Secrets of Online Entrepreneurs: How Australia's Online Mavericks, Innovators and Disruptors Built Their Businesses ... And How You Can Too

CHAPTER TWO PEOPLE

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

Andrew Carnegie

What do all great online entrepreneurs have in common?

This chapter explores the people behind the business, and why they can bring an idea to life and turn it into a multimillion-dollar business while others, equally intelligent and equally capable, struggle to get an idea off the ground. What is it about these entrepreneurs that separates them from those who haven't succeeded?

We take a look at the personal philosophies that underpin their management strategies, their values and their personal mission statements on the way things should be done. We look at how they cope with stress, email overload, failure, setbacks and rejection, and how they keep on keeping on when everything feels like it's falling apart. I wanted to know what worries them, and how they deal with the 3 am terrors — when they wake wondering if they can really get up and go through it all again.

I wanted to know who and what inspires them, what they regret, and why and, if they had their time over, what they'd do differently.

‘It's easy for them'

When outsiders look in on the lives of successful entrepreneurs and see them feted at award ceremonies, in the media or at gala events, the perception is often, ‘Well, it's easy for them to succeed — they had contacts, money, experience, education'. But from my research, that's often not the case. We can sometimes rationalise ...