4 Things About Managing People I Wish I Knew When I Started

I started my first company when I was 17. Between then and now (I’m 33 as of this column), I’ve launched four additional companies and have managed hundreds of people directly.

The way you lead and manage people is the make-or-break skill that will determine if you build a good business or an amazing one. It’s something you get better at with practice, but it’s also a skill (like anything) that can be learned and mastered if you’re determined enough.

If I could jump in a time machine and start again knowing what I know now, here’s what I’d tell my 17-year-old self about managing people:

1. Your age doesn’t matter.

When I was 23, I was managing people twice my age. I used to always think to myself “Why would a 45 year old listen to me?” I would get nervous interviewing candidates and a little jittery as we would do our one-on-one and planning meetings.

That wore off pretty quickly, though. As it turns out, age is only a barrier in your head. Being young is not a negative. Sure, you’re learning as you go, but as long as you pick things up quickly and either read books from great leaders or find a mentor, you’ll be more than fine.

When I think about great young managers at fast-growing companies, I think of Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Evan Spiegel at Snapchat. Both started in their early 20s and not only lead thousands of people today, but also many people double or even triple their age.

Before starting their companies they’d never managed anyone, let alone people much older than they are. They picked it all up as they went along and the results speak for themselves.

2. You can’t fake it.

Managing people doesn’t mean having a “work” persona and a “non-work” persona. I’m sure you know people who are completely different outside the office. You might see them at a function or dinner and think “Is that the same person?”

Management, or more accurately, leadership, is all about being your authentic self. That means not trying to be something you’re not. It means being comfortable with who you are and leaning on your strengths to manage effectively.

One of the best ways to build relationships with the people on your team is to actually mix your work and non-work personas. And to do that, you need to be your authentic self.

During your meetings, you need to talk about any work issues, but you can (and should) also sprinkle in topics such as what you did on the weekend, questions about employees' kids, last night’s game or your favorite new restaurant.

When your team does a great job, get them out of the office and do something together as a group that has nothing to do with work. Go bowling. Have a dinner party. Go on a picnic and bring your partners and kids. Get to know who they really are and show them who you are, too.

Definitely take cues from great managers you know, but approach things in your own unique way. There are too many average managers in the world who just punch the clock and take a pay check.

Being your authentic self helps you rise above the mediocrity. Your team will notice and the word will get around. Pretty soon the best people at your company will be asking to come and work for you.

3. You’ll screw up.

Being a manager is hard. You have to think on your feet, make decisions that affect people's lives and deal with all sorts of interesting and unique personalities.

Sometimes you have to trust your gut or make decisions with limited (or incorrect) information. It’s important to understand that not every decision you make will be correct.

When it turns out you’ve made a bad decision, you can either stick with it or admit you were wrong. Standing by a wrong decision is the quickest way to not only harm your team, but also to lose their trust in you a a leader.

There’s no shame in making a wrong decision if you made it with the best intentions and the best information you could find at the time. Just don’t beat yourself up over it and move quickly to get things back on track.

Most important, tell your team you were wrong and let them know why you’ve changed course. Humility and honesty are absolutely everything when it comes to being an exceptional manager.

4. It’s worth your time.

I had to learn everything I mentioned the hard way. I thought I couldn’t manage people who were older than me. I tried to be a “real” manager. And I stuck by too many bad decisions, just because I didn’t want people to think I’d made a mistake.

Luckily, that’s all behind me now. If you keep an open mind, find amazing mentors (either in books or in real life) and have a genuine interest in your team and helping them succeed, you’ll become a great manager.

Being a great manager unlocks huge career opportunities that you can’t even imagine, quite simply because most managers just aren’t that good. Whether you’re 17 or 70, learning to be a great manager is worth your time.

Who knows, you might even have what it takes to be the next Zuckerberg or Spiegel.

