Denise Brosseau is the CEO of Well-Connected Leader, Inc., an executive talent agency. Previously she was cofounder and CEO of Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (now Watermark, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year) and cofounder of Springboard Enterprises, both organizations for women-led startups. Her book, Ready to be a Thought Leader?, is scheduled to be published by Wiley Press in 2014.

In 10 words or fewer, what is the big idea behind your business?

My business: How to scale your impact and influence in the world.

My life: How to get more women leaders at the top of every organization.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Early in my career I had a mentor, Eunice Azzani, then a senior partner at Korn Ferry International. She told me, “If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room.” I am always pushing, always headed toward the next challenge.

What was the most difficult lesson you have learned on the job?

Knowing when to say “we” and when to say “I.” It is a challenge most of us face in our careers. We are often part of a team that created or gave life to a vision, and it can be hard to stop saying it’s ‘our’ idea and say ‘I’ am the leader. At the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), I had a cofounder who came up with the idea. She did the initial research, and it was her ‘baby.’ I came in as her first follower. Eventually, I had to step out of her shadow and take the stage as CEO. In 1997, I went out to raise money for the organization. In those first conversations she always came with me. At some point I had to say, “I believe in this idea, and we are going in this direction.” Women tend to struggle with this. They may give away too much credit to others or hesitate to step into the spotlight. Learning when to say “we” can also be a challenge. After we started a FWE chapter in Seattle I flew there to meet the leadership team and give a presentation about the beginnings of the organization. Instead of saying “we,” I kept saying “I” as in: “I launched this,” “I led this initiative,” etc. At the end, the woman who chaired the board said, “You did a great job but it would have been better if you had said ‘we’ more often.” Lesson learned.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs on how to build a great business?

Figure out if anybody cares about what you are doing first. It can be exciting to start a business but I have wasted a lot of time building businesses around solutions to problems no one else thinks are worth paying for. You should start by saying, I have a hypothesis, and then go out and get feedback. Don’t stop or get paralyzed when you get your first “no,” but listen to the underlying reasons. When I worked in business development at Motorola, I would ask, “If we could create a product with these features for this price, would you be interested?” Let people react to the hypothesis. The true driver then becomes: Are they willing to put their money into it? When? Do they ask how quickly they can have it? You want to see an “I need it now” response versus a “Sure, that would be nice.”

Also, when you are coming from left field with something new, like we did with Springboard — the first venture conference just for women entrepreneurs — a lot of people will tell you ‘that’s a stupid idea’ or ‘that can’t be done.’ You need to surround yourself with orthogonal thinkers who can cross boundaries and are open to new ideas. They are able to see what is possible.

What inspires you/how do you come up with your best ideas?

I have worked in so many different industries and niches: big companies, small companies, government, for-profit, not-for-profit, etc. For me, it is about expanding the adjacent possible. Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, explains that the world is full of many possibilities, but only certain things can happen. Only by opening doors to new opportunities — a new adjacent possible — can you create what I call a palace of possibilities. I have more doors open — a larger palace of possibilities — than most people, so I can see connections others may not see. My best ideas come from this collage of experiences.

What is your greatest achievement?

Cofounding the Springboard Venture Forums. We have helped more than 500 women entrepreneurs around the world raise more than $5.5 billion for their companies. I now serve on the Council of National Advisors.

What do you consider your biggest failure?

The toughest time in my career was the dot-com crash in 2001. The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs was within a few thousands dollars of closing shop. At one point we had 7 offices and 1,200 members but in 3 months our funding screeched to 0. Entrepreneurship was just not happening anymore. The phone kept ringing but it was mostly men. They would call me and say, “You have a connection to X person, can you introduce me?” The guys were reaching out but the women, including me, were essentially hiding under their beds. My failure was that I didn’t want to tell my board or my advisors about the challenges I was going through. As soon as I did, solutions presented themselves. Everyone says women are so good at asking for help, but that is not my experience. We think we need to be superwomen and overcompensate by trying to handle everything ourselves. You are always going to have setbacks. You need to pick up the phone and find the help you need.

What values are important to you in business?

