Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Why Passion and Grit Aren't Enough | Michael Dermer - From Wall Street Lawyer to Serial Entrepreneur

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Lessons - Why Passion and Grit Aren't Enough | Michael Dermer - From Wall Street Lawyer to Serial Entrepreneur · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore why entrepreneurial thinking is essential in both start-ups and
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  large corporations. Discover how adopting this mindset keeps organizations competitive,
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  understand how to present innovative ideas effectively within bureaucratic systems,
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  and uncover how perspective, shape by pressure, passion, pleasure, and pain leads to better
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  decisions for lasting success.
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  And one thing that you mentioned, and you sort of highlighted on your site, and I like it a lot,
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  there's people that are in all walks of life all stages in their journey trying to do a thing,
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  you know, the side hustle is more popular than ever now. And one of the pieces that you actually
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  mentioned was entrepreneur, entrepreneurism is not nice to have, it's a skill that must be unlocked
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  in every company. So, speak to me about what that means for somebody who's in a company that
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  doesn't understand how they can associate with the word entrepreneur.
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  Yeah, it's a great point. So there's two kind of lens of this. One lens is, okay,
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  you're in a company and you're thinking about leaving and doing your own thing, and that applies
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  to some of the things that we've just been talking about. But companies to compete have to think
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  like entrepreneurs, right? I mean, I mean, Amazon should not exist, right? Walmart should have
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  created Amazon, and Blockbuster should create a Netflix, and so many should have created Spotify,
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  like these organizations had all the way with all the duties of things. And today, if you don't think,
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  we call it think like an entrepreneur, if you don't think like an entrepreneur within a larger company,
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  you're just going to become kind of the next, you know, company that just doesn't stay up
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  with the times. And that's a difficult thing to do, right? Because large companies don't operate
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  that way. They think about quarterly numbers, and it's really hard for them to innovate. So,
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  we have a program called think like an entrepreneur, which is a training program,
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  which helps large organizations take what you learn from entrepreneurs, and employ it within a
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  corporate environment to try to create some of these methodologies and thought processes that
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  entrepreneurs have all day long, but just don't regularly get deployed in a corporate environment.
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  Do you feel like you have advice for people that feel like they're being, I guess, held down,
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  or just like their ideas are being choked out in the organization? How do they actually thrive
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  in a company that is by the quarterly numbers with all the red tape? I'm curious as to how to do that.
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  So, the people that rise, the men and women that rise to senior levels within organizations are
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  the ones that are able to deliver results, right? There are ones that if you ask them, what do you do
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  with your job? The first thing they're going to do is give you a number, right? I deliver X. I
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  deliver this sales or this expense savings or whatever it may be, and this shareholder value.
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  Those people are always interested in innovations that work, right? So, if you're stipled and
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  you're in an organization, I mean, I think that we talked about before, we sold the health plans.
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  Health plans did the same thing for 50 years, and the people that you were selling to were the very
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  same people that put in place the things that you were trying to get rid of, right? So, and the
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  same thing exists within an organization. What I would say is I would respectfully, whether it's
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  the innovation people or the senior leaders in your group and say, listen, do your homework,
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  like come up with a business plan, come up with a business case. Don't just walk in somebody who's
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  the executive VP of BobbieBlo and say, I have an idea. Do your work and put it in a package,
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  but say, this I believe that this can deliver us revenue, competitive differentiation,
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  significant cost savings, and I'd like to have the opportunity to present it to you.
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  And I can tell you that the people that are in those roles,
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  are certainly you and me, we would always want to have that conversation if it was something that
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  was credible, even if you're stifled at different levels of your organization.
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  Yeah, not a good, very good point, very well said. I think that that's something to take note of,
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  like you don't even if you feel like the organization doesn't support, or perhaps you don't see the peers,
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  your peers working on things like this, take that initiative. And I think the takeaway message
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  of the lesson is to, you know, you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish if you start going out
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  there. And like you said, acting like an entrepreneur within a company and pushing these ideas in
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  front of the right people or presenting them in front of the right people, it could really take
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  that career to the next level within an organization. I can tell you what I did when I started my
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  company. Our clients were health plans. And we're an early stage company. I used to literally sit
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  down at eight o'clock at night and leave voicemails for the CEOs of our nation's largest healthcare
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  companies, United Health Care, and I got seven out of 10 calls back. And that wasn't because of my
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  bubbly personality. I basically said, listen, there's going to be a health plan here in the United
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  States that's going to have a reward program just like Marriott and City Bank. And the one that does
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  is going to win the consumer and the one that doesn't is going to fall behind. This is what we're
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  doing. Give us a call back, right? So the CEO would normally say, I you could never get to the CEO.
