163: How to Make the Entrepreneurial Leap with Gino Wickman

Show Notes

Gino took his entrepreneurial leap at 21 years old.  At 25 he took over the family business and brought it out of debt and got it growing again.  He ran it for 7 years and then successfully sold it.  Through the experience, he got involved in the young entrepreneur’s organization or EO.  It was there that he had his “light-bulb moment.”  He felt that his calling was to help these other entrepreneurs.  Over 5 years, he developed the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS) and over 15 years, he built it up to thousands of companies as clients around the world.  He then sold a majority stake in EOS in 2018 and started his newest project, Entrepreneurial LEAP.

Entrepreneurial LEAP is all about helping entrepreneur’s in the making get a huge jump-start on making the entrepreneurial leap.

Of everything you’ve learned, taught, and done in your career, what is the single most important lesson you’ve learned?

The ones that really know their passion and set out to pursue that passion succeed.

The best lesson is to discover, pursue, and stay focused on your passion.

Define an entrepreneur…

An entrepreneur is someone who sees a need or opportunity and then takes a risk to start a business to fulfill that need or opportunity by either creating something or improving upon something that already exists.

It’s an entrepreneur in the making.

It’s anyone that exhibits the traits defined as an entrepreneur that has not yet made the leap.

Your book and methodology Entrepreneurial LEAP is broken into 3 parts:  Confirm, Glimpse, and Path.  Explain what confirm is and the 6 essential traits you speak about.

Confirm is about confirming that you are really a true entrepreneur

An entrepreneur has 6 essential traits

There is no easy business.  Being an entrepreneur is hard.  Those 6 traits are needed to succeed over the long term and endure.

At the 12 min mark, we discuss the “long game and 10 year thinking…”

Let’s break down the 6 traits….

Visionary:  A person who has a lot of ideas.  They see the world different than most people.  Someone either is visionary per the definition or is not.

Passionate:  Passion for the product or service.  You have a strong belief and no one can take it away from you.  Passion  is vital to the success of an entrepreneur. It is almost irrational and that is why entrepreneurs are different.

Problem Solver:  People that lean into problems and are optimists by nature and see opportunities in every setback.  They are energized by problems.

Driven:  Driven has nothing to do with the business or product or service.  It is something that has been in you as long as you can remember.  It is a fire, self-motivation, a will to win.  A sense of urgency.

Risk Taker:  People that are willing to take risks and don’t freeze when it is time to make the decision.  They are willing to fail and know it is part of the process.

Responsible:  You blame no one.  You look in the mirror and take ownership for your problems and for your life and your business.

If someone starts a business for the sole purpose to make money and don’t have the passion, they are missing the ridiculous obsessive passion that is needed to truly succeed.

Gino explains Glimpse in more detail….

Seeing clearly what life looks like as an entrepreneur

Understanding what the day in the life of an entrepreneur looks like

It is also understanding the options for what type of business may be the best fit for them.

Every entrepreneur cannot succeed in every business.  You have to know the best business for your skill set and passion.

What are the 8 critical mistakes entrepreneurs make?

Not having a vision.  You need to have a clear vision of the outcome.

Hiring the wrong people.  Throwing people at problems that are not a good fit.

Not spending time with your people and communicating consistently.

Not knowing who your customer really is.  Trying to be all things to all people.

Not staying true to your core.

Not knowing your numbers

Not crystalizing roles and responsibilities.

The last area of Entrepreneurial LEAP is Path and covers the 9 stages of building a business. Can you walk us through them?

Generating cash.  You have to generate cash first and foremost.  Nothing is more important.

Hiring an integrator.  Every entrepreneur needs to be counterbalance with an integrator who runs the day to day of the business.

Discovering your core values.  You have to know who you are at your core to hire your first employee as you will want to hire those with those values.

Holding yourself accountable.  Know your most important 3 numbers.  Typically sales and marketing oriented.

Communicating frequently with your employees.  Weekly, quarterly.  1:1 if needed and give feedback.

Have a plan B, C, and D.

Staying in your personal sweet spot.  Entrepreneurs are visionaries.  Delegate and elevate and stay focused as the entrepreneur.

Preventing your business from getting away from you. The more successful you are, the more the business can get away from you.  Make sure the business is what you want.

Capitalize on coaching, training, mentoring.

Free assessment to help confirm you have entrepreneur DNA