Startup Leadership

There are five skills that all ELs needs to master (best-in-class skills are not requisite for ELs):
Self-Awareness: Understanding your motivations, traits, and skills
Enterprise Basics: Understanding how an enterprise works and what an enterprise needs from its leader at each of its stages of maturity
Relationship Building: Forming new relationships and making existing relationships

retail, food, distribution, fashion, transportation, or construction.

provided he could lead himself to act in ways that would make people happy to work with him. Many people itching to be ELs already work in or around the type of business they want to lead.

If you don't want to be an EL badly enough that you are willing to make enormous sacrifices and change yourself, don't despair: you can team up with somebody else who does feel that way. You can provide the EL with traits and skills they may not have and become a critical complement and essential founding teammate. As we will see, ELs are always on the lookout for major talent.

while under the many stresses that come from being an entrepreneur.

should be, “I want more than anything to be an entrepreneurial leader in order to . . . be rich, or be my own boss, or be successful in the eyes of my parents, or never ever feel hungry again . . .”

Without a powerful motivation you will not make the required changes in yourself. Instead you will give up, often after having lost money,

Spotting a business opportunity was not enough. He needed something more completely selfish to drive him.

is the requirement that you must change yourself—which every EL must do as his enterprise grows.

To lead others, you must first lead yourself,