Directness. With me, what you see is what you get. In corporate America that did not fare in my favor. As an entrepreneur, I like that I get to select my own clients. I choose to work with people who are straightforward and appreciate my directness.

What is the best business book you have read?

Most recently, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath.

What businessperson do you most admire?

Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels. Unlike most business leaders, he became successful by making sure it was all about the people, not just numbers or ego. Also, I like that he is honest about the challenges he has had to face in his life.

What do you think is the greatest innovation in the past decade?

Portfolio careers. Unlike my dad, I don’t have to work for just one company and have all my eggs in one basket. I have five different income streams which makes me much more resilient to economic downturns.

*This interview originally appeared on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website here.

Beth Cross

Beth Cross is Founder and CEO of Ariat International. Based in Union City, California, the company makes footwear and apparel for riders and the equestrian lifestyle. Cross grew up on a horse farm in Pennsylvania, and moved to California to attend Stanford Graduate School of Business, graduating in the class of 1988. She went on to work at Bain and Company, where she worked with a team that developed strategy for athletic shoe makers Reebok and Avia. She co-founded Ariat in 1990 with Pam Parker, a fellow student from Stanford GSB. Their first product was a boot made for both English and western-style riding, which used materials and construction techniques common in athletic shoe manufacturing. More than 20 years after its founding, Ariat continues to push the boundaries of style and technology. The Volant is a tall, English-style riding boot that could rival Nike running shoes in its performance technology and design. The Volant has a modern cut and a bright red racing stripe, looking more like something made by Prada. Its punk sister, the “Volant Lace H20,” could be worn by a Vivienne Westwood model. Today, Ariat is the global leader in equestrian footwear and apparel.

In 10 words or fewer, what is the big idea behind your business?

To bring the most innovative performance footwear and apparel to the world’s top equestrians.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

As CEO, you cannot delegate vision and culture. That advice came from one of our early investors, and one of my most valued mentors, Angel Martinez, who runs Deckers Outdoor Corporation. In the early days of Ariat, we had a clear vision that we wanted to be the number one equestrian footwear and apparel brand in the world. That was a very bold statement in the early days when the company was just getting going! As the founder, you have to be able to visualize the full potential of the company and the brand — to see it in your own mind so that you can build a road map to the long-term vision, and start to work out how to get there. Vision frames the opportunity for the team, for customers and for investors. Culture is the other critical part of the CEO’s job, which requires a continual focus on the core values and day-to-day character of the organization, always making sure that the organization stays true to those core values.

What was the most difficult lesson you have learned on the job?

There are no do-overs. There is so much on-the-job training when you build a business. Every day, there seems to be at least one decision or discussion, large or small, that in hindsight I would love the opportunity to rethink or redo. I’m reminded of a decision I pushed for to make an inventory purchase of a new product that I thought would be terrific — but our buying team was very skeptical. I thought it was a great opportunity and convinced everyone we should go for it. Well, of course the product was a flop, and we were stuck with the inventory. My team teased me about it for a long time, and I learned to not interfere with the collective wisdom of an experienced team! You have to own your bad decisions, and in doing so you reinforce a culture that celebrates success and learns from failure.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs on how to build a great business?

The most critical thing is to visualize the company as a fully formed entity. We started out with an idea to revolutionize the equestrian footwear industry with performance technology. Once we pressure-tested the idea with consumers, we started to architect the company on paper. We asked ourselves, what will the company look like at $1 million in sales? At $50 million in sales? Study the leading companies in your industry and learn everything you can about their structure and go-to-market strategy. Sketch it out by function so you know what you will be competing against, and also have a sense of what relevant organization structures look like as you’re building your team.

Visualizing massive success from Day 1 helps you design the many small elements of what will eventually form the structure, strategy, and business model of a much larger company. Often the excitement of the startup — of product development and fund raising — distracts people from taking the long view about the company and the culture. Perhaps it can be compared to the difference between a wedding and a marriage — the excitement and flurry of activity during the start-up phase is the wedding, and the hard work of building a sustainable company is more like a marriage.

What inspires you?

