Going Back In Time, What Warren Shiver Would Say To His Younger Self

Mo asks Warren Shiver: If you could record a video about business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say?

• Warren’s advice comes in three parts, the first one is: find opportunities around business development as early as possible, get experience, and fail.
• You can be a Hall of Fame level baseball player by hitting 3 out of ten pitches. Sales teams typically win about half the time but even that can be improved on.
• The second message would be to find a mentor to learn from early on. Warren found a couple of mentors at the beginning of his career, but that was around five years into his decision to focus on business development. Doing that earlier would have accelerated the process.
• The third message is having patience. Expertise takes time.
• Harvard Business Review did some research and found that the average age of a successful entrepreneur is 42.
• Business development is a learnable skill and those three messages are the essence of deliberate practice.
• To get involved with more opportunities you have to show interest.
• To find mentors and engage them, you should reach out within your firm. The senior leaders in your organization are looking for people to differentiate themselves and who are wanting to grow.
• If you are the senior leader, go out and find someone to mentor.
• Find a way to expand or grow your skill set in the role that you’re currently in. Warren had the opportunity to be entrepreneurial within his role which gave him a great level of experience that he could apply when he ventured out on his own. Incremental gains in your business development skills, no matter where you practice, will pay off.

Mentioned in this Episode:

GrowBIGPlaybook.com

thebrevetgroup.com

Why Older Entrepreneurs Have the Edge - knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/age-of-successful-entrepreneurs