Entrepreneurship masterclass: 9 best lessons (strategy, leadership, mindset)

if you're just tuning in welcome and if you've been here before welcome back we are here today for a Powerhouse session that distills the best lessons from season 1 of candada conversations on the founders Edition this is more than just a recap consider this your personal master class in entrepreneurship we'll kick things off with advice on strategy and operations and then we'll shift gears into mindset first up we got maximal president of portero breaking down the art of decision making from gamechanging strategic moves to the nitt choices as a leader adaptability is key and not all decisions can be made with the same framework so let's dive into Matt's Playbook there needs to be some rigor behind the decision I don't want to use my gut feeling just on this is the right way to go and this is what we're going and so to me usually that will involve a combination of analysis um speaking with all levels within the organization uh so those are the bigger decisions I think on the smaller decisions being decisive is more important you don't want to be the bottleneck at least that's what I feel you don't want to be the bottleneck in terms of somebody's day-to-day decisions and so uh it's okay to make a mistake and take small to medium siiz risks on those ones being a little bit quicker we'll get 50 to 75% of the way there in terms of our research a little bit of analysis and then we'll make the decision we don't have to get 100% of the way there because if we're wrong we can always go back and adjust it next we have Brett changen co-founder and CEO of Canadian Media Company the peak I after amassing over 100,000 readers to the newsletter and reaching over 3 million monthly on social media Brett sold the peak for $5 million this past summer but how did he identify and grow his audience to get to that point let's take a look the first thousand readers was really what I like to call hand toand combat that was us posting on our own social channels that was reaching out to our friends and family and getting them to subscribe but really the next iteration upon that was reaching out to them and getting them to share and once they would share especially on LinkedIn is where we saw that more rapid growth come once we got to a thousand users we kind of validated the product we saw that people would wanted to subscribe to it and then we continue reading it so we had confidence that we could keep going with the business and would you say LinkedIn was your primary growth driver originally yeah for the first first 5,000 I think a lot of LinkedIn uh and Linkedin was the highest quality growth channel for us that's where we were getting the best subscribers the ones who were sticking with us and reading it consistently transitioning from who to what founder of wavelengths Emily Young discusses the perk of a flexible brand identity as you scan liked having that name that wasn't related to a specific craft because I was changing and evolving constantly and while I've been in the crochet world for five six years now um who knows right and I don't want to have a name that is so specific to a specific Crow I think this is such a great Insight when you think about creating a brand we often hear things like have a specific name so customers know exactly what your value proposition is the challenge with that though is what if things changed what if you end up doing more than just a thing you initially said you would do like imagine if Amazon was called Washington's best bookstore keep that in mind when choosing your company name next we have nicolina founder and owner of the rig talking about the power of community and Partnerships that just make sense it's just a matter of like having the like stay there to be on your own for a long time that's why we really want to put some yoga upstairs too like add another element to the space that's another like big bonus for the break in hurg is like very early on WE partnered with soul speak yoga we have a joint membership we have a lot of the same people going back and forth the coaches go to both gyms what can you take away from that find and collaborate with partners that actually compl compliment their business a big part of many startup Journeys is Raising Capital Lisa CEO and co-founder of chi raised her first round in under four months in a seemingly impossible fundraising climate what are her tips we say It's a combination of a couple things creating competitive pressure and being very disciplined with approaching a lot of people at the same time it's very much an Al game the same with dating the same with a lot of things it's very much the more people you're going to talk to the more likelihood you're going to be able to get term sheets on and the other thing is the more people you talk to around the same time and the more competitive pressure you create I mean we learned that in Investment Banking right the better the results usually are because if you nobody wants wants to have a cold deal nobody wants to invest in a startup that's been trying to raise money for the nine months right it's becoming harder and harder generally you want to be like the hot deal on the desk that people are committing that every single week you have an update oh now I'm 60% committed now I'm 70% committed now I have a leave that's the kind of deal that you want to be which brings me actually to I guess another point I do think a lot of people view raising money as a Cornerstone of like building a successful business which I completed disagree with I think at the stage as especially that we raised our original round of capital like that like us being able to raise is maybe a good indication of just like a potential in the space in the market but also just me being a good salesperson like realistically raising money is not building a successful business and there's a ton of PE businesses that have raised millions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars that we've seen fail very shortly after especially in like that Tech ecosystem everyone is kind of like so focused on raising money where I think you should be focused on yeah how am I going to get my initial customers how am I going to get to revenue this is a reality check raising money