20 lessons learned (the hard way) as an entrepreneur for the last 20 years.

It was the 1st of September 1999, when along with my two brothers, we opened up the door of our first retail business in Athens, Greece, and since then, I was fortunate enough to have co-founded multiple ventures. As you can guess, that means that I had the pleasure to enjoy various successes and at the same time to experience significant losses and be in the eye of multiple hurricanes, in some cases everything happening the same day.

The first step in my carrier was to focus on offline retail and create a chain of sports stores by the name Sportmania. After 20 years, that not only have we managed to survive the Greek financial crisis but the business is still overperforming with significant signs of further growth. The next step was to launch the first sport online store in my country — www.esportmania.gr -, and at the same time co-create a private label apparel and accessories brand — Evagon- and a local news magazine — ANTE-

Underneath my entrepreneurial skin, I must admit that there is a geek that loves to play around with new technologies and create new experiences. For that reason, I have spent the last decade of my career leading scale-ups and mainly co-creating startups with people I admire. In all these ventures, the vision has always been the same. Bridge the gap between offline and online using cool technologies as the enabler.

My first attempt in the startup world was named MAGECA (MArketplace for GEsture Controlled Applications) and our goal was to join the creators of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality and Human-Computer Interaction solutions with the early adopters that could find value using their applications.

The next startup was a combination of my retail background, the passion for AR, VR and HCI technologies and the knowledge we have gathered at Mageca. Our approach at liateR — Retail Reversed is based on advanced gesture detection and augmented reality technologies to create an environment where consumers can digitally try on and buy clothing in a variety of contexts and locations. From the comfort of their living room to the front of the shopping window at their favorite store, consumers can experience a unique shopping experience.

My last chapter (until the next one) in the startup world is named StylistaaS — Stylist as a Service and is an attempt to support other startups, companies, and professionals by translating their cultural and brand principles into styling guidelines. With a team of extremely talented stylists (don’t worry, I am not one of them), we are helping companies address most of the learnings of this post in order to become more efficient and grow faster.

So without further ado, these are the 20 lessons I learned the hard way as an entrepreneur for the last 20 years.

1.It’s all about people. There is an old African proverb saying that if you want to go fast you should go alone but if you want to go far you should go together with your tribe. The quality of the team and in general all the people in your company will ultimately determine the success or failure of your business. Your people are those that determine the customer experience, so if it is good you are going to win and if it is poor you lose.

2. People are leaving management not businesses. Someone might join your company for the high salary, the upgrade in their CV, or for the amazing health plan but they will definitely not stick for a long if their direct manager is a jerk. As mentioned above, your people are your most important asset, so pay extra attention to your management team and leave all pricks outside of the office.

3. Empower empire builders. As the CEO, you are responsible to create an environment where not only you but also everyone on your team can accomplish anything and everything they’ve ever wanted. I know that this might sound a bit cheesy but the reality is that as struggling entrepreneurs, we’re often insecure and fearful that others will “steal” our clients, our ideas, our energy. Yet, you’ll never attract the best “empire builders” on the planet to work within your organization if you don’t create an environment where they can thrive alongside you. When you start running your company with confidence — in a way that serves your team and clients — you’ll be able to attract top talent and build a true empire that stands the test of time.

4. Stay curious. Keep your mind open to new ideas and embrace novelty. The most productive way to learn and expand your scope is to constantly expose yourself to a multitude of ideas, businesses, and products. Conversely, if you always have your blinders on, your perspective becomes too narrow and you miss out on promising opportunities. And yes, I have been practicing what I am preaching. Last year I had the opportunity to attend the Product Management course at Berkeley, finish two online A.I. courses, mentor 3 startups (one around mobility, the other in the fintech and the last one in A.I.) and managed to finish 19 books (the most mind-blowing of all was Behave by Robert Sapolsky)

5. Don’t give up. Anything is possible if you persevere. Don’t give up. Take the plunge and persist. The prerequisite is having something you’re passionate about to get you through the dark times. You should be excited and motivated to go to work every morning and feel like you made a difference in someone’s life at the end of the day. Once you have those feelings, that job will become more than a job — it will be your passion and your career.

6. Enjoy the ride. So many people get caught up in the black and white of success and failure that they forget to enjoy what they are doing. If you created a business, the chances are that you love what you have built. Forget about success and failure; find a comfortable spot in the gray area and work your butt off. Failure isn’t your worst enemy.

7. Focus focus focus. When you’re building a startup, the task list can feel overwhelming especially if you still haven’t built a team. It is tempting to try to do everything at once, but the more you can narrow your focus and do one thing at a time and doing it well, the more chances you have to succeed in your goal.

8. Learn from your mistakes and do it fast. The time and resources you have as an entrepreneur are extremely limited, so you should focus strictly on validating if your idea or business model is feasible or not. In order to validate your assumptions you must experiment with what you have and do it immediately. Your main goal at the beginning is to validate whether or not your idea has a product/market fit and for that reason you must be thinking outside of the box and testing everything that makes sense.

9. Believe in yourself. I have heard hundreds if not thousands of times that my idea will not work. I was told that no one is willing to buy shoes online (that was 16 years ago), no one will give you the credit card info, no reason to focus on creating a new omnichannel shopping experience, etc You should not blame them but you should stop wasting your time trying to prove them wrong. Other people’s opinions about you or your business cannot determine who you are and if this is going to be a success or not.

