Growth in Entrepreneurship

What do you think ‘fail fast’ means? Every entrepreneur experiences the wild rides of ups and downs and the in-between of growth. But diving deeper, how much do you recognize the growth that you’re experiencing? What are the failures that are going to push you closer to the successes?  

On today’s episode of Making Bank, our guest is Anthony Sarandrea. He specializes in the financial services space and runs a team that drives over a million-customer search year. He seeks to better understand the deep, psychological levels of why people use certain products, spending an hour each week speaking to customers about their lives and motivations. 

Anthony talks about the benefits of mentorship, how it’s both important to the individuals involved. He also discusses the ways of growth, how people can take failures and turn them into their strengths.  

Mutual Benefits of Mentorship 

Having a mentor is huge for growth and gaining new experiences. You can experience just your lessons, or you can learn your lessons AND gain even more knowledge from what other people learned. There’s a balance of teaching yourself and going to others when you need it. It doesn’t make you any less of a businessman.  

Using people as resources is not only a great tool, but it allows you to further connect you to the world of entrepreneurship. Learning from the best of the best in one way, but also learning about what didn’t work for others is important too. There are different stories to be heard, and you can only benefit from gaining knowledge mentors wish they knew earlier.  

Anthony knows the feeling. When he was a mentee, he felt like a leech. People taught him so much, and he was just taking it all in, not giving anything in return – or at least that’s what he thought. Until he realized when he was a mentor, how important it is to teach and help other people learn the things you learned.  

Anthony says, “and so anyone listening, who doesn’t have a mentor, maybe scared to reach out to some, realize the value you’re bringing to someone in that mentee role are you bringing purpose to that mentor.” Mentors can be found in books, in videos, on websites, in coaches. It doesn’t always have to be an obvious person – it can truly be anything because at the end of the day, it’s a human behind the book, it’s a man in the video.  

Nowadays, digital mentors are available. You can talk on the phone with someone, you can ask them questions and you’ll get real-time responses. It can be personal despite the technology barrier. There is so much access to people and experiences, use it.  

Correlation Between Failure and Growth  

In business, you deal with people beyond just mentors and mentees that can help you grow and succeed in business. You also have to work with individuals that are helping you run your company. How you handle them has an impact on your relationships with the people working with you, and the company itself.  

It’s okay to accept failures and mistakes. A business is bigger than the individual. You’re not perfect, why expect someone else to be? Humans are going to fail no matter how hard they try not to. Reacting to failure and moving on is where the growth happens.  

When a situation arises with someone, Anthony says, “You have two sides of the coin to look at it. And oftentimes, the more surface level of getting mad and reprimanding that individual does not yield you…Are you hiring the right people that are going to be there for 5, 10 years, or is it a revolving door.” 

These people that are working for you or that are working with you ARE your mentees. What do you need to do to step up and allow people to experience growth, giving them the resources, they want and need?  

Growth is not immediate. It requires patience and goes back to how you handle failure and how you react to other people’s failures. Pushing growth to happen too fast can in turn cause failure. Anthony talks about “fail fast.” This is his mantra, where when you fall on your face you get back up and try again. And you do it by going through your growth, learning your lessons, and improving on things you’ve noticed.   

You have to take steps to the top – you can’t start with something too big or too perfect. “We’re focused on this a lot of the time. I think entrepreneurs get stuck on the zoom in.” Wanting to start at the top eliminates any ideas that could be successful. Because starting at the top means you’re basing your idea off of what is already working – and that is limiting the potential growth.  

“I’m not worried about if it’s going to fail, whatever the risk is, just go after it and do it,” Anthony says.  

In business, the scary parts are the parts that make it all worth it.