Great opportunities never have “great opportunity” in the subject line.

Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. He is a venture partner at Benchmark, a venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006 and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent across the creative industries. He is an early investor and advisor in Pinterest, Uber, and Periscope, among many other fast-growing startups.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why?

The billboard would say, “Great opportunities never have ‘great opportunity’ in the subject line.”

Whether you’re looking for the best new job, client, partner, or new business opportunity, it is unlikely to lure you when you first see it. In fact, the best opportunities may not even catch your attention at first. More often than not, great opportunities look unattractive on the surface. What makes an opportunity great is upside. If the potential upside were explicitly clear, the opportunity would have already been taken.

Don’t call yourself a visionary, or aspire to make a disproportionate impact, if you anchor all your decisions with what you see and know now. I am always surprised by how lazy people are when making serious decisions about their careers. Join a team not for what it is, but for what you think you can help it become. Be a “founder” in the sense that you’re willing to make something rather than just join something.

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself looking at all my important relationships through the Enneagram lens…. I wish I had discovered it much earlier.

Drew Houston is CEO and co-founder of Dropbox. After graduating from MIT in 2006, he turned his frustration with carrying USB drives and emailing files to himself into a demo for what became Dropbox. In early 2007, he and co-founder Arash Ferdowsi applied to tech accelerator Y Combinator. Dropbox went on to become one of the fastest-growing startups in YC history. Dropbox now has more than 500 million registered users and employs more than 1,500 people in 13 global offices.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

I’ve always admired Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger‘s clarity of thought and how they manage to explain complex topics in simple terms. Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger is one of my favorite examples.

As the CEO of a company, and in life in general, you find yourself making a dizzying variety of decisions in areas where you don’t have a lot of expertise, and your environment is constantly changing. How do you navigate this? How do you cultivate judgment and wisdom without waiting for a lifetime of experience?

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a good start. It describes how to make good decisions in any situation with a relatively limited mental toolkit: the big, enduring ideas of the fundamental academic disciplines. Virtually everyone is exposed to these concepts by high school, but few people truly master them or apply them in everyday life. In my experience, it’s this kind of essential, first-principles thinking that enables the unusual level of insight and conviction that sets the great founders apart from the merely good ones.

Show up in every moment like you’re meant to be there, because your energy precedes anything you could possibly say.

Marie Forleo has been called “a thought leader for the next generation” by Oprah Winfrey. She is the creator of the award-winning show MarieTV and the founder of B-School, and Forbes has included her website on its list of “100 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs.” Marie has mentored young business owners at Richard Branson’s Centre of Entrepreneurship, and she is the author of Make Every Man Want You: How to Be So Irresistible You’ll Barely Keep from Dating Yourself!, which has been published in 16 languages.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

Hands down, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. This book has a magical, activating quality to it. It’s the essential no-bullshit guide for anyone who battles self-doubt or struggles to bring any important project to life. I reread it in full at least once a year. But it’s also the kind of book that you can flip to any page, read the passage, and find the exact jolt of inspiration you need to move ahead.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why?

My billboard would say, “Everything is figure-out-able.” I learned this as a kid from my mom, and it’s fueled every aspect of my career and life. It still does to this day.

The meaning is simple: No matter what challenge or obstacle you face, whether it’s personal, professional, or global, there’s a path ahead. It’s all figure-out-able. You’ll find a way or make a way, if you’re willing to be relentless, stay nimble, and keep taking action. It’s especially useful to remember when things go wrong, because rather than wasting time or energy on the problem, you shift immediately to brainstorming solutions. I honestly believe it’s one of the most practical and powerful beliefs you can adopt.

After starting my first job at Oracle … I ended up in Larry Ellison’s old office, which he didn’t entirely clean out, leaving behind some 40 copies of The Mythical Man-Month.

Marc Benioff is a philanthropist and chairman and CEO of Salesforce. A pioneer of cloud computing, Marc founded the company in 1999 with a vision to create an enterprise software company with a new technology model based in the cloud, a new pay-as-you-go business model, and a new integrated corporate philanthropy model. Under his leadership, Salesforce has grown from an idea into a Fortune 500 company, the fastest-growing top five software company in the world, and the global leader in CRM. He has been named one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune, “50 Most Influential People” by Bloomberg Businessweek, one of the top 20 “Best-Performing CEOs” by Harvard Business Review, one of the “Best CEOs in the World” by Barron‘s, and “Innovator of the Decade” by Forbes magazine and he received The Economist‘s Innovation Award. Marc is also a member of the World Economic Forum Board of Trustees. Marc is the author of three books, including the national bestseller Behind the Cloud, which details how he grew Salesforce from zero to $1 billion in annual sales. Currently, he is one of only four entrepreneurs in history to have built an enterprise software company with more than $10 billion in annual revenue (the other three being Bill Gates of Microsoft, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Hasso Plattner of SAP).

