July 7, 2022 • 20 mins
Getting to speak with Gino about a topic he is so passionate about was extremely enlightening. Through his personal experiences helping hundreds, if not thousands, of entrepreneurs, Gino has managed to come up with a list of six traits that he thinks you need to be a successful entrepreneur. In the UK alone there were almost two thousand new start ups registered every day in the tax year 2019/20. Gino's hope is that by sharing these six traits he can help someone on this tough entrepreneurial journey. Let us know what you think about these traits by leaving a review.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Whether you believe it or not,you are a leader in your everyday life.
Whether it's within your family, inyour work environment, or even online,
you can and will affect change inthose around you. Join me in
conversation with authors, professors and leaders, so together we can learn all things
regarding leadership and life. I'm yourhost, Ferananda Carrillo, and welcome back
(00:22):
to another episode of London's Leadership Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome to London's Leadership
Podcast. Today we're speaking with GinaWickman, who is an expert on entrepreneurship
and nowadays it feels as though everybodycan have a startup. Everybody's an entrepreneur.
But Gina's got some experience on thesubject and he's written a few books
(00:44):
on entrepreneurship, so he's an expertin this field. And we're going to
look at six essential traits of anentrepreneur. And I'm sorry to burst your
bubble, but most people don't haveall these six traits. So do you
know tell us why you're so passionateentrepreneurship and what it took you to write
this book on the sixth Straits ofan Entrepreneur of an entrepreneur I'd be thrilled
(01:07):
to and it's a real pleasure tobe here with you, Fernando. So
I'll start with kind of the bigpicture context. And so my whole life
has been entrepreneurship. I am oneand I have spent the last thirty years
helping entrepreneurs. So I just havethis knack for it. And so I
ended up taking over a family businessin my mid twenties, did a turnaround,
we successfully sold it, and that'swhen I got my first taste of
(01:30):
running a company, building a company, growing a company, and helping my
entrepreneur father, who's a visionary entrepreneur, really get in his sweet spot.
And I played what I call anintegrator role for him and turning that company
around and growing that company. Fromthere, I realized my calling and I
set out to help entrepreneurs and fastversion. Over the last twenty years,
(01:51):
I created a system called EOS,wrote a book called Traction, and then
five subsequent books helping entrepreneurs run greatbusinesses. Well, after thirty years of
doing that, I realized that Iwanted to take on a passion project to
go to the front end of theentrepreneurial journey and help anyone out there in
the world that wants to be anentrepreneur, help them discover if they are
(02:13):
or aren't, and then show themhow to build an amazing business. And
so I set out to do that. Three years ago launched a book called
Entrepreneurial Leap, which is my wayof teaching anyone who thinks they're an entrepreneur
how to become one. And soit's almost as if if we were sitting
and having coffee and somebody said,how do I become an entrepreneur? These
are all the words that would comeout of my mouth. And the way
(02:34):
that I write the book is inthree parts Confirm, Glimpse, and Path.
And what you're asking about here isthe first part of the book,
Confirm, and that's where it allhas to start. Because to waste one
ounce of energy telling you how tobuild a business, we have to first
make sure that you're cut out tobe an entrepreneur. Only four percent of
the world is, and so ifyou're not, it's okay. There are
(02:57):
a thousand other career options. Butif you are one of the four percent,
my goal is to find you,show you the life you were born
to live. And then again,like we're talking about show you how to
build a great business. And soin that confirmed step, the first step
is to decide do you have thesesix essential traits? They are visionary,
passionate, problem solver, driven,risk taker, and responsible. And so
(03:21):
what I do in the first thirdof that book is really go deep into
explaining what they are, help youunderstand them, help you really assess yourself.
