What every successful entreprneur must do: bag groceries

In both my academic and entrepreneurial endeavors, I am constantly trying to identify the traits that make a successful self-starter — a critical skill in unstructured environments such as a research lab or startup. A common heuristic most people use when hiring talent is past success. Showing someone one you have been moderately successful in the past gives them some confidence you will replicate that success in the future. For instance, many professors wouldn’t take on student researchers until they complete a course with them and score a high grade. However, I found this heuristic to be suboptimal. Instead, what I focus on is a candidate’s ability be the best at something.

This is somewhat counter-intuitive, especially for startups where you are advised to find someone who can wear multiple hats within a rapidly growing organization. However, in certain domains, the most successful people are those that can become experts at one thing. Because if you can prove that you are an expert at something, the odds are extremely high that, in the proper conditions, you could become an expert at something else.

Think about it. The best graduate students are those who by the time they graduate they are the #1 expert on a certain topic — more of an expert than their advisor or colleagues. The most successful entrepreneurs are those that become intimately knowledgeable about their market, customers, and larger trends. More so than their investors, competitors, and board members.

When I was an undergrad in NYC, I worked as a bagger at a local supermarket. I had a co-worker named Muhammed. He was a short and stocky middle-aged man and wore one of those lower-back-supporitng belts, possibly because he lifted weighted when he was younger. The belt doubled as a pouch to store all sorts of fun stuff (it was his Batman belt of sorts). Muhammed was a longtime employee who used the same joke with every customer at checkout: “Since you’re my favorite, I’ll give you a free receipt — don’t tell anyone!” While you might not look up to a “longtime” cashier, Muhammed was an expert at saving customers money. Anytime a customer checked something out (even when he was not working at the register) he would immediately identify items that were on sale and would whip out a coupon for that item from his Bat Belt. That’s the kind of skill that is extremely hard to find. If I ever wanted to hire Muhammed, my main challenge would be to put him in a role that brought him the same amount of joy as “couponing” did. But for whatever it’s worth, Muhammed taught me how to be an entrepreneur by quietly, humbly, and relentlessly becoming the best at something.

So what does does it take to become an expert: humility, resourcefulness, and focus. But these will have to wait for another post…

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