I think I give myself high marks being an entrepreneur and entrepreneuring a big idea about how popular social gaming could be. But I learned a lot of hard lessons on the CEO front... and do not give myself very high marks as a CEO of a large-scale company.
The music industry really has to learn a lesson from the tech industry about what scale means at the end of the day and learning how to monetize.
Investing in management means building communication systems, business processes, feedback, and routines that let you scale the business and team as efficiently as possible.
It's a good thing to remember that hiring will get easier as you scale - but you should also never drop your standards.
If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.
The more people you meet, and the more people you have influence over your business can scale quicker.
The only choice that leads small business owners to real success in their endeavors is the one that requires real thought. Understanding and building the systems they need within their company to afford them a framework of organization that can scale the business from a company of one to a company of one thousand.
I ran a profitable boostrapped company for five years, then raised $40 million from Andreessen Horowitz.
Part of being able to make great decisions around that and to really grow a business and scale a business, it also comes down to people. I spend a lot of time building teams at both businesses - both The Trump Organization and my own - and thinking about who to hire to supplement the team and allow us to best achieve our goals.
