10 Traits of an Effective Entrepreneur

All right, so let's talk about what it truly means to become a successful entrepreneur. So to me, an entrepreneur is someone that is fighting for something. And what I mean by that is that they are actually exchanging things of value. So if you are out there, you're hustling, you're selling bubble gum on the streets and you're, you're buying it for 25 cents, you're selling it for 50 cents. That to me is entrepreneurial because you are trading value. You're, you're buying value from somewhere else and you're exchanging it for a higher value. So an entrepreneur is actually doing it. 'Cause even in my early days when I was doing it, man, it was a tough slog. Like, I bought my company and it was a failing company and I did whatever it took. I was figuring out all these things. I was running my head into a wall. Even at that moment when things weren't succeeding, was I entrepreneurial? I would say I was because I was at least fighting for it and I was fighting to make something happen. And slowly the wheels started turning. And an entrepreneur, like, if I think about the traits, they have grit. They're gonna power through it, right? They can build teams. They can also delegate things out too. And they're starting to build systems on top of each other. They're basically able to level up over and over and over, and that's how the business gets bigger and bigger. Now, there are different types of entrepreneurs. We're talking about lifestyle entrepreneurs, we're talking about software. There's all these different ones, right? It just depends on what you wanna become, but as long as you're out there, you're doing things, you're trying, you're exchanging value with other people, there's no way you're not an entrepreneur. All right, so we're gonna explore what it actually means to be an entrepreneur. Check out these next clips. If you shoot for the stars, it's okay, you land on the moon. So let's say you go for $2 million, but you haven't even made your first $500,000 yet. Well, you're going to know why you weren't able to get there in the first place. If at the end of the year you aren't able to digest or kind of dissect what went wrong and what steps you need to do to fix that, well, that's why you need to set goals in the first place because you're going to set goals, then you're just going to hit the new year and say, oh yeah, we hit this number. Onto the next year. You gotta have numbers to aim for. It holds you accountable and also holds— if you have people on your team as well, it holds your team accountable too. So you can ask important but uncomfortable questions. It's the uncomfortable stuff that makes companies grow.

The gift that I've been given is insane curiosity. So I wanted to know how to do this other thing. Optionality is key. Recognizing where potential comes, and that requires a really sober analysis of where opportunity is. If you think an idea is going to be a billion-dollar idea, and you want to dump everything into it, more power to you. But is it going to derive revenue? I'm very much a cash-focused guy. Is it going to— is it going to be able to pay the bills? Is it going to be able to sustain itself? That's, for me, that's the inflection point. If the new idea can meet basic business stuff and you've got an MVP out, this is why the beauty of the MVP is so great, that we've got this idea that just get a product out there to see if people want.

Right.

Because the second you've hit that, The rest is grinding. You're— it's less luck once you've got the point that people are interested in your product.

Failing. Failing a ton. Everybody fails a lot. Everybody's had their failures, right? Elon Musk has had his failures in the past. He had a video gaming company that didn't work out, right? Everybody has had their share of failures. As a matter of fact, his company SpaceX, which uses reusable rockets that land back on Earth, it failed. It almost failed to the point where it had to shut down. Right? But the last rocket ended up working for him.

It's not magic, it's just math. If you wanna make $1 million, that number can seem so large that it's like, that's impossible, right? I need to be some genius to do it. Actually, no. Here's the math behind it. It's not magic, it's just math. And if you take something like a $50 product times 3 sales a day times 5 years, that's $270,000. You can also change those inputs. You can do a $50 product or a $100 product. You can do 3 sales a day or 1 sale a day. You can play with it. That's up to you. You're the CEO of your business.

In business, you need systems.

Number 1, choose a very clear objective that's measurable in your business, right?

Like, I wanna make this much money, I wanna help this many customers, I wanna do this much revenue, whatever it is, or this many email subscribers, or this many views, or I wanna like hire this many people, whatever it is, I don't care. And then you just have to like have some plan on how you're gonna get there.

Hard work all the time, 7 days a week. But what I do try to do is focus really on my list and my priorities, and I'm getting better and better. I always make sure before I go to bed that I've set up my day for the next day so I know what I'm locked into for meetings and for tasks. I try and get up really early. It gives me a couple of hours head start ahead of everybody else that I work with and certainly a lot of our partners. And I can knock off so many of the emails and tasks and admin and follow-up that needs to get done, and it's like gone out of the day. The end of day, I mean, I do always work a little bit later than everybody else because what that allows me to do is at the end of the day do the same routine that I have in the morning, and that's shut down things properly, get myself organized, refocus on what the priorities are, remind myself that shiny objects cannot get in the path every day that I've got to hit a couple of the big goals.

Mm-hmm.

Hitting big goals takes time.

Yeah. Key takeaway number 5. I mean, every single successful person that I know, not just entrepreneurs, has good habits. And I could just tell who's successful and who isn't just by looking at their habits. Think about the decisions that you make, right?

And so this—

I was thinking about a friend recently and there's just a series of decisions that have led to kind of where he is right now. And I'm like, man, like, you know, every single decision you make whether it's who you go work for, like, because who you go work for might, might cause you to go move somewhere, right? Um, and who you decide to marry, that's a big decision as well. And, you know, all these little decisions, uh, or, or, you know, if you decide to start multiple businesses at the same time, like at the time it seems like an innocent little decision, but what happens is you start to make all these decisions and it's like, you know, you wake up in the morning, you decide, oh, you know, You are too lazy to go work out. You're too lazy to take care of your body. You eat unhealthy, right? Like, all these little decisions you make are compounding, right? Like, people talk about compounding interest all the time. It happens with your life too. So you wanna have good habits and you wanna be able to establish, you wanna be able to establish the right habits. That way you can have good results at the end of the day. Couple things I do that help me prime the day before, and some of this stuff is like woo-woo, but it does actually help. The way to get a best start to your next day is actually planning the day before. So always the night before, I'm always coming up with my number one. The number one is usually my number one thing that I want to do as long as I get that one thing done. So for example, today's like shooting a ton of videos, like walking around downtown LA. That is my number one. Like if I get that done, I'm happy. It's not about having a bunch of tasks, having a laundry list of things to do. Um, some people call them STDs, stuff to do. You can also call it, you can replace the S. You don't want to overwhelm yourself that way. You want to make sure that you're focused and doing the one thing that matters.

And I recommend reading that book, The One Thing by Gary When you put your back up against the wall, success— for me, success was the only, the only option. Failing was not. And when success is the only option and you have to make it work, it's amazing how your brain and your eyes, they open up and they see opportunities. They see things that you wouldn't normally see when you have that cushy job.

Yep.

When you have to make it work. And oh, here's the other thing. It always takes 2 to 3 times longer than you think it's going to take to actually start generating revenue.

I would say like my number one rule for success, and plug, I just did a video on this, is progress over perfection. It's about finding ways that you can get stuff done, get it launched, get it out there, and then gradually improve it over time rather than having this perfect business model or this perfect YouTube channel or whatever it may be.

Done is better than perfect, right?

Exactly.

Hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what you think, and we will see you tomorrow. And don't forget to watch the next tip.