But then ultimately I offer a freeassessment for you to take twenty five
questions. If you score ninety yearhigher, odds are you're probably an entrepreneur
in the making. And this entrepreneurialworld is for you. And if you
(03:42):
score less, then you just havea decision to make because there's a good
chance that you may not. Butat the end of the day, it's
your choice. Brilliant I was whenI read Entrepreneur Leap. I realized how
hard it was to be an entrepreneur. I've seen friends who are entrepreneurs and
who and who thrive at it.And even though it looks seductive, I
(04:06):
think from the outside it looks fun, it looks adventurous, it's also a
very difficult way of living that Icould see from from my experience and my
friend's experience and in the moments thatI've tried to step out to start new
ventures, I've realized what it takesand how difficult it can be. So
(04:28):
I think this confirmed step is supersuper important. So would you mind just
maybe we could go through the sixthessential traits and just give people an idea
of of what it might take forthem to understand, maybe to see if
maybe they they might have what ittakes, or maybe they can say,
actually, I don't have what ittakes. I would love to. And
you know, leading into this,I want to just piggyback on something you
(04:51):
said there because you made the ultimatepoint, which is right now, being
an entrepreneur is sexy. In otherwords, everybody wants to be an and
my passion, my desire is tohelp you understand because if you are not,
I'm trying to save to you tenyears of hell. So while the
news may be bad news to you, it's actually good news in the long
(05:14):
run, because it's not all it'scracked up to me. It is a
tough life, it is hard work. We are borderline crazy doing what we
do. But if you have thesesix essential traits, this is what you're
destined to do. You don't havea choice but to live this crazy,
painful, hard life. And soin doing a deep dive into the six
essential traits, I always like tojust do a little one two minute riff
(05:34):
here, and so if you'll allowedme to just kind of riff through all
six and as I share them,I urge your audience because I know right
now we are talking to thousands ofleaders in all different industries, all different
businesses, and some of you outthere you think you might be an entrepreneur.
This is your chance and just kindof scan your body, look back
at your history because you've you've beenexhibiting these traits your whole life. And
(05:58):
so here we go. Here theyare. First is visionary, and what
visionary means is that you have lotsof ideas. You're able to connect the
dots, you put things together.You have a sixth sense, you see
things that others don't see. You'rekind of able to see around corners,
and like I said, you putthings together. Passionate means that you have
(06:18):
passion for your product or service.And so this is about that thing that
you want to bring to the world. You have a strong belief that you
can bring it to the world.You want to fill a void. You
have a reality distortion field, asSteve Jobs was accused of, which means
you just absolutely believe you can dothis, where everyone else is telling you
it's just not realistic. Number threeproblem solver is where you are a creative
(06:44):
problem solver. Whenever there's a setback, you lean into setbacks. You don't
run from problems. You're an optimistby nature. You see solutions where the
rest of the world is seeing problems. Simply put, you love solving problems.
Number four driven. It means thatyou have this internal fire, this
sense of urgency. You're competitive,you want to succeed, yourself motivated,
(07:06):
You hustle. You love working hard. You tend to outwork everyone else in
your life. Number five is risktaker and what that means is that means
you don't freeze when it's time tomake a tough decision. You don't suffer
from analysis paralysis. You are rebelliousby nature. You're willing to fail.
You don't want to fail, butyou know that's all part of the process.
(07:29):
You're willing to fail. And youtend to beg for forgiveness instead of
ask for permission. And last numbersix is responsible, which means you take
full responsibility for the outcome. Youblame no one. There are two types
of people walking the earth. Whensomething bad happens to a human being,
half the world takes total responsibility forwhat just happened. The other half of
(07:50):
the world blames everyone else. Andso your default is to look into the
mirror when something goes wrong, asopposed to looking out at everyone else.
And so, like I said,you take full responsibility for the outcome.
And so there's the deep dive again. Please replay it and scan your body
and just make sure you check allthe boxes. But like I said,
there's also a free assessment on thewebsite Dashley dot com. Filled out twenty
(08:16):
five questions, and like I said, if you score ninety year higher,
odds are you have these six essentialtraits? Thank you so much? Do
you know I think that's so sohelpful. When I looked through those,
I realized, I think I haven'tdone the twenty five questions. But just
as I hear you speak, Ithink the one that I struggle with the
(08:37):
most is is being a risk taker. I realized that, well, I
go through stages in life where Ifeel like I'm not afraid of anything.
But then I go through stages whereI do get analysis prolysis, I find
it quite difficult to take the nextrisk. I find it quite difficult to
make the difficult decision. Could youjust just speak it that a little bit?
(09:00):
What happens? Are these characteristics almostjust set in stone, like,
oh, we would never we wouldnever have trouble with any of those.
Or are they sort of like malleable, like we we kind of grow,
we get bets at them, weadopt or or are we just or is
it is it just fixed? Weeither have them or we do. Yeah,
(09:22):
that's such a great question and agreat place to go for your audience,
because here's the reality. Like Isaid, we're talking to thousands of
leaders in lots of different industries andall sizes of companies, and a leader
you out there listening that never leavesthe corporate world to take the entrepreneurial leap.
(09:43):
This is typically the trait that youdon't have, and why you don't
and why you shouldn't. There's noshame in not taking an entrepreneurial leap.
