Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine, Your destination for travel resources and entertainment.

Close on Sundays. Avoid audiobook stores. These are just two tips that Spirit picked up from leading entrepreneurs. We also scoured Twitter, ransacked the blogosphere, and even let a couple of business scholars duke it out, all to figure out what it takes to move from startup to success. You can repay us with beer. But only if it’s from your own brewery.

By The Editors. Photography by Adam Voorhes.

TO READ

Blogs

Tech Crunch

THE SETUP: Tech-savvy editors alert you to startups that will inspire you.   

SAMPLE POST: “Most men hate to shop. It takes way too much time, we are out of our element, and we end up getting really dorky clothes because we feel like not buying something is an admission of failure….Enter the Trunk Club, a new way to shop online.”

Feld Thoughts

THE SETUP: Venture capitalist Brad Feld introduces you to startups, tech stars, and other cool ventures.

SAMPLE POST: “Overcommunicate. Especially your victories. Celebrate them. If you made your Q1 plan, make sure everyone in the company knows it.…Make sure everyone in your company (and your partners, and your customers, and anyone else that matters) knows what worked and—as importantly—why it worked.”

Seth Godin’s Blog

THE SETUP: Bestselling author Seth Godin helps you transform your company with expert marketing tips.

SAMPLE POST: “Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum. Instead of squandering it in a long, slow death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you. Change is 

a bear, but it’s better than death.”

Freakonomics

THE SETUP: Maverick economists help you get a fresh perspective on the world of commerce—and beyond.
SAMPLE POST: “Of the 160 million cell phones discarded annually, 75 percent of them end up in drawers or trash cans. A new company, Cycled Cells, takes in old cell phones, sometimes paying for them, and either recycles the phones or, if they can be rehabilitated, distributes them to phone-needy people around the world. They even pay for postage.”

Books

The Long Tail by Chris Anderson

TAKEAWAY:  “If the 20th-century entertainment industry  was about hits, the 21st will be equally about niches. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching.”

Good to Great by Jim Collins

TAKEAWAY: “To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. If you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business absolutely cannot form the basis of a great company.”

The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell

TAKEAWAY: “The best way to understand the changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.”

Twitter Feeds

Jack Welch (Former CEO of General Electric)

SAMPLE TWEET: “Interviewing Fmr Tres Sec Hank Paulson Thurs. night at event…what would you like me to ask him???”

Robert Scoble (Popular tech blogger, author of Naked Conversations)

SAMPLE TWEET: “FriendFeed does the same thing [as Twitter] albeit a lot better.”

Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks owner, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment, chairman of HDNet)

SAMPLE TWEET: “Every minute of the work day is selling time. Thinking is for night time. 7am to 7pm+ is selling time.”

John Byrne (Executive editor of BusinessWeek)

SAMPLE TWEET: “News meeting: We’ll lead in the a.m. with ‘The Next Energy Innovators.’”

ADVICE TO HEED

What’s the biggest business mistake you’ve ever made?

“Opening audiobook stores. Lesson learned: My logic about the need for the product did not match the customer’s view. You can be too enchanted with your own cleverness.”—Michael Powell, founder, Powell’s Books

“Entering into a business that I didn’t really know—a brewery—made me realize that there are limits to what one can do. Doing business if you are an expert is difficult enough. But if you don’t know something, you have a good chance of failure.”—Wolfgang Puck, founder, Wolfgang Puck Restaurants

“I hung on to some people longer than I should have. Character, I learned, is far more important than technical knowledge. You want people who fit in with the culture of the company.”—Margot Fraser, founder, Birkenstock

What’s the best advice you can give a new entrepreneur?

“Chase the vision, not the money. Make sure that your business has a greater purpose beyond the bottom line. Figure out what you’d be so passionate about doing that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years even if you never made any money from it. And then go do it. The ironic thing is that if you are actually chasing the vision and not the money, the money will follow because your customers and employees will be able to sense your passion, and they will want to help you succeed.”—Tony Hsieh, founder, Zappos

What’s the most contrarian advice you can give to an aspiring entrepreneur?

