Moment 130: Shopify's President: The 1 Skill You MUST Have To Thrive In Business: Harley Finkelstein

Oct 6, 2023 17m 55s 9 insights
The episode explores how to develop a unique entrepreneurial edge through "spikiness" – acquiring unobvious, complementary skills. The speaker shares personal experiences and emphasizes starting small, embracing hobbies, and partnering with diverse skill sets to build successful businesses.
Actionable Insights

1. Develop Unobvious Complementary Skills

Sharpen your “spiky point” by acquiring unobvious, complementary skills that create an arbitrage opportunity, making you a more sophisticated and unique professional in your field. For example, a coder learning public speaking can build and sell more effectively.

2. Skill Stack for Unique Advantage

Aim to be in the top 10% of six complementary, unobvious skills within your industry, as this can make you the best in a million people at that particular thing, like Cristiano Ronaldo’s diverse football abilities.

3. Partner with Complementary Skill Sets

Avoid starting companies with people just like you; instead, seek partners with complementary skill sets from different backgrounds or faculties to build a richer, more diverse foundation for your venture.

4. Embrace Hobbies for Business Acumen

Engage in hobbies and side projects, even if they seem like distractions, as they can provide invaluable practical experience, build empathy for customers, and deepen your understanding of business tools and processes.

5. Start Small, Remove Expectations

Begin your entrepreneurial journey by removing the expectation of massive success or a fixed timeline, viewing large goals as a series of small steps, and allowing yourself to stumble forward and learn along the way.

6. Minimize Perceived Risk of Starting

Recognize that the cost of failure for starting a business today is extremely low, often comparable to minor everyday expenses, making it easier to experiment with ideas without significant financial risk.

7. Start Businesses While in School

The ideal time to start an entrepreneurial venture is while in school or as a side hustle alongside a job, as there are fewer external expectations for immediate massive success, fostering a low-pressure environment for experimentation.

8. Apply DJing Principles to Business

Leverage lessons from DJing, such as building rapport in pre-meetings to foster client trust, reading the room to adapt your strategy, and finding “hacks” to subtly guide behavior, to improve business negotiations and leadership.

9. Cultivate Curiosity for Business Ideas

Focus on exploring a “nugget of an idea” with curiosity rather than beginning with an extensive business plan, as many highly successful companies started accidentally through iterative exploration and adaptation.