If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you have two options: learn from your own mistakes as you go, or take note of lessons learned by those already at the finish line.

We sat down with a few of our friends in the start-up world to glean from their sage wisdom and experience. The gist of our questions for them was: What advice would you give someone just launching their first startup? And how did you come across this advice yourself?

Grab some coffee and a notepad, sit back, and enjoy!

With today’s growing mobile workforce more and more people are working from untraditional workspaces such as their kitchen or coffee shops. Here in Boston we’ve even seen people working from rafts in the Fort Point Channel.

In an effort to help fuel this mobile workforce of independent workers, freelancers, startups and entrepreneurs and increase awareness of the availability of co-working spaces, we’ve teamed up with Deskwanted, a global network of coworking spaces and shared offices offering their desks to independent workers, and Gidsy, an online skills and experience sharing platform, for an exciting (and super easy) photo competition.

This week’s employee spotlight is on Stephanie Bullis. Stephanie is our word of mouth marketing manager. She runs our buzz department here at Grasshopper and is responsible for generating “buzz” about Grasshopper through press, events and other fun things that get people talking. The goal of Stephanie’s job is to make sure our customers have a good experience with our brand and want to tell their friends about it.

Let’s get to know Stephanie…

As a business owner, time is one of your most valuable assets. You need to make the most of every minute. If you don’t, you risk doing serious detriment to your company’s momentum.

Every saved hour translates into a serious cost reduction, thus improving your bottom line. Imagine if every single employee were able to accomplish more in fewer hours – day after day, the cost savings would be invaluable.

According to  one infographic by Current , the average person wastes three hours out of every eight hour workday. The top culprit? Web surfing. It’s not that people are lazy, however.

From the employee to CEO levels alike, people get so caught up in working hard that it’s difficult to see that there is, in fact, a shorter path from point A to B. Instead of taking healthy breaks, they skip lunch and drive themselves into a perpetual state of burnout. It may sound counter-intuitive, but people need to embrace the art of staying mentally healthy by doing less.

Pinterest is all the rage among small businesses, and for good reason. The image-based social networking site offers something substantially different to brands. In addition to the obvious way small businesses are using Pinterest — communicating with customers in a new way – some clever entrepreneurs have found the platform to be a great way to communicate inside the office as well.

Here are 3 ways you could be using Pinterest around the office: