We’re often told as entrepreneurs that no matter our background, we must be prepared to be salespeople. But many entrepreneurs also may need to be prepared to be marketers. Regardless of whether you’re attempting to tackle your marketing yourself, you have a team or an agency or you just hired your first chief marketing officer, marketing still may need your input and attention. And as both an entrepreneur and a marketer myself, I have the audacity to say it: Entrepreneurs can be both the worst and the best marketers.
After working with entrepreneurs at every phase, from startup to second stage to initial public offering, I’ve seen that many of the personality traits that lend to being a great entrepreneur also can make an individual both a skilled and sometimes frustrating marketer. Here are three personality traits that many entrepreneurs share and how they may impact your approach to marketing. For each, I’ve included some tips for how to bring out the best marketer in you.
A Short Attention Span
Why It Can Be Great
Many entrepreneurs tend not to be over-the-shoulder-manager types. With our creative, excited brains running a mile a minute cooking up the next brilliant idea, we often don’t have a lot of time to get caught in the weeds. Seldom do many of us have the attention span to want to know every detail or overthink every aspect of a marketing project. When at our best, many of us surround ourselves with people we trust to make decisions so we can keep the ideas churning without being weighed down by the day-to-day.
Why It May Not Be
What was it we were talking about? Oh, yeah. Many entrepreneurs seem to have a short attention span, and it seems to grow even shorter when it comes to creative projects. So many exciting things to work on, so little time. One downside of being an entrepreneur with a short attention span is maintaining focus on day-to-day marketing tasks. The priority that made us jump out of bed on Monday morning may not be the same priority that excites us on Tuesday.
How To Manage It
To manage a short attention span and keep your focus where it most benefits your work, delegate the day-to-day marketing tasks when you can. Surround yourself with a team or work with an agency that can help you manage your priorities. Empower your team to give you deadlines and block out time slots in your calendar to get the input and approvals that they need to keep projects humming along. They’ll appreciate you not being the holdup in the process, and you can bounce from priority to priority without feeling your to-do list hanging over your head.
Blue-Sky Thinking
Why It Can Be Great
Entrepreneurs tend to be innovators. Since innovation is how companies can survive in our ever-changing marketplaces, it’s a great characteristic for a marketer to have too. The vast majority of us also tend to passionately reject the “we’ve always done it this way” way of thinking. Past success doesn’t guarantee future success, so why would we limit ourselves to just going through the motions when there are so many new ideas and solutions to try out?
Why It May Not Be
As much as I agree with finding new, innovative ways of doing things, sometimes the old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rings true (especially when a new process or tactic is just taking hold). Also, our blue-sky approach, if left unchecked, can quickly veer into impatience and cause us to focus on the sprint and not the marathon of marketing.
How To Manage It
I’ve said it many times: The inside of an entrepreneur’s brain can be a scary place. When your mind is constantly on the “innovate” setting, it can be hard to focus on the priority at hand. To keep you (and your team) sane, hold blue-sky marketing sessions quarterly (or weekly, if need be) to get all those big ideas out of your brain and onto paper. A “holding pen” file or board is a great way to keep track of all those ideas for future execution. Review those at your blue-sky sessions to prioritize next executions and console yourself with the knowledge that your team hasn’t forgotten about all those brilliant ideas.
Being A Risk Taker
Why It Can Be Great
The label “entrepreneur” can sometimes be synonymous with “risk taker,” especially when it comes to budgets. I’ve certainly loosened the reins on our own marketing budget to fund an idea I strongly believed in, even if it seemed off strategy. Our innate belief in ourselves often leads us to have the guts to find those moments when risk pays off in reward.
Because many of us aren’t afraid to take leaps of faith, seldom do we demand that our team or agency connect every dot to show a sale from a single marketing strategy or tactic. (Our tendency to have short attention spans can play into this as well.) Entrepreneurs also tend to be opportunistic, which can lead to lightning-in-a-bottle moments when something off strategy takes hold.
Why It May Not Be
The downside to being a risk taker? Sometimes ideas that seemed amazing can end up draining marketing resources and leading the team down a rabbit hole to nowhere. And those lightning-in-a-bottle moments can make us want to go all-in on a tactic that may not be repeatable or scalable.
How To Manage It
Set aside a slice of the marketing budget for those “I just had an idea” projects so they don’t impede on the resources needed to execute the ongoing strategies and tactics of your marketing plan. And embrace the seemingly outlandish ideas. We’ve seen many of those off-strategy projects take hold and produce results.
In conclusion, embrace all the traits that led you to become an entrepreneur. Just remember that when you put on your marketing hat, lean into the parts of your personality that make you a great marketer, and let others take the lead on the rest.