So if you have this trait andyou're a risk taker, odds are you're
going to take your leap. Someday you're going to leave that job and
you're going to take your entrepreneurial leap. The rest stay there and you become
more of an entrepreneur. But thisassumes you have the other five traits.
(10:05):
So you are visionary and passionate anda problem solver and driven all of those
other things. So that makes youthis wonderful creative employee who's kind of an
entrepreneur. But again, if youhave the risk take your trade, you're
going to take the leap. Soin answering your question, you don't develop
a risk taker trade. You eitherhave it in you or you don't.
(10:26):
But all six trades you are eitherborn with them or you're not. It
is nature over nurture. And thisis my strong belief. And here's the
reality. Half the world agrees withme. Half the world doesn't. And
that's okay, and I hope I'mwrong. I am hoping you can learn
all of these traits, but youcan't. And I love using responsible as
an example. And here's one ofthe ways I know. If you look
(10:48):
at a family with four children,grew up in the same household, same
parents, same everything, why isit that two of them take responsibility and
two don't. And you can thinkabout everybody in your life or you're own
siblings, and you'll realize, holycow, how is that possible? Again,
it's nature over nurture. The lastlittle point I'll make, though,
to maybe take a little bit ofthe sting off, is there's something I
(11:09):
created and I write about in thebook called the entrepreneurial range. And if
so, if you picture an arc, and on this arc, the far
side, the right side of theark, are the words true entrepreneur.
The far left side of the ark, if you picture the words self employed,
anyone that has their own business issomewhere on the entrepreneurial range. On
(11:30):
that left side self employed, theseare people that are one person, shows
sole proprietor they have a side hustlefreelancer. On the far right side of
the range, the people that redlinethe entrepreneur range. These are the greatest
entrepreneurs of all time. Elon mussOprah Winfrey, Sarah Blakelee, Henry Ford,
Walt Disney, and so everybody thatowns their own businesses somewhere on the
(11:52):
range. What I'm talking about,the people with these six essential traits are
the people on the right side ofthe range that build organizations with people.
And so if you do score lowand you still want to have your own
business, there's nothing that stops youfrom being a one person show, having
a side hustle, being a freelancer. And so it's just very rare that
(12:13):
you'll kind of move to the rightside of that range and build an organization
with people. Again, if youdon't have that risk taker trade like you're
saying, or the other traits,and so there's still hope. And I
would like to use the example oflet's pretend you have handy skills okay,
and you're good at working around thehouse. You could become a handyman or
a handy woman, charge sixty bucksan hour, make six figures a year,
(12:35):
one hundred grand a year easily,and be busy for the rest of
your life if you're any good.And so that's total freedom. That's owning
your own business, that's being selfemployed. But I just don't consider that
an entrepreneur. And then the lastlittle point is if that handy person starts
that handy business and they have allsix essential trades, they will not be
(12:56):
able to stop themselves from building anorganization because going to realize, Holy cow,
if I can go find somebody paythem twenty five bucks an hour to
finish this job, I can gofind another job, start that job,
and all of a sudden they're goingto find themselves with a construction company with
twenty five people. Before you knowit. You can't stop yourself if you
have the six essential traders. Solong answer to your question about risk taker,
(13:20):
but I strongly believe you can't learnit. It's always been in you.
I have been broke three times inmy life, all due to taking
huge risks and uh and so it'sjust what we do. It's we we
we take a flyer every once ina while. I could I just ask
you just one more question to youknow this is this is real gold.
Just you've said you've been borked threetimes in your life, and how does
(13:45):
how does an entrepreneur what what isthe mindset of an entrepreneur maybe who has
the six traits in the midst ofa failure and coming out of a failure,
what what's them? What's how dothey process that failure? What are
they naturally inclined to think? BecauseI think maybe people out there have failed
or they've they've stepped out and maybethey've made they've made a mistake. It
(14:09):
didn't go as planned straight away,and they might think, maybe this isn't
for me. But what might bethe mindset of an entrepreneur in the midst
of that failure? And maybe peoplewho have failed, maybe this would encourage
them to try again, or maybethis might let them know, Okay,
you've tried it, Maybe maybe triedsomething else. Yeah, And this is
(14:31):
so great question because this is whythe six essential traits are so important,
and that is because you are goingto fail. You are going to get
your ass kicked more times than youcan count. And the only thing that
gets you back up when you gotknocked on your ass is these six essential
(14:52):
traits. And let's go to twoof them, passionate and risk taker.
The only reason a sane person getsback up and tries it again is because
they are undyingly passionate about their thingthat they want to bring to the world,
and they're a risk taker. Andanyone that doesn't have it the first
time they get knocked down, theyjust go back to getting a real job.