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

One of the most powerful books in business I ever read was Managing, by the former head of ITT, Harold Geneen. It changed my life and my whole approach to business. He’s old school, and his book is a chronicle of his regime at ITT. A lot of the things we do at Salesforce are based on his techniques, such as our quarterly operations reviews, which we’re religious about.

Life is not designed to hand us success or satisfaction, but rather to present us with challenges that make us grow.

Terry Laughlin is the founder of Total Immersion, an innovative swimming method focused on teaching students to swim in a highly efficient manner. Between 1973 and 1988, Terry coached three college and two USA Swimming club teams, improving each team dramatically and developing 24 national champions. In 1989, Terry founded Total Immersion and turned his focus from working with young, accomplished swimmers to adults with little experience or skill. He is the author of Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier, which I recommend reading after watching the videos titled Freestyle: Made Easy. I was introduced to Terry and Total Immersion by billionaire investor Chris Sacca, and it single-handedly taught me how to swim in my 30s. In less than ten days of solo training, I went from a two-length maximum (of a 25-yard pool) to swimming more than 40 lengths per workout in sets of two and four. It blew my mind, and now I swim for fun. It changed my life.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

Mastery by George Leonard. I first read this book 20 years ago, after reading Leonard’s Esquire article, the seed from which the book grew. Leonard wrote the book to share lessons from becoming an Aikido master teacher, despite starting practice at the advanced age of 47.

I raced through its 170-plus pages in a state of almost feverish excitement, so strongly did it affirm our swimming method. The book helped me see swimming as an ideal vehicle for teaching the mastery habits and behaviors closely interwoven with our instruction in the physical techniques of swimming. I love this book because it is as good a guide as I’ve ever seen to a life well lived.

Don’t spend time chasing a right answer or a right path, but instead spend time defining how you are going to approach whatever path you choose.

Laura R. Walker is president and CEO of New York Public Radio, the largest public radio station group in the nation. Under her leadership, New York Public Radio has increased its monthly audience from 1 million to over 26 million, has raised more than $100 million in long-term investment, and has been described by Nieman Lab‘s Ken Doctor as being on “innovation overdrive.” Laura was honored with an Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the industry’s highest honor. She was named one of New York City’s “Most Powerful Women” by Crain’s New York Business, was chosen for the Crain’s New York Business special feature on “The 100 Most Influential Women in NYC Business,” and was one of Moves magazine’s “Power Women.” She holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a BA in history from Wesleyan University, where she was an Olin Scholar.

What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why? Or what are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

When I give a book, I always try to find something that I loved, and most important, speaks to the person’s dreams, yearnings, or challenges they are facing. For friends who have faced or are facing cancer, I often give them The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, because this beautifully written book weaves together science and story so elegantly, and helped me understand cancer—the history, causes, and innovative treatment—when my son had cancer.

For new cooks I give Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything because it delivers exactly what it promises!

For New York City geeks—and I know a lot of them—I gave Nonstop Metropolis by Rebecca Solnit.

You cannot do anything great without aggressively courting your own limits.

Aisha Tyler is an actor, comedian, director, author, and activist. Aisha is best known as a co-host of the Emmy Award-winning, daytime show The Talk, the voice of Lana Kane in the hit series Archer, portraying Dr. Tara Lewis in Criminal Minds, and her recurring roles in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Talk Soup, and Friends. Aisha is also the host of the comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the author of Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation.

If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, what would it say and why? Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

I love that Jack Canfield quote, “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” If something terrifies me, I typically sprint flat-out toward it, and that has served me well, both professionally and personally. But everyone gets scared, and I sometimes have to remind myself to remain brave when I’ve taken enough steps toward a goal that I can’t turn back, and feel like the floor has fallen out from underneath me.

I try to live in a space of bravery in every aspect of my life: creative, professional, familial, and in my friendships. Being brave means being present and willing to give of yourself regardless of result. I often write “be brave” in books when I sign them for fans—it’s an admonishment for them and for myself. Remaining brave has helped me push toward those goals through paralyzing crises of confidence.