Billionaire Fireside Chat with Jeff Hoffman, Creator of the Airport Check-In Kiosk

Key takeaways

• Hoffman says leaders should spend time creating other leaders, not just directing followers. He describes giving his team the authority to hire a talented young designer without waiting for his approval.
• He says confidence means trusting instinct, which he describes as the sum of what a person has learned from successes and mistakes.
• To test a business idea, he recommends spending time with customers and listening to their needs. He recounts Sam Walton talking with farmers and describes speaking with grocery shoppers about vacation plans.
• He recommends putting a company's main objective where employees can see it and asking how their work contributes to that goal. At one company, this helped the team identify work they could not connect to selling more hotel rooms.
• He suggests defining what success and failure will look like at the start of the year, then reviewing the measures quarterly and tracking them monthly. He says this helped his team identify problems early and return unneeded investment funds.
• Hoffman says founders should maintain regular investor relationships, including when they are not seeking money or reporting good news. He describes spending a day with an investor at a polo match because it was something the investor enjoyed.
• He recommends asking employees what matters most to them and learning why they come to work. He says managers can then support their personal goals as part of their work.
• Hoffman distinguishes working hard when needed from grinding for its own sake. He urges teams to find ways to complete in two days what other companies take a week to do.
• Through the Global Entrepreneurship Network, Hoffman says he aims to teach people to help themselves by starting businesses. He also describes World Youth Horizons as his foundation for helping children who lack a chance at a better life.