(15:13):
There is no shame in that.So when you talk about the process,
I believe we all have a littlebit different process for how we process
failure, you know, So allI can do is speak to my way
of doing it, okay, andso my way of doing it. You
know, the third time I wasbroke, was thirty two years old,
with a five and an eight yearold and a half a million dollar house.
(15:33):
I mean, it was brutal.I was. I wanted to be
a millionaire by the time I wasthirty. I achieved it by thirty one,
and I was broke by thirty two. So I know how to fail.
And then at that point, thankgod, I vowed to never do
that again, which I didn't,but I definitely had a pattern the previous
ten years. Anyway, my wayof doing it is it starts with I
(15:56):
get my ass kicked, I hitthe ground, I suck my thumb for
a few days. In other words, I absolutely sulk, and I get
depressed and I'm bummed, and Iyou know, so I don't pretend I
didn't just get my ass kicked.I don't pretend like I didn't just fail.
But then I start to analyze whathappened. I start to create a
(16:18):
new plan. You know. Oneof the things I teach in this book
is you, as an entrepreneur whostarts a business, you're going to fail
at some point. Plan A isn'tgoing to work, and you've got to
go to Plan B. And sothat's when I then start to analyze and
assess what happened. This is wherethe visionary trade kicks in. And then
I create Plan B, and Ipick myself up and I go back at
it. And sometimes you need tocome up with a Plan C and a
(16:38):
Plan D. Hopefully not Plan E. It hopefully doesn't get that far,
but sometimes it does. But that'skind of my process. I get knocked
down, I suck my thumb,I assess what happened, and then I
leaned back in and I try itagain. And so that's my process.
But we all have a different process. That's that's pretty and thank you so
(16:59):
much. I allow myself to bein misery for a day or two.
I allow myself to be depressed.You know, we also are manic depressive
sometimes, we entrepreneurs, you know, and so it's called the hypomanic edge.
It's amazing book that just talks aboutwe just got these incredible bursts of
creativity and energy and then these periodsthat we crash. Fortunately for me,
(17:19):
it's leveled out as I've learned andbeen aware of that. But when you
crash for whatever reason you're crashing,relish in the crash. Relish in the
failure, sit in it for awhile, basking it, learn from it,
and then pick yourself up. Butit can only last for a few
days. It can't last for monthsor years. You only get a day
(17:40):
or two, but more than anhour. Please the reason why it's funny
that you say that a day ortwo. I my most recent failure,
in my eyes was last year,and I was trying so many things to
grow this charity that I'm a partof, and I felt like I had
just failed in all of them overuntil the summer, and and I'm ashamed
(18:03):
to say I didn't take a fewdays. I took literally from August to
January to think, to soul tothink. But eventually I did stand back
up. Do you know, thankyou so much for your time today.
This has been super, super helpful. And if anyone's interested in learning more
about entrepreneurship in the entrepreneur Leap,if you should be, if you're an
entrepreneur, if you've got this bigidea, if you don't know if you
(18:23):
should go for it. Definitely goand get this book and do the do
the twenty five questions and see whathappens. You might be the four percent
of entrepreneurs. So thank you somuch. GINO, is anything else you'd
like to say? Well, justreal quick, I'll try and say it
in thirty seconds, but I'm gonnarun through two or three really fast things
because I want to help this audience. Number one, you already said it.
(18:45):
Go to e dash leap dot com. You will find a ton of
free resources and how to become anentrepreneur. If you are one, please
take that assessment. Also, thefirst thirty pages of the book are downloadable
in free, so you can geta little taste of the book before you
buy if you want to do that, but certainly buy the book if you
want to do a deep dive.Last two things are if you want to
become a collaborator and join us andteach this content to the world. We
(19:08):
have one hundred and twenty eight collaborators. I give you my content for free,
you get to teach you to theworld. Click on the become a
collaborator button, and last is clickon the one two three roadmap button if
you want to do a one hourexercise to take you through the assessment,
then my biz match to determine theperfect business for you, and then my
Vision Clarifier to create a vision.It's this wonderful one hour exercise to just
(19:33):
take you through the process of creatinga vision for an organization you want to
build, so you can just tryit on. If not for an hour,
just experience the process. That's theone two three roadmap ton of free
resources. Dive in and just enjoythem. Super super helpful. Thank you
so much, you know feld time. Thank you so much everybody for listening
today on London's Leadership Podcast. Seeyou next time. Thank you so much
(19:56):
for joining me today. I can'twait to see you next time. Remember
to leave a review, let meknow what you think and if you need
help implementing anything we've discussed, oryou just want to say hello, feel
free to email me at Fernando atLondon's Leadership Podcast dot com. Until next
time, Remember to live and leadwith love every day.
