Morning all, Back at it again: So I’ve been asked this question several times so I thought I’d write a little bit about the subject - What do I think are the traits of a successful entrepreneur? What qualities does a person must have to successfully build a business? It’s a great question with no ‘set rules’ But certainly, I find there to be some consistencies amongst the folk I know who are most entrepreneurial that I’ll go on to discuss with you - Appetite for Risk Aversion To Risk Bias To Action Ability to MultiTask [I was going to say] Be able to sell Adaptability

Appetite for Risk

I think most business owner’s I know or those who go on to lead successful companies definitely are happy to take risks. To leap into the unknown and see what may come from an experiment. There isn’t a business owner I know who doesn’t like trying things. Example: You very very likely know this man - and as he outlines here - back in 2008 two of his most successful companies were alive by ‘skin of their teeth’. Elon Musk is someone who has risked it all in his search for growth and success and changing the world. Fast forward 12 years from 2008 - and this has been his personal financial payoff:

This is a living and breathing example of someone who was able to levy the most amazing return over time. Personal Example: Anyone who comes to be part of the Pearl Lemon team is taking on some risk. We’re a new company less than 5 years old and we run in an extremely lean fashion. There’s been nothing meteoric about our rise - we are a small company making strides and I think that anyone deciding to tether themselves to the Pearl Lemon ship needs to have an appetite for risk.

Aversion To Risk

Here’s the other side of that coin. The successful peeps I see that go ahead and build businesses also have a deep aversion to risk. Money gambled is money they can afford to lose. Time invested in projects is the time they have to spend. Example: A good way to demonstrate this is by looking at companies and their cash reserves. The amount of money that Apple has on hand is obscene. But it means that there’s really no such thing as ‘risk’ in Apple’s case. They can buy the bank or be the bank they have so much financial muscle. Personal Example: I run Pearl Lemon in a very lean manner. I have almost no salaried staff, have sales guys on commission and our SEO team are project-based. This meant during the Coronavirus Pandemic as our revenue shrank by 60% within 45 days so did our costs significantly. Next to no furloughs and we were able to see out the initial crisis of March 2020 without imploding BECAUSE of our business model.

Bias To Action

This is another amazing quality I’ve noticed in entrepreneurs who’ve gone on to have wild success (not that I particularly know any multi millionaire’s personally). So having a bias to action is centred around the ability to make decisions quickly and effectively - and not overthink things. Example: The people who ran these companies will have this in spades: For the most part, companies that hit billion $ valuations in <3 years are those who have an extraordinary bias to action. Their instinct isn’t to pass it up to a committee or have a board meeting or put together a detailed planning document to investigate an idea further. It’s having the idea, thinking about the idea for a couple of minutes (sometimes less, sometimes more - a few days depending upon the gravity of the change) - and then going after it. It’s definitely something I notice as a common consistency in successful companies. *Please note - most of these ideas fail but you only need one to work depending upon how you spread your risk Personal Example: Just discovered we rank #1 for this on Clutch because of the strength of our PR: I immediately Google public affairs for a definition: Saw that it contains ‘media communications’ ‘CSR’ ‘strategic communications’ ‘reputations management’ BINGO - that’s close to SEO and Public Relations - So then very quickly this email went out: And this email shortly after: And then this on Whatsapp: Now let’s see what happens over the coming 3-6 months.

Ability to MultiTask

I think this is huge in the modern age. A business owner being able to task-switch I think is more important than it has ever been. ‘Single-focus’ with so many wheels spinning at the same time becomes more and more difficult. Much of your role is about jumping in and jumping out of activities quickly and effectively. Example: Natan Latka underlines this in his book - ‘How to be a capitalist without any capital’ which I’m yet to read but it’s on my to-do list Personal Example: These are some of the videos I’ve made literally today whilst (trying) to write this blog: Notice the timestamps. Now, to finally eat into as much of this blog as I can I’ve set a pomodoro just giving myself another 9 minutes to get something valuable written up: See top right.

[I was going to say] Be able to sell

My next thought moved to the ability to sell. This relates to actual revenue generation for your business alongside being able to sell internally to staff, new partners, contractors, and anyone involved or part of your mission. When we broaden the scope it becomes about empowered communication if you will. We sell when we lead by doing, and when we lead we do it by saying and/or doing. Different people draw inspiration from their leaders in different ways. But perhaps I’m conflating ‘sales’ with ‘leadership’. As you can see I’m a little unclear on this topic as there are some companies who have no ‘sales force’ as such but are so useful and innovative that they spread via WOM. Example Many people don’t know that some of Uber’s early successes came from literally the art of cold calling - and this being a central part of their business growth. Showing that even in the modern-day - ‘cold calling’ the purest form of sales… Is not dead. Personal Example: As you can see above - we keep internal records and examples of the sales calls we get on. And even though we have a team of 5 salespeople now - it’s actually 6 including myself. Because I’m still out there on a day to day basis selling.

Adaptability

The world is changing faster than it ever has. That means the market you move in is more akin to Bruce Lee’s water than it is King Arthur’s stone. The sheer rate of change is absolutely incredible when it relates to how quickly things just turn on their head. This means the best entrepreneurs create markets, move with the market, and often are at the apex of a turn in the market. Laggards get left behind. Example: You’d only need to Google it to look at companies that reinvented themselves and then another example would back this up even more Personal Example: I was just checking our backlink profile in Ahrefs when I saw this: I then checked out the site and saw it was a webinar of an interview upon which I hosted Jaydip Parikh. He’s transcribed our interview upon which I hosted him onto HIS website. What an amazing idea! Will now copy - have already asked him: So…. These are some of the insights I have when it comes to the traits of a successful entrepreneur One day, I’ll come back and update this some more ;p