isn't the Milestone building a real business with genuine customers and growth is wise words from Lisa we can all take to heart now being successful at building and running a company doesn't come down to just strategy and tactics it's also about perspective and mindset Rob Frasier CEO and founder of outway socks reveals the gamechanging perspective that allowed him to take his business to the next level I think like I've evolved with the business I think like I've made a very conscious effort to get out of my own way I think like and that's been just by surrounding myself with people that have done the thing like I said like and asking like what are the common mistakes what are the Paw Halles cuz in the early days the0 to one like you have to do all the work like you've got to be in the weeds you've got to be like I was there was a point where I was making the socks I couldn't afford to hold inventory so like we blanks and I bought all the Machinery to actually apply the designs so I would start the day making socks and then answering customer service emails packing the socks I was doing it all like all and for years then it gets to a point where like you need to hire people and you need to get out of the way and that's like I think a lot of uh where a lot of Founders will fault like falter is like can they get out of their own way can they trust other people to do the work which is the only way you're going to scale I think like removing the ego which was like I think this is probably the hardest part for me me was like in my past career of cycling it's on me I am the guy I've got to win the race there's no one else that's going to ride the race for me um so like that served me well in the early days um but then it's like oh like actual success in business is like letting other people run the RO once you get to a certain scale or reach a certain level of audience people are going to listen to what you have to say I talked to former team candada and World Tour snowboarder Natalie alport on the importance of embracing vulnerability on a Global stage and so that once I got to a place where I just felt I was I guess more confident in being vulnerable and understood like what happened and what like when you're living in it sometimes you don't even know what's happening and then once I hit the mental health knowledge and awareness I was like okay this is something I I want to talk about because if I saw like me talking about it this could have really helped and so yeah this has been really important for me to normalize it and see like how many other people have gone through it and then same thing with like things I dealt with was like body image like I used to I I'm first starting CrossFit I was like oh my God I need to eat this a certain way because I see everyone on Instagram is doing that I need to train or look the certain way cuz I see all the other athletes are doing that and then you know I learned the hard way where I like had no energy was burnt out was getting sick was like not performing well I was like wow something needs to to change here and then I learned I was like wow like why was I following I'm thinking I can Dev look like this and do this so I've seen like the the harmful effects of social media and I've seen like when people put out this like unrealistic standard I never want to do that on the topic of Role Models one of my favorite moments of all these interviews so far is this next one with rivalry CEO Steven SS have you ever thought about the role of books in an entrepreneurs Journey outside of the Frameworks and advice Stephen shares his perspective on the importance of books in contextualizing our real life experiences I don't think I've heard someone approached their relationship to books in this way before and it makes a lot of sense let's check it out that's been the thing that's actually help me most of my entrepreneurial Journey more than any business book or anything I've read is being able to like contextualize to different like moments in history that have like resonated with me and be able to say okay like you know I'm dealing with like some really difficult problem with my gambling business and some like cultural issue but yeah I can think back to like some person in like an infinitely more challenging uh circumstances situation and then I can pretty quickly say Okay so soad the ability to like compartmentalize which you also will find if you read in history is like that is usually a thing that also is even greater than like discipline and great routine that's not a sign a pick up a book I don't know what is closing on a powerful note Rachel and Iana of Monday girl share what it truly means to be an entrepreneur if you're building a business or even thinking about it this one's for you being able to figure anything out and I think like we've never had all the answers we didn't have you know in the early days we didn't necessarily have like perfect mentors giving us advice on how to do everything and it was very much like okay I have no idea how to build a website no idea how to like throw an event we don't have a like know event background but let's just figure it out like let's um be resourceful I feel like that's one thing that we do share that's pretty entrepreneurial is like a very like yes mentality and yeah like I don't know CU that's is the think that we could throw a tennis or 11 star event with like zero event planing back but we're like we're going to do it it's going to be amazing but I think a little bit that well naiveness or it's excitement we're both really good at and always so we just keep getting better let me know in the comments your favorite moments from these interviews and hey don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe for more useful and relatable entrepreneur content until next time bye for now

Channel: The Founder's Edition

Views: 247

Keywords: founder, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, interview, leadership, leader, growth, strategy, venture capital, startup, startup story, story, challenge, conversation, podcast, startup podcast, entrepreneur podcast, real talk, business, business tip, business tips, startup tips, learning, education

Id: AomkHRukxag

Length: 10min 40sec (640 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023