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Telling the stories of startup founders and creators and their unique journey. Each episode features actionable tips, practical advice and inspirational insight.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:01
Welcome to the Founders Journey podcast. Inspiration education for Founders by Founders. Hey, I'm Greg Moran, co-founder of Green Mountain Equity Partners and host of the Founders Journey podcast. Recently at Evergreen Mountain, we released our groundbreaking new archetype of the world's best founders, and we called the Entrepreneurial Adaptive Innovator. As a VC fund, we use this model every day to understand the number one thing that we evaluate and any investment that we're considering, and that's the quality of the founder.
00:00:35:04 - 00:01:00:17
So today, what I really want to do is, is share one of the traits in the adaptive innovator model. And that's creative resilience. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a founder or you're an investor, you've likely faced those moments of intense pressure when everything is going wrong. And that's where creative resilience comes in. What it does is it helps you innovate your way through adversity.
00:01:00:17 - 00:01:21:20
And that's what great founders do. So let's break down what it is and how you can really develop this for yourself within your business. What exactly is creative resilience? Well, what it really means is the ability to innovate when times are tough. When the world feels like it's crashing down. The most successful founders don't just survive. They adapt and they thrive in.
00:01:21:20 - 00:01:45:19
They innovate in that kind of environment. They almost need that kind of environment to really start to move themselves forward at an even faster pace. They turn obstacles into opportunities. So at evergreen, we found that founders with creative resilience often lead businesses that not only make it through tough challenges, but actually come out stronger on the other side.
00:01:45:21 - 00:02:10:20
The bigger the challenge, the stronger the business gets. That's one of those defining characteristics that so innate it can be developed. But it's a it's a trait that's common among all the great founders that we've seen. It's about keeping your cool and finding new paths when things don't go according to plan. And we all know being involved in startups, whether you're a founder or investor, nothing ever goes according to plan.
00:02:10:21 - 00:02:30:19
So let me give you a couple concrete examples. Brian Chesky is a co-founder of Airbnb. We've all heard of it. He didn't start running, start out running a, you know, multibillion dollar company. In fact, Airbnb was completely born of desperation. So back in 2008, Jet Ski and his co-founders were struggling to pay rent. They're living in San Francisco.
00:02:30:19 - 00:02:54:22
Super expensive place. And they came up with the idea to rent out air mattresses in their apartment to conference attendees in San Francisco. Hotel rooms were really expensive that were hard to find. So they started renting out air mattresses. So what started as a really simple hustle like side hustle really turned into the global business that we all know today, because Jet Ski and his partners were willing to innovate under pressure.
00:02:54:29 - 00:03:17:23
It was that pressure that created that business. So we didn't shy away from a tough situation. He actually leaned right into it. This is what creative resilience is all about. It's not about being reckless, but it's about seeing opportunities in the most challenging moments. Another great example. This is a podcast we did fairly recently with a, somebody named Walter Randall.
00:03:17:23 - 00:03:50:27
Walter's the founder of Lounge Studios. If you haven't listened to this podcast on the Founders Journey podcast, make sure you look up Walter on the on our channel and listen to it. Walter built one of the top recording studios in the country. He started this when he was homeless. He was sleeping in the closet of the studios. Once he graduated from his car, he was resilient enough to convince his New York City landlord in a high rise building in New York City to let him do all the construction himself in the building, because it was his only choice.
00:03:50:27 - 00:04:15:06
That's unheard of. If you're familiar with New York City real estate, it was Walter's ability to innovate under pressure, whether that was from competition or, in his case, financial difficulties. That really allowed him to turn Lounge Studios into the top, one of the top venues, in the world for some of the hottest artists in the world. So how do you develop creative resilience in your own business?
00:04:15:09 - 00:04:36:08
Here are a few really practical steps. You got to embrace challenges instead of avoiding them. Great founders look for creative ways to solve problems and they lean into those problems. Those problems are would drive the innovation. They stay flexible. The plan you start with may not be the plan you end up with. That's fine. It never is the plan you end up with.
00:04:36:09 - 00:04:55:01
As an investor myself, I there's very little credence. We actually put into the original plan that a founder comes up with, because they're going to have to iterate so many times, it's probably not going to look anything like what they originally intended. That's fine. They need to experiment constantly. They've got to test new ideas, even if they seem riskier, outlandish.
00:04:55:06 - 00:05:19:23
Nothing is off the table. And you've got to build a resilient mindset. You have to view setbacks as learning opportunities and not failures. As a founder, if how you view setbacks as failures, you will be paralyzed. Because that journey, that path of a founder and I've been on it many times myself, is filled with failure. You've got to see them as learning opportunities.
00:05:19:25 - 00:05:46:06
Creative resilience is really one of the most powerful traits that a founder can have. It allows you to turn obstacles and opportunities to come out stronger on the other side. So if you want to dive deeper into this, and then the other three traits that will hit in other videos that define successful founders, head over to EMI. IPO stands for Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners MPO and download the free whitepaper Understanding the Behavioral DNA of Successful Founders.
00:05:46:10 - 00:06:06:15
There's also a link in the description below. And before you go, don't forget to like the video. Subscribe to the channel. Hit the notification bell so you don't miss future episodes and drop a comment below. I'd love to hear how you've used creative resilience in your own business. Thanks for joining us.