Simply, the chance to learn something new every day. As a team, we have so many creative ideas, but my favorite part of the process is working together to take those ideas and bring them to life. We do a lot of testing of our ideas, which allows us to learn as we go. If you fail small, you smile, you learn from it, and you move on. Continual innovation is built into our culture.

We love being a force for innovative change in the industry. One of my favorite recent examples is the Volant. It is an English riding boot and everything about it is new: the construction, the materials, the athletic platform and design. It is a non-traditional boot designed for a very traditional sport. Holly Andrews, our English product manager who originally visualized the Volant, is also a top rider. She guided the product team to design and build a product that she herself would compete in and really appreciate from a styling standpoint.

What is your greatest achievement?

Raising three great kids and having a successful marriage. I had great role models growing up. My mom ran the farm, my dad ran the family business, and they both worked together to raise eight kids. Working has always been an integral part of my life. I love to work and consider it a privilege. Work-life balance is a big topic of discussion at the GSB, and there are many different paths for different people. For me, I’m not able to boil it down to one headline or pithy bit of advice. There is no simple answer.

What do you consider your biggest failure?

We have small, medium, and big failures all the time. The question is: How do you handle failure when it happens? How do you handle it with your customers, your team, your shareholders? A real failure is when you make a mistake and don’t do the right thing, fix it as quickly as you can, own it, and learn from it.

How do you come up with your best ideas?

Our product creation team is relentless. They are riders as well as designers. They read, travel, and shop, and they are out in the market constantly. For me, personally, the environment that creates the most idea generation is being out in the field with our customers. You need to carve out enough time to talk about what is going on in order to share ideas. Sometimes people are so busy that there is no time left over to really brainstorm. It is critical to find time to share ideas in an open way.

What values are important to you in business?

First is integrity — keeping your commitments, being honest and fair, and treating everyone with respect. It is important to remember when you are hiring to add people who share your values. The hardest part of building a team is hiring people who share our strong sense of values, who bring a strong work ethic, and are great teammates. When hiring, you cannot rely on interviews alone, you need to tap into your network to learn more about the person you are thinking of adding to the team. A reputation for personal integrity is formed over time, and people typically either have those values or don’t.

Another critical company value is appreciation. We all feel grateful for the business we’ve built together and the opportunities we have, and we work hard to communicate that to the team, our customers, and our business partners.

What impact would you like to have on the world?

The opportunity to impact in a positive way the lives of our employees, our customers, and our partners. Business is a team sport for me. Every day we go out on the field together and play to win. We are competitive and we like to have fun. I am grateful for the chance to help build a great company, create fulfilling jobs, and transform an industry.

What was your first paying job?

I was a busgirl (clearing tables) in a busy restaurant when I was in high school. Most of the people in the kitchen and the wait staff were parents working two jobs to support their family. It taught me early on how to be part of a team and get along with all types of people. I learned how to be the best “low man on the totem pole,” how to learn on the job, how to have fun and still get the work done. On school nights we often stayed until one a.m. to clean up. The rule was that no one went home until the work was done.

What is the best business book you have read?

Getting Things Done, by David Allen. It’s a great time management system.

What businessperson do you most admire?

I’ve been lucky enough to have a handful of amazing mentors in the business, all of whom I’ve learned different things from. How can an athlete go on the field without a coach?

What do you think is the greatest innovation in the past decade?

I’m energized by online education, like what’s being developed at Stanford and the GSB. We employ roughly 50 people in China, and most of our factories are in Asia. China is a global powerhouse, and yet there is still limited access to high quality local education. Online learning will be a game changer.

*This post also appeared on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website here.

Whoever said politicians don’t create jobs hasn’t met Steve Poizner. This serial entrepreneur and former 2010 California gubernatorial candidate is on his third startup. His last company, SnapTrack, brought GPS technology to mobile phones and sold to Qualcomm for $1 billion in 2000. In October he launched Empowered, a partnership with UCLA Extension that offers training for adults who want to change careers or upgrade their job skills. He earned his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1980.

In 10 words or fewer, what is the big idea behind your business?

