Savage Mindset: 3 Secrets To Entrepreneurial Success

Welcome to my newsletter. Each month, I share entrepreneurship lessons, new tech, and things that have recently inspired me. This November, National Entrepreneurship Month, I'm reflecting on some of the most valuable lessons I've learned in 17 years in the entrepreneurship game.

Listen to Your Intuition

As an entrepreneur, you're required to make many hard decisions quickly, and you'll always encounter people who have an opinion on how you should proceed.

Hearing other perspectives is important, but you should never let them derail you into the dangerous territory of ignoring your intuition.

Brendan Schwartz and I have faced crossroads time and again at Wistia , and those moments that have defined our partnership and trajectory are ones in which we heard others out, thoughtfully considered the information, and acted in a way that felt true to us.

When a VC in the video marketing space told us our market was too small and a company like ours would never scale past $10M, we never spoke to him again and instead held fast to our vision. His warning lit a fire under us. We stayed the course and flew past $10M a few years later.?

When we got an offer to sell Wistia in 2018, we didn't think it was in the long-term interest of our team members or our vision. We turned down the offer, took on $17.3M in debt, bought out our investors, and took complete control of Wistia. This year, we paid it off. That decision to bet on ourselves and our mission to build a lasting, creatively driven, independent business was the best decision we ever made.

Never underestimate the importance of making decisions that leave you with a clean conscience and better sleep at night — they're nearly always the right ones in the long run.

Build Your Network Wisely

The famous quote by John Rohn, "You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with," is true. You become your network. Build it wisely.?

Everyone has a unique lens through which they see the world, and that perspective rubs off on you when you talk with them, work with them, or seek their advice. Your view ends up shaped by all those with whom you spend your time, for better and worse.

If you don't like where you are — whether you're unsatisfied with growth or your talent pool is falling flat — stop and assess the first-degree connections in your LinkedIn community. You have complete freedom to cultivate connections deliberately.

In life, we often let people "happen" to us. But if you put some work into thinking about what kind of people you want around — and exercise conscious choice around who you include in your network — it can be one of the most powerful routes to personal growth.

Don't Underestimate The Power of Mindset

What we say to ourselves and how we perceive our worlds can make or break entrepreneurial efforts.

People all have default mindsets, where they tend to fall when it comes to outlook.?

"I'm too busy to take a vacation."

"I can't afford to fail."

"I never get lucky."

We all can vacillate and shift perspective, but we tend to default to the same place repeatedly.?

When we repeatedly default to the same place, "I'm too busy to take a vacation" can lead to burnout. "I can't afford to fail" can become stagnation because you're afraid to try. "I never get lucky" can prevent you from finding good fortune because you don't try to begin with.

If you have a different mindset about the scenarios above, your entire reality can improve. You'll take that vacation because you're busy and know you need to recharge your creative tank. You know that failure is a sign that you're learning quickly and progressing. And you believe you have just as much a chance as anyone to strike gold, so you keep in the game with more chances to manifest luck.

Entrepreneurs must take on each day with confidence, have the unflappable belief everything will work out, and manage adversity. In an entrepreneur's world, the right mindset may be most important of all.