North East insights – Entrepreneurship

My name is Johnny Grubin. I'm the founder and CEO of SoPost. So, SoPost has been around for about 10 years now and everything that we do is really focused on creating technology products to help brands run really powerful product sampling campaigns online. I ended up starting my first business kind of by accident. It was a hobby. You know, I taught myself how to make websites. I was designing wallpapers and screensavers for my first mobile phone. And off the back of that, it sort of opened up into various opportunities for me to try and do other things. And then, you know, a few years later, next thing I know, oh, I've got all these different startups that I'm involved with. So that's sort of the reason, you know, it wasn't a conscious decision of saying, oh, I'm going to go and do this with my life. It was more just doing the things that I enjoyed, taking opportunities where I found them, and then suddenly being like, oh. People who have big dreams, which might sound very cliched, but, you know, they've got this vision of where they want the world to go or something that they want to create. And they really find ways of getting there. You know, I think one of the most important things to recognize, actually, not just as an entrepreneur, but frankly, as anybody, is that the world really doesn't owe you anything. And those entrepreneurs who have achieved the greatest successes and the ones who, you know, I look at and take a lot of inspiration from are people who recognize that there's no entitlement to any of this stuff. And if I want to have something or I want to do something, I myself need to find a way to make that happen. So it's, that real sense of direction, but also, you know, pragmatism about saying, well, I know where I'm trying to go, but let's try to navigate and find the path of least resistance. That's been something that I've, I guess I've really had to learn. You know, Seropost today is about 80 people, which is the biggest company I've ever been in. But when I started it, it was obviously just me. And I've really learned over the years, what the role of the leader looks like. And it's very different for different people. I've found the most important thing for me is actually being able to go out and find incredible talent who I can work with and surround myself with, because there are so many different roles here. And everyone in the company performs those functions much better than I ever could. And actually, the most important role of the leader is to go out, find that amazing talent, bring them on board, inspire them, and really allow them to do their best work. I think there are a lot of things that entrepreneurs, good leaders need, which you probably can't train those things. You know, it's around resilience and pragmatism. And if I think about myself, and I look at where I am today versus when I was starting out, I'm much more developed in those areas. But that's not been through a traditional educational route. That's more been through the, I guess, the school of hard knocks, you'd call it and doing stuff and taking things as they come. So I don't know if that really answers the question. I think there are certainly a lot of good things that you can learn. And on the core business side, everything related to budgeting or cash flows or whatever, that's really important. But I think the essence of what entrepreneurship is, I think you only get that from doing stuff and carving your own path. It's all about people, ultimately. Meet as many people as you can, create as many opportunities as possible. You know, ultimately, there's nothing special about me. You know, I'm no smarter than anybody else. I'm no better to anybody else. But I think one of the reasons why I've been able to get to where I am is because I've created so many opportunities for myself and I've probably put myself in positions where I've allowed good things to happen more than perhaps other people have. So, you know, I'd say be curious, create the opportunity for opportunity to happen, but also be pragmatic and choose the path of least resistance with what it is that you're doing. Probably not to take it too seriously. When I launched my first business, I was doing it all from behind the computer. So the people I was working with didn't know that I was 14. But I kind of built this other person. You know, I wasn't 14-year-old Johnny, I was 30-something-year-old entrepreneur. And it took me a long time to actually just embrace myself in the world of work. And today, you know, the Johnny-you-get-it-so person, the Johnny-you-get-at-a-football-game-on-the-weekend is exactly the same person. And, you know, I think that's what I tell myself when I was 14. You don't need to pretend to be someone else. And actually, if you can be your true authentic self all the time, not only will you be happier, but also people just like that. People like it when people are themselves. You don't need to pretend to be somebody you're not.