Disrupt education and help boomers switch careers by closing the skills gap online.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Burt McMurtry, former chairman of Stanford’s board of trustees and an early investor in my past companies, told me: “Focus until you think you’ve focused too much, then focus some more.” Focus is particularly difficult with startups. It is so easy to go after multiple segments and niche opportunities but it is best to focus like a laser beam on one or two opportunities. Once you master your products or services in a small area, you can expand from there.

What was the most difficult lesson you have learned on the job?

Putting the right people in the right job. When people don’t work out, sometimes it’s the person but often it’s the hiring manager who does not fully understand the skills of the person he or she is hiring. I’ve hired a large number of people and I have gotten better over time, but it’s still difficult. In one of my companies I needed a VP of sales who was also very entrepreneurial. I looked for someone with a lot of experience, seasoning, and depth but he didn’t work out. He had lost the fire in his belly. It was a total mismatch and caused us to lose time. There are a few ways you can improve your hiring decisions: Interview a broad group of people. Bring those people in front of your entire management team and your board. Ask everyone to look for issues or signs that person is not the right fit. Combine all of that feedback with extensive reference checks. Anyone can give you a list of people who will say nice things about them. Call the people who are not on the list.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs on how to build a great business?

Think big and build diverse, high-quality teams. Small problems can take as much time as big problems, so you should make it all worthwhile. With every organization I have ever built or run, the key to our success was putting together diverse, high quality teams. Taking on big problems that impact the world requires massive amounts of intellectual power, and that can’t be done by a couple of people who have the same viewpoints. When I took office in 2007 as the insurance commissioner for California, I wanted to assemble a diverse team of senior people. We hired republicans, democrats, and independents, as well as people from the insurance industry and consumer advocacy groups. The diversity of the team led to lively debates. When I made important, multibillion-dollar decisions they were based on understanding every aspect of the problem.

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by the idea of people changing our country. I’ve focused on job creation, innovation, and education my whole career. I am driven by the idea that California and the country need to continue to be the innovation capitals of the world. Education is key to our state and country’s future. My current startup taps into my passion for education, as well as my high-tech background and previous work as a public official.

What is your greatest achievement?

I’ve been fortunate to have a bunch of entrepreneurial opportunities. If I had to pick one, I’d say the White House fellowship. They choose 10 people each year from 1,000 applications. You can work for someone senior in the executive branch. In 2001 I was assigned to work with the National Security Council in the Counter-Terrorism group. My boss was Richard Clarke, who was the Counter-Terrorism czar for multiple presidents. I worked on a number of projects, including how to protect our banking system, power grids, and the internet from cyber warfare attacks.

What do you consider your biggest failure?

When I ran for California governor in 2010 against Meg Whitman, who beat me in the Republican primary. I’m really concerned about California’s economy and the high unemployment rate. As governor I could have tackled problems in our education and economic engine.

What values are important to you in business?

Open and honest communication. Problems fester when teams are not open and honest, especially with diverse teams where there are a lot of differences of opinion. As a leader you need to create a culture that rewards and promotes honesty, even if you disagree with something. It is also important to be bold — especially if you are an entrepreneur and you want to impact the country and change the world. That takes guts and courage.

What impact would you like to have on the world?

I want to create an environment where entrepreneurs can thrive. Entrepreneurship and innovation are being threatened by a subpar education system. I would love to continue to work on projects that foster innovation. I’m proud of my current venture. It’s about education and skills training and getting people into positions where they can have an impact.

What was your first paying job?

I’m 55. That was a long time ago! When I was 15 in Houston, Texas, I was an usher in a movie theater. I made $1.10 an hour. I learned there what it meant to work hard and be a good employee. The first movie that played when I started in 1973 was The Godfather. I saw that movie 60 times and can quote chapter and verse.

What is the best business book you have read?

Thomas L. Friedman’s The World Is Flat. It described for me the chief problem in California. California helped create much of the technology that enables entrepreneurs all over the world to build businesses, which means those jobs no longer need to be in the U.S. or California. Friedman does an excellent job of describing how urgent it is to stay competitive in education and job creation.

What businessperson do you most admire?

Steve Jobs. He was a phenomenal entrepreneur. In our call center there are so many Apple products! Jobs was a big, bold thinker who created some amazing, massive, disruptive breakthroughs.

