Being generic gets you nowhere, even if you’re giving away seemingly valuable information
Tell us a little bit about your current projects. What exciting milestone would you like to share with our readers? (Don’t hesitate to delve into your achievements, they will inspire the audience)
Alexander Moen: McSmartyPants Software just recently launched on August 2nd, 2021. This project was about 14 months in the making. It required more thinking and know-how and resources than any of my previous endeavors. But, the market need is tremendous and it is exciting to see this grow. Product managers and entrepreneurs and managers at small to midsized businesses simply don’t have this kind of tool available, so it is really exciting to bring something brand new to the table.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up?
Alexander Moen: One of my early entrepreneur hard times came about in the middle of what seemed like an amazing success. I had a company that went from 0-30 employees and $0 to $130k per month in that same time frame, with no outside funding. I just kept reinvesting every spare penny it made back into itself and brought great people onboard as we expanded. I was very much caught up in the 24/7 hustle mentality and literally, every waking moment was geared to making that company work.
However, I found out the hard way that personal limits exist, both for myself and for my employees. The expectations of myself (16+ hours working per day, no days off) started pouring into my employees and a breaking point was reached. The initial enthusiasm of the team was replaced with a feeling of drudgery and low energy. I burnt my team out and then doubled down on my own efforts to try to rebuild a team, but I had reached my limits as well. We went from amazing rocketship to crash landing in a year’s time. But, I learned quite a lot. Don’t just know your limits, but also understand that taking time off can actually make you more productive.
Your physical, mental, and emotional states are key to driving your business. I believe that each person has a different balance (mine still tends toward the workaholic side, but not as heavy), but know that balance and treat your body and brain and emotional states as something that is important. Your body and brain are the only tools that you really have to accomplish everything that you are after, so get to know those and support those to make the most out of what you have in business and in life.
What are the most common mistakes you see entrepreneurs make and what would you suggest they do?
Alexander Moen: People get too caught up in making money or in what other people are doing. I think you’ll be far more likely to achieve success if you focus on the intersection of these 3 points:
What are you passionate about that makes you want to work hard and learn more? Passion alone isn’t enough. It needs to fuel you. You need to put in way more time, both in the short-term and the long-term, to accomplish your goals.
What do people value? People give you money because they derive some sort of value from what you are giving. The deeper and wider your value-giving capabilities, the more money you will make. Don’t think about the dollars themselves- think about the value to others that is so strong that they will crack open their wallets for it and not think twice.
What are you comparatively good at? There’s lots of talk about just comparing yourself to yourself, but that’s somewhat naive in my opinion. If everybody is better at something than you, then you’re really in for a rough time. What skills and capabilities that you have that are relatively effortless that you can still push and develop? We each have our own unique strengths, we just need to be objective about it and double-down on those strengths and build around them.
If you find the overlapping area between all 3 of those, you will do well. It’s just a matter of time.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Alexander Moen: Rather than define resilience and making that the key focus, I’d like to propose a better word: Anti-fragile. Resilience implies that you just get worn down by adverse events at a slower pace. Anti-fragile, however, is a word that means when you are exposed to adverse events you actually become stronger. Everybody has their problems, but most people look at them from the perspective that it is a struggle to get through and that hopefully, you’ll have the energy to do so.
Instead, look at it from the perspective that absolutely every problem you have on your journey is one that your competitors have as well. Once you overcome that, you will have learned a valuable skill that they do not possess. This will make you much more valuable. The more obstacles you encounter and master their solutions to, the better. The obstacle is the way.
When you think of your company, 5 years from now, what do you see?
Alexander Moen: McSmartyPants Software will be a full two-sided platform. On one side, we will have over 100,000 product lovers and purchasers that just love seeing future products being built and that want to be a part of evaluating and guiding things that they’d like to have in the future. These product lovers will be across multiple industries. That alone is a huge draw for the other side of our platform: the companies and people launching products who want that market feedback mechanism as they buy.
In 5 years we will have more data about product-market fit than any company in the world. With tens of thousands of products, hundreds of thousands of evaluators, and the power of hindsight, our big data for successful product launches will be at a point where it can discover and create products and measure product success potential all on its own. It’ll be a full-blown AI system for product launches with a depth that is hard to fathom for many right now.
Delegating is part of being a great leader, but what have you found helpful to get your managers to become valiant leaders as well?
Alexander Moen: Too many people in management positions are administrative, check-the-box managers. We need more valiant leaders that are also able to emotionally inspire and emotionally connect with people. Having a well-written operational plan that any skilled employee can follow is great and needed. But, having people underneath you that are stoked about your company and you and would buckle up and go to war with you, that’s just a whole other level. Valiant leaders that can take care of their people are the ones whose people will take care of them.
What have you learned about personal branding that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Alexander Moen: Being generic gets you nowhere, even if you’re giving away seemingly valuable information. We are at a time where information is everywhere and we’re actively taking measures to avoid it. Develop a following that is based around a few core niche ideas that people care about and you’ll be much better off. You might think you’re missing opportunities by niching down, but it’s the opposite. You don’t realize how big your niche might be and how refreshing a non-generic voice is in this world. Also, once you start developing this, work on it constantly.
Nobody accidentally builds a community around them. They consistently show up and make it a part of their focus. It takes a long time until you get noticeable results, but it’s worth it.
How would you define “leadership”?
Alexander Moen: Do people actually care to follow you? Do they tell you that you’re a good leader? If not, you’re probably just a manager or are disconnected from reality. You can’t lead if nobody follows. I would define good leadership as leadership that pulls people to you, rather than pushes them. Pulling is motivating. Pulling also takes a lot of energy on the end of the leader.
I believe this is very close to the idea of servant leadership as well. People want to be motivated. People want to be trusted. People want to do well. If you’re a person that can help deliver on those in the long run and they recognize you and your efforts have made a difference to that end, then you’ll be an actual leader.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Alexander Moen: Follow the triple venn diagram of success that I mentioned earlier:
- Find something that people value incredibly
- Find something that you’re passionate about that makes you both work hard and want to continually better yourself at
- Find what you’re comparatively good at
It’ll probably take lots of interviews with those close to you and the marketplace in general to find the answers to #1 and #3. And, it’ll probably take lots of introspective time to figure out #2. If you have no experience to figure out #2, find the answers to #1 and #3 and then try a bunch of things and gauge how you feel afterward. Also, I think that younger entrepreneurs really underestimate how hard and how long you have to push at something to make it work. If you find yourself testing a lot of things for #2, you really need to give yourself at least 6 months on something to know the area and yourself well enough to succeed.
And, that 6-month session will almost certainly not be very fruitful, but at least you have a baseline to compare future things too. If you’re prepared to do this for years on end, you have a great entrepreneurial mindset and will succeed in the long run. Just be prepared for the long-run success taking longer than you think.
What’s your favorite “life lesson” quote and how has it affected your life?
Alexander Moen: I had the good fortune to be mentored in my younger days by a multimillionaire who was in his early 20s at the time. One thing he said to me will always stick with me: “you can either let your emotions create your actions or let your actions create your emotions.”
When he said this, it was in response to the idea of working hard and being motivated. He was a very hard worker, but his mentality was that if you just wait around to “feel motivated” you won’t do as much as you need to do. But, if you can discipline yourself and take action regardless of how you feel, then you will make progress. And, ironically, when you start seeing that progress and start doing those actions, your body actually starts to feel motivated.
This interview was originally published on ValiantCEO.
