I interviewed a number of top leaders in my Lessons in Leadership series in Thrive Global this fall and asked each to share the best advice they ever received. Here is what twelve top leaders shared:

Martin Cooper, inventor of the first handheld cellular mobile phone: People who think only of themselves are doomed to failure if success is defined as having a satisfying and productive life.

Gary Kovacs, former CEO of Mozilla: I heard from a mentor early in my career a line that has stuck with me ever since, which is don’t argue the outcomes, argue the assumptions. You can get almost any outcome if you change the assumptions, but the question is, are the assumptions correct? That is where the debate needs to happen—around the assumptions. Assumptions can include your ability to execute, the capabilities of the team, your financial position, an honest assessment of your market position, and many other factors. If you have a clear sense of these, and how they are changing, then the outcome that you create has the highest chance of being successful.

Adriana Gascoigne, founder and CEO of Girls in Tech: No excuses. Ever. In my second internship, I had an amazing boss at a firm called Moya, Villanueva & Associates. I was working on major brands like Nestle and Disney – a big deal when you’re starting out. When I told my boss I couldn’t get something done on time, she bluntly said “no excuses.” After initially being taken aback, I saw the wisdom in her approach to facing roadblocks by setting aside excuses and immediately offering three potential solutions for moving forward. Even though you might not have caused the problem, you always must be accountable. Don’t blame anyone. Apologize. But have a short-term memory and immediately pivot to solutions.  No excuses. I take it to heart and my antenna goes up a little when people give me excuses. It reflects far better on a person to be focused on where we go from here instead of how we got to where we are.

Robert Fried, Academy Award and Emmy Award winner and CEO of ChromaDex: Finish what you start.

Jennifer Schuler, CEO of Wetzel’s Pretzels: Get a coach. It’s hard to coach, inspire or support others in their growth if you aren’t doing it yourself.

Michael Houlihan, co-founder of Barefoot Wine: My father once said to me, “Make up your mind Michael, do you want to make a statement, or do you want to make a deposit?”

Bonnie Harvey, co-founder of Barefoot Wine: My mother once said to me, “Yep! You can do it! Just set your mind to it!”

Antron Brown, auto racing champion: The single best piece of advice I have ever received is from my cousin (NFL star) Troy Vincent. When I was 19 years old, he told me to ‘be slow to speak and long to listen.’ What he means by that is to sit back and observe your surroundings and take in all of the information you can before you speak about anything. For example, I’m trying to court corporate partners to support our race team and this advice is something that I always take with me into a boardroom. I never go into a meeting with a potential sponsor and think ‘how am I going to sell them on what I want?’ Instead, I want to learn from them what their goals and objectives are and take that information and present them with an opportunity whereby joining on with our team, we can help them achieve those goals. How can you benefit them? We’re not pitching them on our goals, we’re pitching them on how we can help leverage their goals.

Roel Vestjens, CEO of Belden: Treat every experience as an opportunity to learn something. This advice has been valuable in my career. Even if something doesn’t go as I once hoped or planned, I don’t dwell on it or feel ashamed of a failure. I reflect on the situation, learn from it and commit to approaching a similar situation differently next time so as to not repeat the mistake.

Joe Hart, CEO of Dale Carnegie Training: Mindset is everything. The way we frame problems, how we see the world, whether our perspective on life is positive or negative is critical. Are we looking for opportunity? Or do we think in terms of scarcity? Do we feel we can “take command” of a situation or do we see ourselves as victims? Two people can be in the exact situation and one person is happy and the other miserable. What is the difference? Mindset. Our attitude drives everything. The good news is that we can choose how we think, and we can condition thoughts to serve us as opposed to undermine us.

John Crowley, founder and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics: In the life sciences, there are many people who have made dramatic advancements in improving lives that serve as inspiration to me. One of those people is Dr. Jonas Salk, who invented the polio vaccine. Despite Dr. Salk’s enormous success and what he did to change the world, one must consider how many times he failed in what he was doing. His first experiments were abject failures. After one of those many failures, Dr. Salk sat on a park bench and thought about how he would share that failure with his family, with colleagues, with his academic superiors. And then he looked out at the playground and saw children playing and it dawned on him. In that moment, he realized that without a polio vaccine, some of those children would contract polio. Some of them may even die or be confined to an iron lung in their life. He realized at that point, the enormity of the importance of his work and returned to it with a renewed vigor. The lesson of Dr. Salk is that “it’s bigger than you.” It’s an important lesson in any undertaking in life, but certainly in business and entrepreneurship and particularly in biotech. There is purpose to what we do. Understanding that “it’s bigger than you” carries me through my work to continue pursuing treatments for rare genetic disease, despite the challenges.

Todd Snyder, fashion designer and entrepreneur: Todd: My dad always said, to be the best, work for the best. It’s served me well so far.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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