The Heart and the Hammer
When you are grounded, believing you can compete in the realms of greatness is audacious. Think about it....the odds are astounding: First Round Capital tells us that the chances of becoming a billion dollar startup are just 0.00006%.
Yet, having this intrinsic belief that we can achieve beyond measure is at the very core of what great startups are built from.
Some startups are bred from greatness, with serial entrepreneurs as founders and funding amounts that set the stage. Others, like the underdog, undersized thoroughbred in the picture above (btw...can you guess who it is?) are born with something else -- heart. As entrepreneurs, we talk about "culture" a lot ... but really culture is just a synonym for shared passion amongst a group of individuals. There is nothing that can create greatness without passion and there is no passion without meaning and there is no meaning without mission.
"Why are you here? What does it mean to be great?"
Communicate that answer to your team on a weekly basis. If they don't understand what you, as the founder, believe, then you're all just working for a paycheck. Do they realize how special it is what you are building? How it change lives in ways big and small. That their contributions to a team goal will lead them to far more individual fulfillment than imaginable.
Pounding away with a hammer is necessary to get the job done, but the audacity to #HOPE is what creates outliers. Hope sounds easy, but you are the underdog and you know it.
Don't let that stop you though because hope is contagious...
Give your team the hope to think different.
Give your team the hope to stay hungry.
Give your team the hope to be foolish.
All they need is someone to believe in them - and it starts with you.