Mitchell Harper

To Grow Your Business, Start Creating Solutions Instead of Just Managing Problems

As humans, we often get distracted with supervising and conserving the extent and intricacies of what we have, but at some point management only gets us so far. Nature, at its core, creates. It creates and does it well and if it were sentient, it'd probably encourage you to do it too.

Whether it is time, money or clients, too many entrepreneurs focus their efforts on protecting and managing what they have rather than creating even more. At one point I have been guilty of this myself. However, over time I realized that this mindset only keeps entrepreneurs and their businesses back from reaching their true potential. In order to grow, one must create.

The act of creation does exactly what it says it will do: create. Before anything can be managed, it has to be created. For example, in the initial years of starting my business, like many entrepreneurs, I was often forced to significantly reduce my prices to secure a sale. I would sacrifice my profits, sometimes just barely break even, just to get a deal done. Other times, I would resist upselling my current customers because I was afraid of scaring them away to my competitors. My mistake was trying to protect my small customer base instead of finding ways to build it. I’ve learned that the only way around such a dilemma is to prospect so much that one, two or even ten lost sales wouldn’t even matter.

Related: Sales Prospecting Isn't an Event. It's a Campaign.

Although some may see the importance of creating solutions rather than managing problems, the fear of meeting the risks attached to such an act can keep them back. Thinking about birds migrating because of a shortage of food may help – they run the risk of losing their home while they find a temporary new one. It's a big risk traveling all that distance. They may starve on the way or lose some helpful bird friends in the flock that could have made spotting places to nest a bit easier. Maybe mates even fall victim to natural causes. Either way, migration is a hazardous act and puts a lot on the table. However, similar problems would have arose sooner or later as a result of managing their shortage of food instead of exploring ways to have more.

It's the same view I have on money. I once viewed money as something finite. As soon as my business brought in sales, I would push that revenue aside and watch it with eagle vision. I did not dare touch it. Reinvesting wasn’t my priority. The reason for this was, like many entrepreneurs, I wasn’t confident that I could make another lump sum of money. Grant Cardone said it best, "The only reason to hold on to something is if there is a shortage." I would very much prefer to be in a situation where my business had too much money that I didn’t know where to put it all than to be in a situation where my days were spent figuring out how to cover expenses and invest in expansion with too little money.

Related: Escalate Revenue and Growth With These 5 Strategies

In the business world a situation of too many pencils, not enough paperwould prove disastrous or even fatal. Think of wolves: out of a pack of about fifteen wolves there's usually only one or two alphas. The role of the alpha is to lead the packs into hunts and ensure that hunts don't fail while the rest of the pack executes the hunting strategy. The majority of the pack is focused on bringing in food - creating. If every wolf in the pack was an alpha, and focused on protecting the pack they would all die in starvation. This is the mindset entrepreneurs need to have. Manage, protect and conserve, yes. But most importantly create or your business will starve.

Another thing we humans tend to put our energy towards is managing time. I have found that the most successful entrepreneurs focus their efforts on maximizing time by finding ways to turn an hour into two or three extra hours. It's just like a tree that may be taking its time segregating cells and photosynthesizing. While doing that it may be creating new seeds and moving water up its roots. Maximizing time is a way of ensuring continued existence and success in the great game of business. Some ways to do this are by delegating projects that could have been handled by someone else, ceasing activities that don't help your overall goals and even cutting down on sleep time.

This even applies to natural selection: instead of managing a poor evolution, natural selection weeds out the organisms that don't work and creates newer, more efficient ones suitable for the environment and habitat.

Right now, you couldn't be reading this article if you didn't exist; an egg being fertilized is the reason you're here on the web, enjoying this article. Without creation, you couldn't be here wondering what nature has to offer over certain problems and what solutions it can provide with simple creation. If anything, it's like a massive canvas everything is connected to each other by brush stroke after brush stroke. Take a moment to apply the concept of natural selection to whatever it is in life you're struggling with. Even better, take the idea of creating a solution rather than managing a problem.

Warren Cassel , Jr