Know Yourself – Unlocking Entrepreneurial Potential

Speaker 0: what advice would you give entrepreneurs who are looking to disrupt traditional industries or creative innovative solutions? that's a good question. yeah. i mean, always be curious. i think that's that's always, you know, always be curious and open minded. i think that is that is at the heart of recognizing opportunity. and so if you can always stay curious, always ask questions, and and be open to opportunities. so when opportunities come, really, like, you know, explore them and spend the time on them, and be, and be positive and, overly optimistic because you have to be that way and not see all the big things that are that in front of you to make things happen. and just, like, break it down, chunk it down, do, like, do one step at a time. but one of the things i do say for, you know, young entrepreneurs that, that approach me and talk about my journey as being an entrepreneur, i say and i wish i had done this because they'll say what i say, but not what i did. but what i do now is spend time to really get to know yourself and understand where you create the most value, your personality type. like, i like the myers briggs. i just think it is absolutely for me and for a number of people that i've introduced to, to it, it has been such an amazing tool for people to better understand themselves. because i, you know, i did the test. i've done it many times. i always get the same thing, enfp. and there's so much literature on that personality type to say, like, you are like this, and this is what you're good at, and this is what you're not good at. where, you know, this is where you find challenges. this is where you thrive in these sort of areas. and if you spend some time to really understand what that is your superpower, what makes you special based on what's easy and what comes easy to you, don't try like, everything's gonna be hard. don't you don't have to start with it being hard. you know? it's gonna come up it's gonna get hard later anyway. right? but start with being doing something that that comes easy to you that is very much, very much in line with your personality. and i'll give you an example. when i got out of university in nineteen ninety six, there was no jobs. we were in the middle of a recession, and and i i got offered a sales job, with chubb and with chubb security. and i thought i didn't go to university and rack up fifty thousand dollars with the student debt so that i could go and sell security systems. so i decided i was gonna go back to school and become an accountant. if i had just done that and i lived through a year of pain, like, severe pain. it was the worst job i've ever had in my entire life. and it's not because it was bad people. it was because i was not suited to that job. i'm good at math, but i am terrible at sitting down and just doing, you know, very detail oriented work for a very long period of time with their social interaction. and if i had understood that about myself, i never would have went down that path. i i would've i instead of just seeing the benefits of being a ca and maybe a cfo someday and all those things that i had the sight lines to at that point or that i was i was looking for, i would have recognized that that's not what i should have done. and, you know, afterwards, people are telling me, it's like, i can't believe you even went in that. like, why would you have done that? and so i just didn't know myself well enough. i really just didn't. and i didn't value the the the uniqueness of my personality and then you this is other people's personality. so you can usually, what you see is you see that i'm not good at this, and i'm not good at that. and you're like, i wanna get better at this, and i wanna get better at that. and if you recognize that this is just not in your dna, you can do it. you can get away with it for a while, you know, but that's not gonna come easy to you. and if you are gonna try and compete with someone else that comes easy to you, they're gonna eat your lunch all day long. right? so figure out what you're good at and then bring that. like, so look for those opportunities, but bring your superpower. like, yeah, me, i have, like, i have shortcomings, like, as long as my arm, but i can tell you that i understand what they are. i like, i'm like, i'm always learning. i don't understand everything, but i so much better now understand than i did when i was in my twenties where i bring value and where i don't. and i try to be very mindful of my communication with other people because i think differently in a lot of ways, and and i know that that can be also frustrating for other people. and and so so that helps me to be a better communicator. it helps me to be a better leader. it helps me to be a, a better partner. and, like, it just helps me to perform better and offer more of myself to my team because i'm in the place in the organization where i create the most amount of value. so if you know that upfront and then you see the opportunity and you say i'm gonna do this thing, you should look at what that superpower is, and and if you're not good at it, hire it. like, figure out a way. give them equity. you know, like like, if you can't afford it, like, figure out a way to bring in someone that compliments your personality that has the has different skill sets so that you can do what you do really well, and that is very much a recipe for success.