Luck, teamwork, discipline and America. Those are my takeaways about key factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success after attending a major entrepreneurship competition in Florida.
Each November for decades now, the accounting firm EY announces the winner of its Entrepreneur Of The Year competition at its Strategic Growth Forum. Leading up to that announcement, a series of regional competitions takes place throughout the country. Regional winners in each industry category proceed to the national competition.
Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending Florida’s regional awards and hearing the stories of more than two dozen entrepreneurs and their companies. But it was the remarks from the winners that really grabbed my attention.
At events like this, one is always tempted to tune out when the winner takes the podium: Canned statements of thanks are sure to follow, with nothing that enlightens about the founder’s entrepreneurial experience. I am very glad that I did not have this temptation in Florida. The 10 industry winners announced that night had compelling things to say about their experiences and, most intriguingly, common themes emerged from all of them. Their remarks turned out to provide a casual, yet surprising, window into the minds of successful entrepreneurs.
First, nearly every winner credited the American system for his success. (All winners happened to be male.) More than one pointed out that his family had immigrated to the United States and started with nothing. Others noted that they had come from “humble” beginnings. Amidst a bout of pessimism regarding the future of innovation and economic growth in the United States, particularly as compared to other countries, these are refreshing observations. Yes, the United States faces significant challenges, and issues such as inequality have been rightly raised as problems. But, this country continues to enjoy “soft” advantages in its system of democratic capitalism and the ability of anyone to enjoy its fruits. These extraordinary entrepreneurs proved this point.
Second, we hear all the time that entrepreneurship is a team sport, but you cannot hear it enough. Each winner gave massive amounts of credit—in some cases all the credit—to his team. The lone-wolf idea of entrepreneurship, if it ever had any basis in reality, just wasn’t true among these founders. This also reinforces the notion that a successful entrepreneur is a good manager—not a manager in the bureaucratic Office Space sense of things, but someone who has the ability to pull together and align a variety of different resources, including people and their talents.
Third, and following from the first two, the award recipients consistently referred to themselves as “lucky” and “blessed.” At one level, this is standard thank-you fare. On another level, however, the winners in their remarks did appear to acknowledge the large role that luck and randomness play in business. You can be doing everything right, but a shock from left field could still send you off course. In some cases, what sets apart a successful entrepreneur from one who didn’t succeed is his or her capacity to respond to those shocks. Yet on the flip side, sometimes what we perceive as entrepreneurial “success” could be partially the result of random events that did or did not occur.
Finally, despite their humility and sharing of credit, the Florida Entrepreneur Of The Year winners did reveal a common characteristic that contributed to their success: discipline. One recipient cited neurological research showing that humans are wired to “feel first and think second.” To succeed, he said, entrepreneurs must “think first, and feel second.” That requires discipline. Discipline to overcome hurdles of varying height; setbacks will happen, and entrepreneurs must persevere.
The nature of the companies, too, reveals the importance of discipline in execution. These are not necessarily the companies that grace the covers of magazines or receive breathless coverage on Silicon Valley websites. But, these are the companies that make the economy run: banks, health care services, promotional products, travel, beauty products and so on. Such proven firms do not necessarily fit the idealized mold of disruptive ideas or breakthroughs.
The entrepreneurs at the helm of these companies perceived a changed circumstance, a new challenge, a new opportunity, or a problem, and they oriented their firms in that direction and executed better than other firms.
These are not necessarily earth-shattering observations, but the companies honored in Florida and across the country remind us that entrepreneurship requires so much more than the glitter that often surrounds it. It requires teamwork, discipline and some measure of luck—and it helps if all these occur in a place like the United States.
