kSB alumni across the nation (and 10,000 women from an earlier program) can relate.

Here are some other juicy nuggets I picked up during one of my most delightful days as an entrepreneur:

1. Hire for passion, said Dorsey. Make sure your employees align with your purpose, he specified, assuring us that all other skills could be trained. Then, figure out how your hires complement each other.
2. Hire for grit and drive, advised Bloomberg. "I've always said I would like to hire the person whose father was never there, whose mother was in a drug treatment program and he had to work three shifts at McDonald’s to go take care of his siblings," he said. (Later, during the commencement address, cohort sweetheart Roy Castro identified himself as having been an at-risk teenager. Community training (courtesy of a non-profit called Strive) helped him land a job out of prison, after which he worked hard, eventually buying the ice cream distributorship that landed him in 10kSB. During the day’s most touching moment, Castro said Strive was his high school, and 10kSB his college. Marvelous.)
3. Delight your customer, insisted Buffett (whose hands, by the way, are awesomely soft). Delighting customers creates an experience--and transcends cost when they become your salespeople, he said, cautioning us not to “settle for satisfied.”
4. Keep shooting, said Jessica Johnson, star alum from the first flagship cohort. Like a village elder (no reference to age), Johnson relayed how 10kSB had given her the education and focus she needed when her father, whom she’d inherited her security business from, died. In the seven years since, she’s created over 100 new jobs in the Bronx, and increased her revenues by 1000 percent. “Big shots are little shots who keep shooting,” she said.
5. Remember that we’re all in the same boat, said Blankfein. He didn’t actually say this yesterday, but had won my heart when he mentioned it during our afternoon pitch session. On Goldman's jaw-droppingly beautiful 44th floor, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by 360-degree views of Manhattan and Jersey City, he reminded us that, despite these realities of giant-business success, we shouldn’t be intimidated (at the panel, he called our status a mere "weigh station"). After all, we were the founders that had taken the risk to start something new--and we were every bit the masters of our destiny. 

Post-ceremony, Mori Taheripour, a Wharton professor and the program’s most beloved New York City faculty member, held an all-alumni class on negotiations. She repeated the lesson that relationships are everything and people come first. I reflected on this truth. It was coming at an ideal time for me: our first flat sales year, rife with restlessness and slight frustration. Could refocusing on people--my favorite variable historically--actually snap me out of it? I believe yes, and I can’t wait to move my office, embrace staff and clients with new gusto, expand our business and start scaling again.

Thank you, Goldman, and 10kSB partners Babson College and LaGuardia Community College. Thank you for your vision, your generosity and your incredible, impactful, long-ranging gift to the world. I’ll remember this contribution and use it well. Now if only I can make you a client of MarketSmiths...