10. Celebrate little wins. Building companies is an extremely hard process and one way to avoid burnout and keep a team energized is to celebrate the little wins. Speaking from experience, the hard times get very hard and it’s exhausting to feel excited unless you acknowledge the wins that do come along. People will abandon if they don’t get excited about it and excitement comes from celebrating the little things.

11. The customer is the one that truly matters. The logic is pretty simple here. We built businesses in order to create value to users/customers so we better deliver what they want in the way they expect it to be delivered. I will avoid sharing just another Amazon example but believe me on this, your customer must be at the core of everything you do.

12. Assume it’s a 7–10 year commitment because to succeed it most likely is. Of course, there are examples of a very successful exit in 2–3 years, sure, you vest stock every year and can put in four or even less, but if that’s your attitude going in, you’re likely being too short-sighted and aren’t excited enough about your idea and vision.

13. Build your business around the life you want to have. It’s easy to get caught up in the challenges of running a business and doing your best to make it a success. It is important to make your business a priority, especially at the beginning. But it’s also easy to fall into the habit of making it your only priority. And if your business structure is so dependent on you for the day to day operations, it’ll be difficult to carve time out for yourself.

14.  Learn every technology that is relevant to your business. When I started off, there wasn’t any online store and now we have mobile web, smartphone apps, VR-AR, crypto, the blockchain, AI and the list goes on. If you aspire to be a tech entrepreneur, you must make sure that you are passionate about technology. Do not give excuses that you don’t understand tech stuff and that you will hire some tech resources to solve your problems. You should know the foundation of each and every technology out there and its relevance to your business.

15. Look neat. Because light travels quicker than sound, people are seen before they are heard. That is why, even before a person utters a word their appearance tells a much about them in terms of their competence, perceived level of intelligence, affability, self-esteem, self-confidence, success, authority and beliefs… (Ninette Pongo)

16. Constantly reinvent yourself. A tech start-up’s journey is similar to white water rafting. You know where you want to go and the rapidly changing river is full of obstacles to circumvent in order to reach your destination. However, you have to design and test a new raft that is currently only a concept and drawing on a whiteboard. You have to define how your raft is different and what benefits it will offer to potential customers. Next, you build your prototype and drink a ton of river water testing it. And then you just have to start all over again. Be prepared.

17. Idea is 1% and implementation is 99% of every success. You will need to pivot 2–3 times the first 18 months so don’t value the initial idea so much and focus entirely on implementation. You need to build an organization that will constantly under promise and over deliver with extremely limited resources.

18. Learn the importance of being lean. When I was invited to share for the first time with the TEDx community my thoughts, I decided to dedicate my first presentation on how we can all be lean and the importance of the lean mentality in your everyday life. Regardless if you are building the next unicorn or you are simply trying to turn your passion into a business, you must always be trying to eliminate uncertainty, work smarter not harder, and validate your learnings.

19. Wear multiple hats at the same time. As the CEO of the company, you will be asked to be the cheerleader, the HR liaison, the bad guy and sometimes the maid. You must be ready for this and also, make sure you listen. Listening is a key component of communication. You cannot motivate a team if you haven’t listened to what makes them tick so the lesson here is clear, you will be doing everything at the same time.

20. Be grateful. I left the most valuable tip for the end. Gratitude is probably one of the most important elements in life and definitely a key to experiencing life to the fullest. For that reason, I try to express my appreciation whenever possible and believe me it works. Unfortunately, I cannot mention everyone that had impacted my career positively all these years but I can at least start by thanking Alexandra Choli (the most influential mentor I had all these years), Marc Wesselink (the reason why I made the leap and moved to the Netherlands), Konstantinos Stefanidis and George Margetis (the moving power behind liateR and two exceptional individuals), Stavros Vassos (the most passionate, inspiring and giving person I have worked with), Savvas Georgiou (the person that encapsulates the true startup mentality), Spyros Trachanis (a VC investor that has been honest and extremely supportive all these years), my mentors at Startupbootcamp Rojda Lord and Tim Geenen, of course Patrick de Zeeuw and Ruud Hendriks and the entire SBC community (especially the commerce program of 2015) like Sal Matteis, Marc Elias, Willem Bijleveld, Willem Drost, Gerben Klop, Giovanni Vaccari, Liane Mosselaar, and Alejandra Montoya. Furthermore, I would like to thank Suneil Mishra for his amazing support to Mageca and his willingness to help us throughout the journey, Dennis Tan for being a constant force of change and innovation, Rutger Teunissen for being such a successful example of what you can accomplish if you are dedicated and willing to perceiver, Lennert Pieters, Jan Brogger Andersen, Alex Kahn, Victor Levitin, Marieke Vollering, and the rest of the CEO group from the 2015 Commerce program, Jason Manolopoulos for his kind support and amazing gift (one of the best books you can read as an entrepreneur), Dimitris Vranopoulos for his on-going assistance all these years, Gerry Papaspyratos for inspiring me to become an entrepreneur, and of course Stamos and Spyros for being my business partners the last 20 years (and hopefully the next 20 as well) and last but definitely not least Marianna Vakalopoulou for being my constant inspiration, and my most reliable safety net.