Whether you believe it or not,you are a leader in your everyday life.
Whether it's within your family, inyour work environment, or even online,
you can and will affect change inthose around you. Join me in
conversation with authors, professors and leaders, so together we can learn all things
regarding leadership and life. I'm yourhost, Ferananda Carrillo, and welcome back
(00:22):
to another episode of London's Leadership Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome to London's Leadership
Podcast. Today we're speaking with GinaWickman, who is an expert on entrepreneurship
and nowadays it feels as though everybodycan have a startup. Everybody's an entrepreneur.
But Gina's got some experience on thesubject and he's written a few books
(00:44):
on entrepreneurship, so he's an expertin this field. And we're going to
look at six essential traits of anentrepreneur. And I'm sorry to burst your
bubble, but most people don't haveall these six traits. So do you
know tell us why you're so passionateentrepreneurship and what it took you to write
this book on the sixth Straits ofan Entrepreneur of an entrepreneur I'd be thrilled
(01:07):
to and it's a real pleasure tobe here with you, Fernando. So
I'll start with kind of the bigpicture context. And so my whole life
has been entrepreneurship. I am oneand I have spent the last thirty years
helping entrepreneurs. So I just havethis knack for it. And so I
ended up taking over a family businessin my mid twenties, did a turnaround,
we successfully sold it, and that'swhen I got my first taste of
(01:30):
running a company, building a company, growing a company, and helping my
entrepreneur father, who's a visionary entrepreneur, really get in his sweet spot.
And I played what I call anintegrator role for him and turning that company
around and growing that company. Fromthere, I realized my calling and I
set out to help entrepreneurs and fastversion. Over the last twenty years,
(01:51):
I created a system called EOS,wrote a book called Traction, and then
five subsequent books helping entrepreneurs run greatbusinesses. Well, after thirty years of
doing that, I realized that Iwanted to take on a passion project to
go to the front end of theentrepreneurial journey and help anyone out there in
the world that wants to be anentrepreneur, help them discover if they are
(02:13):
or aren't, and then show themhow to build an amazing business. And
so I set out to do that. Three years ago launched a book called
Entrepreneurial Leap, which is my wayof teaching anyone who thinks they're an entrepreneur
how to become one. And soit's almost as if if we were sitting
and having coffee and somebody said,how do I become an entrepreneur? These
are all the words that would comeout of my mouth. And the way
(02:34):
that I write the book is inthree parts Confirm, Glimpse, and Path.
And what you're asking about here isthe first part of the book,
Confirm, and that's where it allhas to start. Because to waste one
ounce of energy telling you how tobuild a business, we have to first
make sure that you're cut out tobe an entrepreneur. Only four percent of
the world is, and so ifyou're not, it's okay. There are
(02:57):
a thousand other career options. Butif you are one of the four percent,
my goal is to find you,show you the life you were born
to live. And then again,like we're talking about show you how to
build a great business. And soin that confirmed step, the first step
is to decide do you have thesesix essential traits? They are visionary,
passionate, problem solver, driven,risk taker, and responsible. And so
(03:21):
what I do in the first thirdof that book is really go deep into
explaining what they are, help youunderstand them, help you really assess yourself.
But then ultimately I offer a freeassessment for you to take twenty five
questions. If you score ninety yearhigher, odds are you're probably an entrepreneur
in the making. And this entrepreneurialworld is for you. And if you
(03:42):
score less, then you just havea decision to make because there's a good
chance that you may not. Butat the end of the day, it's
your choice. Brilliant I was whenI read Entrepreneur Leap. I realized how
hard it was to be an entrepreneur. I've seen friends who are entrepreneurs and
who and who thrive at it.And even though it looks seductive, I
(04:06):
think from the outside it looks fun, it looks adventurous, it's also a
very difficult way of living that Icould see from from my experience and my
friend's experience and in the moments thatI've tried to step out to start new
ventures, I've realized what it takesand how difficult it can be. So
(04:28):
I think this confirmed step is supersuper important. So would you mind just
maybe we could go through the sixthessential traits and just give people an idea
of of what it might take forthem to understand, maybe to see if
maybe they they might have what ittakes, or maybe they can say,
actually, I don't have what ittakes. I would love to. And
you know, leading into this,I want to just piggyback on something you
(04:51):
said there because you made the ultimatepoint, which is right now, being
an entrepreneur is sexy. In otherwords, everybody wants to be an and
my passion, my desire is tohelp you understand because if you are not,
I'm trying to save to you tenyears of hell. So while the
news may be bad news to you, it's actually good news in the long
(05:14):
run, because it's not all it'scracked up to me. It is a
tough life, it is hard work. We are borderline crazy doing what we
do. But if you have thesesix essential traits, this is what you're
destined to do. You don't havea choice but to live this crazy,
painful, hard life. And soin doing a deep dive into the six
essential traits, I always like tojust do a little one two minute riff
(05:34):
here, and so if you'll allowedme to just kind of riff through all
six and as I share them,I urge your audience because I know right
now we are talking to thousands ofleaders in all different industries, all different
businesses, and some of you outthere you think you might be an entrepreneur.