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  If you go to somebody and say, this is how you really win or this is how you really lose,
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  right? They will break all the rules for you. Obviously, you have to be concise and unpointed
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  and really talk to something that really makes a difference. But the people that arise to senior
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  levels rise to senior levels because they cut through things and ultimately deliver some kind
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  of financial performance. One point that I wanted to highlight because you list off
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  a whole bunch of problems with mentors that align themselves with entrepreneurs,
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  people that oversell themselves, people that are only looking for winners,
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  so on and so on, that keeps going going. So as an entrepreneur, it's scary out there to align
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  with someone. How do you look for the right person? There are a lot of mentors that are doing all
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  the right things, but then there's also a bunch of mentors that are trying to sell you things,
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  trying to bring in their own financial partners, trying to bring in their own marketing partners,
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  and things like that. Here's what I would say. A lot of times mentors that maybe don't always have
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  your best interest at heart. Like I said, there's many that do. A lot of times they prey on the risk
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  that entrepreneurs are feeling. When you're talking to somebody and you have a mentor and to some
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  of you really like and you're connecting with, go ask a colleague of yours. Not somebody that has
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  the last thing, last name in you or somebody you're dating or your brother, just somebody who's
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  business judgment you respect and say to them, hey, listen, I'm thinking about getting involved
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  in this mentor. Can you talk to them for a half hour an hour? Because they're a completely
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  objective view, right? And they will come in and say, well, I think this person's a little to
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  this, a little to that. And that can really help you, especially when you talk about the book and
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  this whole idea of perspective. We all know this. We're in the middle of it. We have a really
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  tough time seeing things. What other people can see really clearly. That also works a lot when
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  you're hiring employees, right? When you're working 24 hours a day, the person in front of you
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  might just fire them just because they can speak, right? Because you're so busy. If you go to like,
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  if I went to you and said, hey, listen, could you interview this person for me? You would give me
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  a reason, thoughtful, you know, objective view. And I'd be able to make the right type decision
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  just like I would with with a mentor. Yeah. Good advice. It's very good advice. I've never heard
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  it frame like that. I've never heard that suggestion before, but I really like that a lot, especially
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  when you're, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're right. You're just overtired, absolutely exhausted.
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  No decisions you're making are probably the right ones. So you're trying to look for all these
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  little tricks and tips to make it easier on yourself. I like that a lot. I'm not what we said before
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  about like being a series of skills, right? It's not, yes, the big things matter, but it's also,
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  you know, you hire the wrong person, you get the wrong mentor, you know, you're already kind of,
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  you know, behind a fall a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. One other, the last thing not to end
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  and date with lessons from the book, but I thought there was a few really, really good ones.
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  And then I wanted to ask just some, like, some personal insights from your career. But
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  the four P's you mentioned that perspective can be influenced by pressure, passion, pleasure,
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  pain, or a flawed perspective. Yeah. He speak a little bit more on that and extrapolate just what
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  that means exactly and how to sort of watch for that as an entrepreneur. I think we sort of touch
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  on it a little bit, but just to make it clear into things. Yeah, it's really interesting when you
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  take a step back after I sold my company and you're like, what is up? What do we all really go
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  through? Like when we were writing the book, we were saying, what do we really go through? And
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  this whole idea of a four P's can we start saying, well, you have passion, right? And you're like,
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  well, I'm going to make meatballs, right? And somebody will go, well, the world has plenty of
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  meatballs and you'll be like, well, not my meatballs, right? So we all have that kind of,
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  but then you also have, you know, pressure, right? There's a lot on you sometimes financial
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  pressure, sometimes you leave a job. You know, you have the pleasure of, you know, the first time
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  you, you, you print your business card, you get your first customer, it's like your first kiss,
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  right? And then the pain, you know, when the first time an investor tells you that they don't
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  like your business, it's like somebody's calling your baby ugly. And, and we're really invested in
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  when you're, we're always under the influence of these four P's that make us do the wrong thing.
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  When we're under pressure, right? We hire the wrong person, right? When we're feeling all
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  passion about our meatballs, sometimes we're not listening to the feedback of the market saying,
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  hey, it doesn't work this way, but it might work that way. So we just always have to be really
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  cognizant of the fact that we're kind of under the influence of these things so we can employ
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  some of the techniques we were talking about before. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.