3 Key Business Lessons I Learned in 2016

The year 2016 will go down as the most interesting, frustrating, successful, challenging and amazing year of my life. Yeah, it was all over the place, and I have a feeling I wasn't the only one who experienced a capricious 2016.

As the year comes to a close, I find myself most thankful for three specific lessons that proved fruitful in 2016. These were not new lessons to me so much as they were lessons in which unique opportunities were presented this year which helped me re-learn and apply them in business-transforming ways.

Getting close to your users is always a great idea.

Earlier this year, I embarked upon a 35-city roadtrip across America. 18 of the cities were cities Localeur was already available in while the remainder were cities we'd yet to launch. At its best, the roadtrip was an exciting and inspiring concept, but at its worst it had the appearance of a time-consuming distraction. When I first announced the roadtrip, I know there were many people - some of my investors included - who thought this represented me (founder/CEO, mind you) simply enjoying myself and gallivanting across the country on the company's dime.

But what I realized very early into the roadtrip was that getting on the road wasn't just about knocking back drinks with locals and sharing photos on Instagram. Getting on the road was about re-connecting with my company's mission, getting closer to our users and making some gutsy product decisions based on the outcome. Now, over 7 months since my return to Austin since the 17,000-mile journey, Localeur has expanded to nearly 40 cities including cities like Columbus, Detroit and Jacksonville where I'd spent a little over 24 hours in each meeting with actual locals like Larry Robertson and Toni Smailagic who've joined our curated community of locals.

Team building is about subtraction as much as it's about addition.

In 2016, one of the biggest decisions in our company was the departure of my co-founder and product head Chase White. Chase and I started Localeur together nearly four years ago after leaving our jobs at Bazaarvoice. Unlike many horror stories you hear from some startup founders, our founder relationship was always built on honesty, openness and mutual respect. So after careful discussion between Chase and myself about where we were with the business, I didn't hesitate to push forward in making his amicable departure possible despite some reticence from my board about the potential negative signals a founder breakup may create. Throughout, I knew undoubtedly that Chase would go on to an exciting new project he was extremely passionate about (check out Loom), and that Localeur would sustain the loss of our product leader. More importantly, I believed his departure would create more space for both myself as a lone acting founder to drive the product roadmap, which has already entailed a full redesign of our app, and for our founding engineer to step up even more as a functional leader.

In the last month alone, our team has doubled after we secured our most significant round of funding, but the seeds of both that equity financing and these recent hires were planted many months ago during those crucial conversations between Chase and me.

Empathy is the most important attribute if you're seeking advice.

One of the things you do when you're starting a business is try and meet with a bunch of people who seem savvy and knowledgeable to get advice. It's smart to seek counsel from those with experience and success, but it's also a challenging way to triangulate feedback and hone in on the vision and strategy that will help your business thrive. Plus, when you're running a business of any type - a boutique, a consulting firm, an event production company, a startup - you get advice from everyone and their grandmother. I know because I've owned all of those businesses in the last decade.

In the last year, however, I've realized that the best kind of advice isn't necessarily industry specific, technical in nature or industry-oriented. The best kind of advice is from someone who has empathy for the position you're in as a business owner.

Here's something a lot of people won't like to hear: if you're not the CEO or founder of your business, a lot of your advice to business owners sounds like the exact opposite of empathy no matter how sound the advice is. A CFO may tell you have to make your financial operations more effective. A VP of Sales may tell you how to improve your sales efficiency and process. An HR director may have advice on how to execute interviews and hiring new team members. This can all be extremely helpful advice, but these people doling out professional tips often lack the ability to fully put themselves in your shoes as a business owner, CEO or founder. It doesn't mean these executives and advisers lack empathy, but it certainly means they must work much harder to provide constructive recommendations on what you - the final decision maker for your business - may need to do in a particular situation that is unique to a business you own or run.

When I secured Localeur's latest and largest round of funding earlier this year, it wasn't from someone who has spent decades in Silicon Valley or someone who is currently the CEO of a venture-backed tech startup. No, our latest round of funding was led by a successful business owner who asked me a very simple question: "what do you want?"

If more advisers asked founders and business owners what they wanted, listened to the answers then provided feedback and advice, I have a strong belief that many more businesses - be they local businesses or venture-backed startups - would succeed.