Advice to Entrepreneurial Leaders

In this last of a six-part series of blogs about the growth and lead­er­ship of The Lit­tle Pota­to Company’s (LPC) CEO/­co-founder Angela San­ti­a­go, she offers advice to up-and-com­ing lead­ers, based on her life and lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence build­ing a rapid­ly grow­ing company.

As Angela San­ti­a­go learned how to be a great leader, she also learned – often the hard way – how to nav­i­gate the per­son­al chal­lenges lead­er­ship brings.

For peo­ple with sim­i­lar ambi­tions, here’s her advice:

• Enjoy the jour­ney because it’s long.
• For­give your­self. You’re going to expe­ri­ence some chal­lenges, hits and miss­es. Learn from them, for­give your­self and move on.
• Be present in the moment. When you run fast and build a com­pa­ny fast, you’re either look­ing in the rearview mir­ror or fur­ther ahead and you’re not in the moment, per­son­al­ly and professionally.

• Pay atten­tion to your resilience. Rest, recov­ery and bal­ance between work and fam­i­ly requires much more effort, thought and planning.

• Make appoint­ments. With a train­er to stay phys­i­cal­ly fit
• Jour­nal and meditate.

• Be inten­tion­al about time with friends and family.
• Stay authen­tic and true to your val­ues. Know­ing who you are guides your decisions.

At times, that prin­ci­ple has cost her mon­ey, peo­ple, and led to mis­un­der­stand­ings. But, as she says, at the end of the day, it’s the reflec­tion in the mir­ror that mat­ters — that’s how you’ll judge yourself.

What’s next for LPC and Angela

Excit­ed about build­ing some­thing new, Angela (of course) has a list, that includes:

• Bal­ance and enjoy­ing a dif­fer­ent part of life that is not just about build­ing a busi­ness, now that her kids are older
• Fam­i­ly gov­er­nance and oppor­tu­ni­ties for her chil­dren if they want to work in the business
• Expan­sion for LPC out­side of North America

For more, here are links to our recent LPC Case Study and watch the full inter­view with Angela below.