“Don’t go into debt. When I started JP Mitchell, I had only $700 and never borrowed a penny. People told me it was impossible to do with such a small amount of money. They were partially right. We crept along for months. It took years to pay the bills, but eventually we did it.”—John Paul DeJoria, founder, Patron Spirits and John Paul Mitchell Hair Systems

“Some people feel we should open on Sundays, but closing the restaurants on that day is the best business decision I have ever made. It attracts the kind of people who appreciate having Sunday off, whether they worship or not. Closing on Sunday hasn’t hurt our sales at all. We still compete.”—S. Truett Cathy, founder, Chick-fil-A

“Milton Friedman said the only reason a corporation exists is to maximize the return of the shareholder. Forget that. Do this instead: Put the employee first, and that employee will take better care of the customer than anyone else.”—Kip Tindell, founder, the Container Store

Who were your mentors and what did they teach you?

“I was at an airport, and someone flew in on a private jet. He worked for a major restaurant franchise and owned more than 300 units. He’d started with just a few. I found it interesting that someone who started small could multiply his earning power into an expanding business model. From that one encounter I learned how to turn each small success into a big one.”—Rick Schaden, founder, Quiznos

“John Malone, former CEO of Telecomm Inc. He opened the door to lots of investors and advertisers. At one time he was funding us, and he never took on equity, just more debt. I asked him why, and he told me, ‘Bob, I always knew you’d work harder for yourself than for me.’”—Robert L. Johnson, founder, Black Entertainment Television

“Steven Wynn. What he taught me was to deliver the promise. Give the consumer a product that delivers exactly what you say it does in the advertisement.”—Ron Popeil, founder, RonCo

What new online trends do you see?

“Recently there’s been a lot of buzz about ‘real-time.’ What that actually means can be debated. I think we’ll see more sites that will be more interactive, more engaging, and more chatty. People love to communicate and share content.”—Sandy Jen, founder, meebo.com

Web 2.0 enabled self-promotion. How should entrepreneurs take advantage?

“They need to use every medium possible and make communication a priority. Tweet not only about the moves your company makes but also about your passions. Don’t have someone else write for you. The essence of your personal brand as a CEO is hard to recapture once it’s been lost.”—Kevin Rose, founder, digg.com

What’s something every entrepreneur should know before taking the business online?

“Despite all the talk about radical new ways of doing business, the truth is that nothing has changed at all. To be successful, you have to find something simple that people need and solve that problem in a way that people love. This core principle has always been true and always will be.”—Jimmy Walsh, founder, Wikipedia

PLACES TO GO

Get startup insights with the price of admission at these museums.

Henry Ford Museum (Detroit)

Inspiration arrives without fail at the Henry Ford Museum, whether you’re touring R. Buckminster Fuller’s “house of the future” or imagining the Ford Mustang No. 1 in your garage. The museum also includes a section devoted to the eureka moments behind American inventions like tractors, dishwashers, and clocks.

Big Mac Museum Restaurant (North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania)

You’ve heard of Ray Kroc, but what about Jim Delligatti? You can thank him for the original twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun (aka the Big Mac). Located about 20 miles from Pittsburgh, the Big Mac Museum gives chowhounds the story behind the popular fast food staple—and a chance to sample the goods.

Museum of American Finance (New York City)

Entrepreneurs steal the show in one of the Museum of American Finance’s most popular exhibits. Listen to interviews with futurist Ray Kurzweil, Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, and 14 other leading businesspeople. You can also get a primer on the inner-workings of the banking system and tour an entire room devoted to Alexander Hamilton, founder of the first bank in America.

The Tech (San Jose, California)

Exhibits at the Tech run the gamut from robots and roller coaster design to the latest developments in biotechnology. The museum also sponsors an annual Tech Challenge design competition for students and gives out Tech Awards to people who invent gadgets that benefit humanity.