Christine Comaford-Lynch – once a high school drop-out, teenage runaway, Buddhist monk, lingerie model, geisha trainee, software engineer and hospice worker. I met Christine 2 weeks ago at a women conference in Berkeley.
Christine became an entrepreneur at age 27. She was 5 times CEO averaged about 700% returns on investment. She invested in over 200 companies as a venture capitalist and angel investor, including Google and many successful companies. She consulted to over 700 of Fortune 1000 companies. She was the advisor to the White House for the Clinton & Bush administration. She is a business accelerator and advisors for many companies. She was successfully retired at 40. Christine recently founded Mighty Venture to help people to discover both their personal and business potential in a fun and effective way that fosters connection and community.
Here are some lessons that I learnt from Christine’s panel discussions:
- Slow Down – Don’t try to do everything at once in 95 miles per hour speed. Multi-tasking is great, but it is very difficult to be excellent in every single areas of your life. Focus on one thing at a time. Your heart, your voice and vision all need to be focused.
- Perseverance – Don’t give up. There is no get rich quick scheme.
- Change Fast – When things go wrong, don’t dwell on it. Move on and change your strategy and direction fast.
- Take Risk – No Risk No Gain
- Stretch / Growth – If you are not growing, you are dying. Always stretch yourself to learn new things.
- Never a problem – Everything has a solution. Don’t think you only have problems, find solutions
- Choose the right partners – Fire them if you need to.
- Self Identify – Everything is an illusion. Pick the one that is fun. Choose your own identity. Don’t let investors to set your values for you.
- Build Emotion Equity – When approaching investors or buyers, help them and build emotional equity with them. Make sure they want your venture to succeed as much as you do.
- Life = the people you meet + what you create together. Build the connection and community with everyone around you.