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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
[00:00:00]
[00:00:07] Rachel Elsts Downey: Entrepreneurial thinking sometimes tends to dissipate or vanish as soon as spreadsheets start rolling in. Instead of what made you great to get started, you get bogged down with administrative to-dos and bottom lines. In the early days, you don't always have a long-term vision to bank on. It's about being nimble, making quick calls, and diving in without overthinking.
[00:00:31] Rachel Elsts Downey: But as companies scale, everything else starts to slow down.
[00:00:36] Rachel Elsts Downey: Processes get more complex, and suddenly, that entrepreneurial spark that got you going, it starts to fizzle out. You start seeking validation or permission before you press go.
[00:00:47] Rachel Elsts Downey: The companies that thrive, they maintain that entrepreneurial spark, they maintain that bias to action.
[00:00:54] Rachel Elsts Downey: And so of course as a leader of Share Your Genius, I am seeking how we keep that entrepreneurial fire lit up and burning, and so I had to call Nick Smarrelli.
[00:01:05] Rachel Elsts Downey: He's cracked the code on how to keep that energy alive while you're growing.
[00:01:10] Rachel Elsts Downey: As a former tech CEO, and now a professor and director of entrepreneurship at, I have to say, my alma mater Butler University, Nick's philosophy is refreshingly simple, and when I say refreshingly simple, I mean you don't need an MBA to implement it.
[00:01:25] Rachel Elsts Downey: When I was thinking about how do we build a culture of entrepreneurial thinking as we grow, as we scale, I called Nick, and here's what he had to say.
[00:01:34] Rachel Elsts Downey:
[00:01:44] Nick Smarrelli: Hey Rachel, it's Nick. I got your question and I'm actually sitting in my office right now, and on the board has rules of entrepreneurship that I share with my students at all times.
[00:01:57] Nick Smarrelli: So my favorite rule in the world is rule number one, which is speed over perfection. As you're growing and evolving in a business, most organizations die often from slow decisions, not necessarily bad ones. So one of the rules that we use is if you have about 70% of the data, make the call.
[00:02:17] Nick Smarrelli: Think about that executive meeting where you feel like you're talking about the same darn thing week, over week, over week.
[00:02:22] Nick Smarrelli: So put it out in the world, see what happens, and be okay with the fact that you're gonna have to iterate on the fly. Rule number two is, enthusiasm is a force multiplier.
[00:02:31] Nick Smarrelli: And I'll say like, ritualizing enthusiasm is finding moments, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, as a leader, as a person in the group, to spotlight wins, to share like, "Why the heck does this matter?" To think through strategic priorities and celebrate progress towards those.
[00:02:51] Nick Smarrelli: The strategy is lame. What people rally around is like conviction and enthusiasm around a strategy, and that's what they follow. That's the tail that they grab onto and say, "I'm on board." Number three is one that I struggle with, starting scared. So normalizing risk taking, in the sense that as a CEO or anybody in the organization, think through normalizing, imperfect actions, celebrating times where you put something out in the world and it was wrong but then here's what I learned from it.
[00:03:21] Nick Smarrelli: Number four is compounding your efforts. One of the topics that I love to think about is just as far as life is this idea of like, consistency always beats intensity. Anybody who's ever read Atomic Habits, they're like 1% better every day thesis, which 1% is actually really hard to get better every day.
[00:03:37] Nick Smarrelli: Entrepreneurial thinking is all about compoundingyour efforts. What does that mean? Looking at execution as key. So instead of like these, like gigantic breakthroughs, these like gigantic business pivots, it's just thinking about what can we do to produce consistent execution.
[00:03:54] Nick Smarrelli: Number five is be a learning machine. I think sometimes we think you go to college. You learn from your professors and then you're all done. And it's like, "I'm just gonna hope that the world provides me with learning experiences." Versus flipping it on your head, taking some agency and saying, "How do I figure out ways to create learning moments for me?"
[00:04:11] Nick Smarrelli: And again, podcasts, books, seminars, joining small groups of people and using them as best practice sharers. Any of those things are ways and opportunities to learn.
[00:04:20] Nick Smarrelli: Adaptability equals intelligence. So, intelligence is no longer the key, either you got it or you don't, but adaptability is something that you can learn.
[00:04:29] Nick Smarrelli: The next one is slightly applicable to your question. How do you, like, own core capabilities of your business? How do you own a competitive moat? How do you create something that is uniquely your own, and using that as a opportunity to be different? Next one is test small, scale big. I think oftentimes people launch things too quickly.
[00:04:48] Nick Smarrelli: In entrepreneurship, we call it the beachhead market.
[00:04:50] Nick Smarrelli: Number nine is copy proven playbooks. Shamelessly steal from best in class operators. And I think oftentimes people fail here, not because they don't realize that this is important, but they benchmark other businesses like them.
[00:05:05] Nick Smarrelli: And then the last one again, the idea that truth is a gift and feedback is a gift.
[00:05:10] Nick Smarrelli: And so how do you create mechanisms to share and give feedback to each other? I am sure you may have some questions on these, so give me a call anytime.
[00:05:19] Nick Smarrelli: Would love to chat, and I'm proud of what you're doing. Talk soon, Rachel.
[00:05:31] Rachel Downey: Thanks for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast.