An inside look at entrepreneurship with Jared Lafitte, Founder of Lafitte Coaching and The Human Culture Movement. As a nationally recognized speaker, consultant and personal coach, Jared helps individuals and organizations build cultures that drive engagement, productivity and profitability. He's logged thousands of hours of coaching and spoken to over 15,000 people across the country since 2009, including work with Fortune 500 organizations.
What was the “aha-ha” moment that lead you to become an entrepreneur?
When I moved to Louisville for graduate school in 2008, I realized that I would need to be able to generate a large amount of income in a small amount of time in order to allow time for my studies and professional growth. Working minimum-wage jobs wasn't going to cut it, and I realized I could leverage my teaching background to build a company from scratch that had higher potential. It was a big risk for someone who had moved to a new city with no connections at all, but I have sold hard and built a company one phone call and email at a time. That's the heart of entrepreneurship, I believe: building a life for yourself and others based on an ever-increasing value you can provide, and fully accepting the risk of the process. I don't know if I ever had one lightbulb moment that pushed me toward entrepreneurship, but I do remember feeling around age 21, when I was graduating college, "I'm either going to build my own future with some risk involved (that's what the word "entrepreneur" literally means!) or I'm going to be working under someone else's structure with heavy parameters on what I can do and become." Choosing the latter was a no-brainer for me, and I've been self-employed my entire adult life. I've taken some pretty big risks and had some truly amazing experiences, learning as I go along. It's all been pretty surreal.
What was your toughest obstacle as an entrepreneur and what did you learn?
One of the biggest lessons I've learned in the past decade of entrepreneurship is that good can be as much an enemy of great as anything else. I've had periods where I've gotten excited about doing a few projects I knew I'd be pretty good at doing, and I invested time, energy and resources into them, but soon realized that I could have been doing something else even better with those investments. Doing four or five things that you're very good at doing can take you away from doing one or two things that you're great at doing. As an entrepreneur, you're competing with other people who are equally good as you in a lot of areas, and if you really want to rise to the level of thought leader and do world-changing things, you have to be willing to forgo a lot of things you're very good at doing so you can focus on the one or two things you're able to do better than almost anyone in the world. Success is often a strategic trail of "no"s.
How do you define success as a social entrepreneur?
Success is doing what you're meant to do. That's quite a simplification, but I believe it encompasses a lot. There are plenty of people who achieve much of what the world would consider success in terms of money and fame, but they're deeply dissatisfied and searching for thrill after thrill to fill a void. And then, there are those who don't quite match up to the world's definition of success but live each day with a deep sense of gratitude and fulfillment as the impact lives and do exactly what they want to do and are meant to do. Who is more successful? To have a deep sense of freedom, purpose, fulfillment, relationships, and vision, encapsulates success in my mind.
How important has flexibility been in developing your venture?
Flexibility has been enormously important for me. I am a true right brainer and am definitely not one for operating inside a heavy amount of structure. Sometimes this hurts me, but most of the time this helps me develop my best content and generate breakthroughs with clients and organizations. I give myself a good deal of structured freedom for creating the content, systems and training my clients need. Some people function very well planning their days down to 10-minute increments, but that will never be me personally.
What is your best tip for entrepreneurs?
Don't attempt to become an entrepreneur because it seems like a sexy or hip thing to do. It's incredibly hard work, a brutal lifestyle, and something that will absolutely stretch you to your breaking point. I know that language seems big and grandiose, but it's not an exaggeration. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be truly convicted about what positive impact and changes you want to make in the lives of others through your product or service. If that conviction isn't there, you will burn out, guaranteed. If you want to become an entrepreneur solely for the purpose of making money, you're doing it for the wrong reason and probably won't make any. Also, you have to know who you are. Not everyone is built for this life. I personally believe that entrepreneurs are more made them they are born, but that doesn't mean that your nature and make up plays no part in the process. It's not something that simply anyone can do if they just hustle hard enough. You have to know yourself.