This is your chance and just kindof scan your body, look back
at your history because you've you've beenexhibiting these traits your whole life. And
(05:58):
so here we go. Here theyare. First is visionary, and what
visionary means is that you have lotsof ideas. You're able to connect the
dots, you put things together.You have a sixth sense, you see
things that others don't see. You'rekind of able to see around corners,
and like I said, you putthings together. Passionate means that you have
(06:18):
passion for your product or service.And so this is about that thing that
you want to bring to the world. You have a strong belief that you
can bring it to the world.You want to fill a void. You
have a reality distortion field, asSteve Jobs was accused of, which means
you just absolutely believe you can dothis, where everyone else is telling you
it's just not realistic. Number threeproblem solver is where you are a creative
(06:44):
problem solver. Whenever there's a setback, you lean into setbacks. You don't
run from problems. You're an optimistby nature. You see solutions where the
rest of the world is seeing problems. Simply put, you love solving problems.
Number four driven. It means thatyou have this internal fire, this
sense of urgency. You're competitive,you want to succeed, yourself motivated,
(07:06):
You hustle. You love working hard. You tend to outwork everyone else in
your life. Number five is risktaker and what that means is that means
you don't freeze when it's time tomake a tough decision. You don't suffer
from analysis paralysis. You are rebelliousby nature. You're willing to fail.
You don't want to fail, butyou know that's all part of the process.
(07:29):
You're willing to fail. And youtend to beg for forgiveness instead of
ask for permission. And last numbersix is responsible, which means you take
full responsibility for the outcome. Youblame no one. There are two types
of people walking the earth. Whensomething bad happens to a human being,
half the world takes total responsibility forwhat just happened. The other half of
(07:50):
the world blames everyone else. Andso your default is to look into the
mirror when something goes wrong, asopposed to looking out at everyone else.
And so, like I said,you take full responsibility for the outcome.
And so there's the deep dive again. Please replay it and scan your body
and just make sure you check allthe boxes. But like I said,
there's also a free assessment on thewebsite Dashley dot com. Filled out twenty
(08:16):
five questions, and like I said, if you score ninety year higher,
odds are you have these six essentialtraits? Thank you so much? Do
you know I think that's so sohelpful. When I looked through those,
I realized, I think I haven'tdone the twenty five questions. But just
as I hear you speak, Ithink the one that I struggle with the
(08:37):
most is is being a risk taker. I realized that, well, I
go through stages in life where Ifeel like I'm not afraid of anything.
But then I go through stages whereI do get analysis prolysis, I find
it quite difficult to take the nextrisk. I find it quite difficult to
make the difficult decision. Could youjust just speak it that a little bit?
(09:00):
What happens? Are these characteristics almostjust set in stone, like,
oh, we would never we wouldnever have trouble with any of those.
Or are they sort of like malleable, like we we kind of grow,
we get bets at them, weadopt or or are we just or is
it is it just fixed? Weeither have them or we do. Yeah,
(09:22):
that's such a great question and agreat place to go for your audience,
because here's the reality. Like Isaid, we're talking to thousands of
leaders in lots of different industries andall sizes of companies, and a leader
you out there listening that never leavesthe corporate world to take the entrepreneurial leap.
(09:43):
This is typically the trait that youdon't have, and why you don't
and why you shouldn't. There's noshame in not taking an entrepreneurial leap.
So if you have this trait andyou're a risk taker, odds are you're
going to take your leap. Someday you're going to leave that job and
you're going to take your entrepreneurial leap. The rest stay there and you become
more of an entrepreneur. But thisassumes you have the other five traits.
