About the Author: Gareth Everard is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Rockwell Razors, and has directly raised over $500,000 Rockwell through crowdfunding campaigns. Rockwell has been featured in Forbes, Playboy, and the Globe and Mail, while Gareth has presented at the 2016 Canadian Crowdfunding Summit and the Ryerson DMZ, and has had his writing published in outlets such as VentureBeat.
As a result of starting a business in my senior year of university and subsequently moving into full-time entrepreneurship upon graduating, aspiring young entrepreneurs often ask me about what they need to do to start a successful business. They typically believe my answer will point them to the need to complete a detailed business plan, to run early user-testing to ensure product-market fit, or to securing a certainnumber of paying customers before an official product “launch”. My answer is different than what they’re expecting: the best thing they can develop is their personal character - in preparation for the potential complexities, adversity, and rewards of entrepreneurship.
This answer is understandably surprising, given the plethora “resources” and “guides” from popular blogs and magazines on how anyone can be a successful entrepreneur nowadays. I respectfully disagree with many of these materials – I would argue a new business is highly dependent on a founder’s ability to match their ambition with strong character to point them towards execution of their company’s objectives. My viewpoint is a product of coming up against my fair share of adversity since founding my manufacturing and e-commerce company, Rockwell Razors, during my senior year at Western University. Due to a dishonest supplier and some unexpected manufacturing defects, I shipped a product of inconsistent quality to my first 2500 customers in 2015, disappointing many of those early adopters. This challenge could have easily crippled another startup, but by sticking to points of personal character many new entrepreneurs may find unconventional, I was fortunately able to persevere through these growing pains. I invested all my personal savings in a new manufacturing method, implemented obsessively stringent quality control measures and shipped a free replacement of the end product to those 2500 customers from over 75 countries around the world. Despite the massive personal expense, it didn’t ever feel like there was “another” option – I simply would make it right with every single customer. If you’re curious, you can read Rockwell’s full story on VentureBeat.
Rockwell is now growing rapidly, and one year after graduating with honours from Western University, I have a flourishing business on my hands. The challenges I overcame weren’t a product of simply “drive” or “ambition”, or the other characteristics that young entrepreneurs are so frequently exposed to as determinants of success. As a product of managing a manufacturing crisis for my new company, while writing my undergraduate thesis and studying for exams, I had to learn how to remain calm, composed, and self-controlled. These are all parts of the character component identified as “Temperance”. My newfound stoicism was a direct product of my predicament, but as I reflect on my senior year, I believe the conscious decision to stay calm in an inherently entropic situation was the only reason I got through the school year with passing grades in my classes and my company alive.
As a result of my experience, I was surprised to learn that a study by Ivey Business School found that Temperance was one of the lowest ranked dimensions of character in a survey of employees at North American MNC’s, ranking the perceived importance of the 11 character dimensions. The highest ranked character dimensions from this same study happen to be the dimensions that are anecdotally highly visible in popular literature for young entrepreneurs – Drive, Accountability, and Integrity. The Ivey study concludes by suggesting that modern business leaders consider a focus on character development across the entire spectrum of character dimensions help leaders, and their teams, reach their full potential in the workplace. I would stipulate that this approach also applies to entrepreneurs – a narrow focus on developing few character dimensions will not have as beneficial an effect as a focus on developing a well-rounded character. Temperance is just one facet of a complete character profile, and one that I found particularly relevant to the early stages of growing Rockwell – all the dimensions are complementary and should all be considered when self-examining your current state of personal character development. The full potential benefits of a well-rounded character profile and the full 11 dimensions of character development can be reviewed in this Ivey Business School study.