Research: The Habits Of Entrepreneurs And How They Impact Our Success
This morning, let’s talk about entrepreneurs and habits for success.
Don’t back the horse, back the jockey. This is an often said remark by investors and it is true, of course.
I’ve just met too many remarkable people to know that you can give them almost any project (within their realm of interest) and it’s a solid bet that they will make a success of it.
A few years ago, Heavy Chef connected with a young student entrepreneur, Tamir Shklaz. He started a second-hand textbook exchange platform, Quillo. Over and above his idea though, it was Tamir’s intellect, skill, discipline and drive that immediately impressed us.
In fact, he impressed us so much that we invited him on stage to share his journey as a student entrepreneur. But we also started raising funds with the intent to invest in Quillo.
Our perspective at the time was that we wanted to invest in Tamir, to be honest. Internally, we even spoke about how if Quillo failed (hint: it didn’t), Tamir would still build something else that would become a massive success.
Unfortunately, our investment company was still pretty new at the time. We’d already invested in Heavy Chef and wanted to focus the remaining funds on more “stable” opportunities like property.
Silly us.
Today, Tamir co-founded and runs the world's first coding class designed to empower kids to master math: Strive. Its mission is to replace STEM education. No biggy.
Entrepreneurs like Tamir can be found from all backgrounds, in all types of communities. And many of them have something crucial in common in that they have specific habits that underpin much of what they do.
Today, I’d like to share data with you from our research repository that looks at entrepreneurs with established businesses (older than 5 years) and compares the habits of those that are still “micro” in size versus those who’ve grown their businesses to “medium” size:
Insight 1. Entrepreneurs with medium-sized businesses have regular access to many other entrepreneurs to share experiences and learn from each other.
Insight 2. Those with medium-sized businesses make a point to meet with other entrepreneurs more frequently than those with micro businesses.
Insight 3. Reading books often is a prominent habit of entrepreneurs with medium-sized businesses.
Insight 4. There is a significant difference between those entrepreneurs with medium-sized businesses and those with a micro-sized businesses in terms of access to a mentor.
Insights 5. Similarly, there is a difference between the two sets of entrepreneurs in terms of those who have attended specialist entrepreneur learning programmes before.
There are many factors that impact an entrepreneur’s ability to grow a business, many are outside of the entrepreneur’s control. But an area that entrepreneurs can control is their habits. Some of the good habits that correlate with growing businesses include connecting with more entrepreneurs more regularly, reading books, identifying a mentor and looking for and attending structured learning engagements.
So, what can we take from these findings?
For entrepreneurs, healthy habit formation is a precondition to success. Can you identify one habit that you can commit to seriously for a few months?
For educators, there is a science to forming habits that stick. How can you go about threading the data and knowledge you have on hand through your curriculum?
For service providers, entrepreneurs know they need to form healthy habits but need help kickstarting them. Are there ways that your services or tools can incentivise them to push through that first period before a habit is fully formed?
This article was originally shared with our community as Louis Janse van Rensburg’s Friday Research Mailer. Subscribe now to get it in your inbox fresh!