(10:05):
So you are visionary and passionate anda problem solver and driven all of those
other things. So that makes youthis wonderful creative employee who's kind of an
entrepreneur. But again, if youhave the risk take your trade, you're
going to take the leap. Soin answering your question, you don't develop
a risk taker trade. You eitherhave it in you or you don't.
(10:26):
But all six trades you are eitherborn with them or you're not. It
is nature over nurture. And thisis my strong belief. And here's the
reality. Half the world agrees withme. Half the world doesn't. And
that's okay, and I hope I'mwrong. I am hoping you can learn
all of these traits, but youcan't. And I love using responsible as
an example. And here's one ofthe ways I know. If you look
(10:48):
at a family with four children,grew up in the same household, same
parents, same everything, why isit that two of them take responsibility and
two don't. And you can thinkabout everybody in your life or you're own
siblings, and you'll realize, holycow, how is that possible? Again,
it's nature over nurture. The lastlittle point I'll make, though,
to maybe take a little bit ofthe sting off, is there's something I
(11:09):
created and I write about in thebook called the entrepreneurial range. And if
so, if you picture an arc, and on this arc, the far
side, the right side of theark, are the words true entrepreneur.
The far left side of the ark, if you picture the words self employed,
anyone that has their own business issomewhere on the entrepreneurial range. On
(11:30):
that left side self employed, theseare people that are one person, shows
sole proprietor they have a side hustlefreelancer. On the far right side of
the range, the people that redlinethe entrepreneur range. These are the greatest
entrepreneurs of all time. Elon mussOprah Winfrey, Sarah Blakelee, Henry Ford,
Walt Disney, and so everybody thatowns their own businesses somewhere on the
(11:52):
range. What I'm talking about,the people with these six essential traits are
the people on the right side ofthe range that build organizations with people.
And so if you do score lowand you still want to have your own
business, there's nothing that stops youfrom being a one person show, having
a side hustle, being a freelancer. And so it's just very rare that
(12:13):
you'll kind of move to the rightside of that range and build an organization
with people. Again, if youdon't have that risk taker trade like you're
saying, or the other traits,and so there's still hope. And I
would like to use the example oflet's pretend you have handy skills okay,
and you're good at working around thehouse. You could become a handyman or
a handy woman, charge sixty bucksan hour, make six figures a year,
(12:35):
one hundred grand a year easily,and be busy for the rest of
your life if you're any good.And so that's total freedom. That's owning
your own business, that's being selfemployed. But I just don't consider that
an entrepreneur. And then the lastlittle point is if that handy person starts
that handy business and they have allsix essential trades, they will not be
(12:56):
able to stop themselves from building anorganization because going to realize, Holy cow,
if I can go find somebody paythem twenty five bucks an hour to
finish this job, I can gofind another job, start that job,
and all of a sudden they're goingto find themselves with a construction company with
twenty five people. Before you knowit. You can't stop yourself if you
have the six essential traders. Solong answer to your question about risk taker,
(13:20):
but I strongly believe you can't learnit. It's always been in you.
I have been broke three times inmy life, all due to taking
huge risks and uh and so it'sjust what we do. It's we we
we take a flyer every once ina while. I could I just ask
you just one more question to youknow this is this is real gold.
Just you've said you've been borked threetimes in your life, and how does
(13:45):
how does an entrepreneur what what isthe mindset of an entrepreneur maybe who has
the six traits in the midst ofa failure and coming out of a failure,
what what's them? What's how dothey process that failure? What are
they naturally inclined to think? BecauseI think maybe people out there have failed
or they've they've stepped out and maybethey've made they've made a mistake. It
(14:09):
didn't go as planned straight away,and they might think, maybe this isn't
for me. But what might bethe mindset of an entrepreneur in the midst
of that failure? And maybe peoplewho have failed, maybe this would encourage
them to try again, or maybethis might let them know, Okay,
you've tried it, Maybe maybe triedsomething else. Yeah, And this is
(14:31):
so great question because this is whythe six essential traits are so important,
and that is because you are goingto fail. You are going to get
your ass kicked more times than youcan count. And the only thing that
gets you back up when you gotknocked on your ass is these six essential
(14:52):
traits. And let's go to twoof them, passionate and risk taker.
The only reason a sane person getsback up and tries it again is because
they are undyingly passionate about their thingthat they want to bring to the world,
and they're a risk taker. Andanyone that doesn't have it the first
time they get knocked down, theyjust go back to getting a real job.
(15:13):
There is no shame in that.So when you talk about the process,
I believe we all have a littlebit different process for how we process
failure, you know, So allI can do is speak to my way
of doing it, okay, andso my way of doing it. You
know, the third time I wasbroke, was thirty two years old,
with a five and an eight yearold and a half a million dollar house.
