From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I saw something in the world that was done poorly and thought it could be done better. The difference between a miserable, crank grump and an entrepreneur? Both are unhappy- but the entrepreneur says they can make it better… that they can fix it… and they follow the spark.
It was not wealth or fame that these people wanted… These individuals had, in their own minds, observed a particular customer need that wasn't being met. They were wired in such a way, that this need seemed obvious to them. Whether it led to a million or a billion? That was secondary.
I scaled the business from just me, to 10,000 people some 20 years later. Scaling and keeping control of that business was practically impossible- I failed many times, but managed to succeed overall through sheer determination, hard-work and having very, very good people.
Too often I feel there is also a search for 'the next' Steve Jobs or Joanna Shields. These are extraordinary people and yet I believe we should not treat entrepreneurialism as requiring a narrow checklist of certain characteristics.
Where decent jobs are scarce, women can achieve financial independence by becoming job creators rather than job seekers – providing, of course, that they have the right support and opportunities to do so.
Read a lot. Never accept current standards. Always improve yourself. And remember, you always meet twice in life.
I invested most of our money, not in marketing, but in service. That was crucial to our early growth.
In the same way that business entrepreneurship has transformed industry since the early 1970's, social entrepreneurship can transform the social sector by having people who are willing to take risks and innovate to help address social issues.
You become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. It may be that you see a need in a market and decide to act on it. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones.... Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.
I would love to say that we knew all the answers in advance, but the truth is that we discovered our product and opportunity, rather than planning for it.
The people who were there at the beginning may not be the people who are scalable... As a founder, one of the hardest things you ever may need to do is take someone into your office who was there from the beginning... but who you now recognise doesn't have the skills for the next chapter of the business' journey.
We characterise our ideal 'Substacker' in affectionate terms – we call them outsider nerds – they're outsiders insofar as they don't fit comfortably in the dominant media structure for whatever reason – perhaps they feel they can do better work outside of it.