What do you think is the greatest innovation in the past decade?

Putting GPS receivers in cell phones. We were told by venture capitalists that it was impossible because you can’t see satellites from inside a building. So we came up with new approaches to make it work. It was a massive breakthrough that has had a big impact on multiple industries and lots of people’s lives.

*This post also appeared on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website here.

Ellen Siminoff

Ellen Siminoff is an entrepreneur, executive and advisor in Silicon Valley. Currently chief executive of Shmoop, an online educational resource for kids, Siminoff was one of the first executives at Yahoo, where she served as senior vice president of entertainment and small business. She was also chief executive of Efficient Frontier, a search engine marketing solutions firm sold to Adobe. She is on the board of directors for Mozilla, Zynga, and SolarWinds. She received her MBA in 1993 from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In 10 words or fewer, what is the big idea behind your business?

Return joy to learning and teaching.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Go West. When I was studying at Princeton a number of people told me to apply to Stanford. I didn’t even know I was interested in technology or would become an entrepreneur. Apparently, some people knew me better than I know myself!

What was the most difficult lesson you have learned on the job?

Embrace turnover. A lot of people are fearful and worry when people leave their companies. People are relevant to companies at different phases. They select out when they are no longer believers. You want to get those people out as aggressively as you can. At every company I have ever been involved with, there has been a panic when someone important resigned. In almost every case, a month later, the company finds someone else and moves on.

What advice would you give other entrepreneurs on how to build a great business?

Learn how to sell. I have never seen entrepreneurs do poorly when they are good salespeople. In Silicon Valley we are great at building great technology and better mousetraps but at the end of the day, a company needs revenue. You need to learn how to reach customers and get them to buy. There is a perception that marketing is good and sales is somehow of a different order. But when times are tough the first thing a company cuts is marketing. You never get rid of good salespeople. And good salespeople often become CEOs.

What inspires you — how do you come up with your best ideas?

There are a couple of times in your life when education really matters to you: when you are going through it yourself and when you become a parent. My husband went online and became angry when he saw what was there in education. So much of what is online discourages students from learning and makes it more complicated. With Shmoop, my husband wanted to make learning fun and educational. He can explain Hamlet or calculus in a way that gets kids excited. Once we nailed the tone and the voice of the site, it almost wrote itself. The voice we landed on is a mixture of the way Dave talks with the voices of our favorite teachers. I had the world’s greatest algebra teacher. We took the material everyone else was teaching and made it live and breathe.

What is your greatest achievement?

I like to think I’m a good mom. My kids are 13 and 9. It’s a mix of listening and responding, as well as being clear with expectations and helping them with whatever they are doing.

What do you consider your biggest failure?

I was a dreadful organic chemistry student. It has not been helpful to me so far.

What values are important to you in business?

Honesty. I know that seems trite but what I mean is that you should do what you say you are going to do.

What impact would you like to have on the world?

I think my children will far exceed anything I have done. I would like to make a difference for one student who is slogging it out in school. Maybe it’s someone who was not planning to study for the SAT and now is motivated to do better in order to go to a better college. If we can change one kid’s life, that matters.

What was your first paying job?

My first real job was at Princeton. I sold advertisements for a magazine on campus called Business Today. It was founded by Steve Forbes at Princeton. We sold sponsorships to major companies and sold ads. I got commissions and I got paid. Instant gratification! I thought that was terrific. My parents paid my tuition, and I made enough doing sales to cover all my other expenses. I was really proud of that. I just “got” business. After sophomore year I flipped from pre-med to business.

What is the best business book you have read?

I’m reading a book called Java. I think I would have been a great programmer. My son, who’s nine, loves to code, and we read Java together. He also has a tutor, and we are taking online courses through Stanford and MIT.

What businessperson do you most admire?

My husband. I don’t know too many people who can be financially brilliant as well as creative. Most people are either creative or analytical. He can manage money at a sophisticated level and also write really brilliant and funny copy.

What do you think is the greatest innovation in the past decade?

I love my iPad. It has brought happiness to my life. I do email, play games, surf the internet, and read everything from The Wall Street Journal to Google News.

*This interview originally appeared here on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website.