(15:33):
I mean, it was brutal.I was. I wanted to be
a millionaire by the time I wasthirty. I achieved it by thirty one,
and I was broke by thirty two. So I know how to fail.
And then at that point, thankgod, I vowed to never do
that again, which I didn't,but I definitely had a pattern the previous
ten years. Anyway, my wayof doing it is it starts with I
(15:56):
get my ass kicked, I hitthe ground, I suck my thumb for
a few days. In other words, I absolutely sulk, and I get
depressed and I'm bummed, and Iyou know, so I don't pretend I
didn't just get my ass kicked.I don't pretend like I didn't just fail.
But then I start to analyze whathappened. I start to create a
(16:18):
new plan. You know. Oneof the things I teach in this book
is you, as an entrepreneur whostarts a business, you're going to fail
at some point. Plan A isn'tgoing to work, and you've got to
go to Plan B. And sothat's when I then start to analyze and
assess what happened. This is wherethe visionary trade kicks in. And then
I create Plan B, and Ipick myself up and I go back at
it. And sometimes you need tocome up with a Plan C and a
(16:38):
Plan D. Hopefully not Plan E. It hopefully doesn't get that far,
but sometimes it does. But that'skind of my process. I get knocked
down, I suck my thumb,I assess what happened, and then I
leaned back in and I try itagain. And so that's my process.
But we all have a different process. That's that's pretty and thank you so
(16:59):
much. I allow myself to bein misery for a day or two.
I allow myself to be depressed.You know, we also are manic depressive
sometimes, we entrepreneurs, you know, and so it's called the hypomanic edge.
It's amazing book that just talks aboutwe just got these incredible bursts of
creativity and energy and then these periodsthat we crash. Fortunately for me,
(17:19):
it's leveled out as I've learned andbeen aware of that. But when you
crash for whatever reason you're crashing,relish in the crash. Relish in the
failure, sit in it for awhile, basking it, learn from it,
and then pick yourself up. Butit can only last for a few
days. It can't last for monthsor years. You only get a day
(17:40):
or two, but more than anhour. Please the reason why it's funny
that you say that a day ortwo. I my most recent failure,
in my eyes was last year,and I was trying so many things to
grow this charity that I'm a partof, and I felt like I had
just failed in all of them overuntil the summer, and and I'm ashamed
(18:03):
to say I didn't take a fewdays. I took literally from August to
January to think, to soul tothink. But eventually I did stand back
up. Do you know, thankyou so much for your time today.
This has been super, super helpful. And if anyone's interested in learning more
about entrepreneurship in the entrepreneur Leap,if you should be, if you're an
entrepreneur, if you've got this bigidea, if you don't know if you
(18:23):
should go for it. Definitely goand get this book and do the do
the twenty five questions and see whathappens. You might be the four percent
of entrepreneurs. So thank you somuch. GINO, is anything else you'd
like to say? Well, justreal quick, I'll try and say it
in thirty seconds, but I'm gonnarun through two or three really fast things
because I want to help this audience. Number one, you already said it.
(18:45):
Go to e dash leap dot com. You will find a ton of
free resources and how to become anentrepreneur. If you are one, please
take that assessment. Also, thefirst thirty pages of the book are downloadable
in free, so you can geta little taste of the book before you
buy if you want to do that, but certainly buy the book if you
want to do a deep dive.Last two things are if you want to
become a collaborator and join us andteach this content to the world. We
(19:08):
have one hundred and twenty eight collaborators. I give you my content for free,
you get to teach you to theworld. Click on the become a
collaborator button, and last is clickon the one two three roadmap button if
you want to do a one hourexercise to take you through the assessment,
then my biz match to determine theperfect business for you, and then my
Vision Clarifier to create a vision.It's this wonderful one hour exercise to just
(19:33):
take you through the process of creatinga vision for an organization you want to
build, so you can just tryit on. If not for an hour,
just experience the process. That's theone two three roadmap ton of free
resources. Dive in and just enjoythem. Super super helpful. Thank you
so much, you know feld time. Thank you so much everybody for listening
today on London's Leadership Podcast. Seeyou next time. Thank you so much
(19:56):
for joining me today. I can'twait to see you next time. Remember
to leave a review, let meknow what you think and if you need
help implementing anything we've discussed, oryou just want to say hello, feel
free to email me at Fernando atLondon's Leadership Podcast dot com. Until next
time, Remember to live and leadwith love every day.
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