I was in Kiev, Ukraine a few months ago and did a workshop on “Personal Attributes of a Successful Entrepreneur”.
The nice thing about doing this type of workshop in another country is that a lot of the stories you tell and examples you use in your presentation are totally new and interesting (most people have never heard them before) so you feel really smart and cool.
In this case, I was thinking about how to convey the elements that make a good entrepreneur and I kept coming back to the Pyramid of Success by John Wooden.
I figured odds were good that people in Ukraine probably wouldn’t have heard too much about John Wooden before and I was right!
And for those of you who don’t know who John Wooden is…he was the UCLA basketball coach in the 60s who led them to 10 national titles.
He is considered to be one of the best sports coaches of all time and created the Pyramid of Success.
All jokes aside, the more I prepared for this workshop, the greater my awe for John Wooden having such a universal insight over 50 years ago that expanded far beyond the scope of sports.
If you look at his Pyramid of Success closely, you will see that there are a lot of attributes at the base of the pyramid before you get to “skill”.
I decided to take a shot at creating my own Pyramid of Success for an entrepreneur based on my own observations in the startup world (and the amount of coffee I drank that day).
Here is what I came up with (excuse the terrible font…my wife Clare told me that the design was embarrassing).
I’ve always found that the hardest parts of being a founder are the intangible attributes at the base of this pyramid.
There are times when things get very challenging and you probably feel like the biggest loser in the world (not only of today but of all time).
When no one will return your calls and you feel like you are running into a wall.
In those instances, it takes a surplus of grit, persistence and a sense of “we are in this together” to continue forward.
Without that, nothing else would really matter.
I’ve also seen that a lot of founders have a habit of emulating other successful founders (see Elizabeth Holmes pretending to be Steve Jobs…that’s a little extreme but you know what I mean).
This is wrong. I have fallen victim to this in the past and tried to act a lot more “corporate” than is natural for me.
It always makes me feel uncomfortable and it never works out.
It took me a really long time to understand that it’s best to always be yourself.
You imprint your own personality on your company and that is probably what people believe in (you just may not realize that).
The elements of “empathy” and “adaptability” have become an increasing area of focus with all the new trends around “design thinking” and “customer-centric development”.
That’s a good thing. If you can’t put yourself in your customers’ shoes and adjust to their needs, you probably will have a hard time.
I won’t write too much more about the specific elements of my attempt to co-opt John Wooden’s insights.
This post is a bit lighter on concrete information than usual, but sometimes I think we all need a reminder that as a founder “no you are not the biggest loser on earth” and the intangible attributes you bring to your company are just as important as the tangible skills.
I’ll leave you with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ldAQ6Rh5ZI