The 6 Characteristics You Need To Become A Serial Entrepreneur

What is a serial entrepreneur?

You may already know that a serial entrepreneur is someone who devotes themselves to turning creative ideas into successful businesses, multiple times. But how can you go about becoming one, and step away from the single business you already own? Well, find out what characteristics you will need to develop to become a successful serial entrepreneur in this episode the Startup Streams Serial Entrepreneurship Podcast… 

Believe it not, not every entrepreneur has what it takes to become a coveted serial entrepreneur, as the skills, patience and positivity needed to run multiple businesses at the same time can be more than overwhelming for most. 

Luckily, if you are considering moving away from your single business and are setting you sights on your next, there are a number of characteristics you can develop to help you to succeed. So, here are the main 6 characteristics you will need to develop to become a serial entrepreneur.

Time management is essential for serial entrepreneurs 

First off, let’s start with the obvious: Time management. Your ability to manage your time effectively will pay dividends in the future as your time, and therefore attention, will be split. This is the only reason how top tier serial entrepreneurs like Elon Musk can manage Tesla, The Boring Company, OpenAI, Neuralink and Space X at the same time. You may have heard in our previous podcast “How to find time to start your next business as a serial entrepreneur”, how Elon splits his time into 5 minute increments to make sure that he is making the most of each and every day, to become as effective as he can be as a CEO. Remember, as a serial entrepreneur, it is always best to work smarter, not harder. Being able to prioritise time is of the utmost importance. 

You'll need flexible thinking 

Next up, how flexible is your thinking? Yes, it’s all too easy to build a time management plan and stick to it, but what happens when there are multiple figurative fires to put out? What if one of your business’s faces a serious dilemma and requires your undivided attention? How will your daily schedule and, in turn, your other businesses be affected as a result? It is all too easy to think rigidly, but change is a constant. 

Adaptability

As well as being able to divert your attention towards dilemmas, you also need to be able to divert your attention and quick thinking towards positive change. This is what serial entrepreneurs do best. Probably the best example of this is when serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson saw an awesome opportunity to get the edge over a competitor. In 1999, the world famous London Eye was due to be erected from the River Thames. It just so happened to be sponsored by Richard Bransons’s rival British Airways, also know as BA. Richard was woken up at 5.30am and told that his competitor was facing an embarrassing situation as the London Eye was unable to be lifted out of the river. Seeing this, and just so happened to be owning a Blimp company, he immediately sprung into action and had a blimp sent into central London, with the giant words “BA can’t get it up” written on the side. This gained Branson’s company, Virgin Atlantic, with lots of PR as it was covered in the national and indeed the international press due to its humour and ingenuity. Genius. 

Deconstruct goals

The third characteristic you need to develop as a serial entrepreneur is goal setting. You may already be great at this. The difference between some who is good at goal setting - the ability to set a goal and stick to it - and someone who is great at goal setting is deconstruction. Being able to deconstruct what you want into smaller bitesize actionable steps is advantageous as you can work backwards and find out exactly what you need to do each and every day in order to achieve your goals. The more specific goal is the better. 

Serial Entrepreneur Noah Kagan has had an interesting career. He was the 30th employee at Facebook before being fired, and had set up and has been a part of a number of businesses in-between, including launching AppSumo, where you can go to get great deals on software. One of these companies which Noah was a part of was Mint.com, where he was the marketing manager for the launch of the finance app which you may already have heard of? He was given the rather daunting task of getting 100,000 downloads of the app within 6 months of launch. Ouch. However, you can find online exactly how Noah deconstructed this goal, and managed to find out and estimate exactly where that traffic was going to come from; from which sources and outlets. His deconstruction and ambitious marketing plan ensured that mint.com not only received 100,000 downloads in 6 months, but had accomplished ten times this number. 1 million downloads in 6 months? Amazing. 

You need to be super curious about the world around you

Characteristic number 4: Curiosity. Serial entrepreneurs in the eyes of the public tend to be game changers. They seem to come up with the best ideas no one else can think of.

As the saying goes, “Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see”. The key reason for this is curiosity.

Serial entrepreneurs are curious by nature and love to experiment, test and develop ideas and new businesses, even if they fail - who remembers Richard Branson’s Virgin Cola? To come up with new ideas, you will always need to stay curious and hungry to find innovative solutions to existing problems. Whilst financial gain may be a main motivator to starting a business, a serial entrepreneur is able to reach success time and time again with big ideas more so because they are curious. Any of the serial entrepreneurs mentioned so far in this podcast could of course be sat on a beach, Mojito in hand, counting their stacks; but instead choose to progress with business after business. Why? Not necessarily to make more money, but because they are driven by curiosity and have a mission in mind. For Elon Musk, to get the human race to Mars.