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Build with Leila Hormozi
Successful People Have these Traits [TIER LIST] | Spotify Video Exclusive
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Today I'm going to be ranking character traits on a tier list. The characteristics that I'm going to be ranking are ones that will make you a ton of money or just overall make you more successful in life. The first one I'm going to start with is self control. What is self control? It is the ability to delay gratification and resist urges or adverse behaviors. The biggest thing that I see, especially in people that are starting business and people that are new to business, is that they don't have the self control to say no to the fast cash that they could make with opportunities that pop up. And I'll give you a story to kind of help you understand this a little bit more. I have a friend and that friend started in business around the same time that Alex and I did. And that friend was very talented. They had a great skill of not just being a great marketer or a great CEO, but having both of those together. So it's almost like this person was a combination of Alex and myself over the years. I thought that they would be more successful than us at many times. But what I saw is that though he had all of these skills, he lacked the character trait of self control. He indulged in a lot of short term comforts that then derailed him from his long term goal. Had multiple divorces, he ended up cheating on multiple women, he ended up doing a lot of drugs. He had a really successful business. And rather than doubling down on that business, he actually ended up starting four other businesses within the span of 18 months. Where that person is at today, they don't have a business at all. He ended up saying, like, fuck it, I'm over it. Because he was so overwhelmed. The overwhelm was created by things that he could have controlled. And I think it all stemmed down to what we told him, which is just like you're not able to delay gratification. The worst thing that can happen in business is that we get quick wins in the beginning, which then teach us that we don't have to put in the hard work and delay gratifications to get the bigger wins later. Things are gonna happen, we're gonna say this business, I wanna do something else. And the reality is, is that you can't let your emotions of the short term change your entire direction. Logic is a reason not to follow your feelings and it doesn't get rid of them. Like any skill, if you want to increase how quickly you acquire the skill, you would want to increase how quickly you get reinforced for it. So the reason that I feel like I am able to delay gratification is because I do a lot of things to put in place short term reinforcers. For me, if I say my goal is to get acquisition.com to 10 billion and that's the only mark that I am successful, then like how do I feel along the way there Feels like I'm constantly probably losing, but if I and measuring towards that goal then I'm getting constant reinforcement of if I'm going in the right direction or not. The reason I think reporting is so good, especially for entrepreneurs who lack self control, is it indicates to you if you're making progress or not. And a lot of people just need the reinforcement of progress to stick with the path. And so I like to say let's make it as easy as possible for you to be self controlled rather than putting yourself in an environment and gritting your way through it. There's only so much of that that people can do. What, why not engineer it in your favor? I would rank self control at S tier. What is a character trait? I look at them as the foundational skills that we have to learn in order to become the people that we want to be. And I think that they're often the skills that people think are inherent, that we're born with, but they're not. They're skills that are 100% learned. It's not like I came out of the womb knowing time management right, or being patient. What I would love is that at the end of this video, identify what are the top three where I am weakest and that if I worked on those would give me the most progress towards my goals. So the next trait is arrogance. The quality of being unpleasant, unpleasantly proud and behaving as if you are more important than or no more than other people. There is a very common belief amongst new entrepreneurs that many people who are successful are arrogant. The people who are arrogant stand out and get a lot of publicity because they are arrogant. Now would I say that most all leaders who are successful are arrogant? I would say no. They succeed despite being arrogant, not because they are arrogant. And that most likely that person that's arrogant has a pool of people around them that guard them from the rest of the company who are not arrogant. There's arrogance and there's confidence. Confidence, I would say is a character trait that is very important when leading a company because it's very hard to get people to rally behind a cause, behind a mission, if you exemplify nothing but uncertainty. Arrogance, on the other hand, suppresses many other People around them. An example of this is, you know, we had had somebody in the portfolio, had a really fantastic business. We could not for the life of us get anyone to work for this guy. All I heard from everyone was the same word. They said, this guy's an arrogant asshole. That was the biggest impediment to him growing his business. And so I think for a lot of people, they see all of these like big figureheads who act arrogant at times, and they think that that's what I have to act like to get people to respect me. And they misconstrue that with what's actually creating the success, which might be that that person just happened to get lucky and hit the market at the right time. Don't look at the outliers, look at the majority of people running companies. The majority of people running companies don't find success through arrogance. I'm going to rank arrogance at a C and I would say a C and not an F, because there's things that are worse. The next one we've got is empathy. So I would say that it is acting in a way that validates others feelings. It's not that you're feeling what they're feeling. It's that you are acting and behaving in a way that demonstrates to that person that you know what they're feeling. If somebody is telling you something and it's clearly something that's upsetting to them, and I sit there and I go like this, That doesn't come across as empathetic at all. What I'm thinking in my head, I could be like, oh my gosh, this person, like, I feel so bad. Like. But if all that's coming out is like, they would not consider me empathetic. On the other side, if somebody's telling me terrible news, my father just died, I'm crying and I sit on the other side, I go. That comes across as empathetic. A lot of people say, well, Layla, I'm just not empathetic. And I'm like, can you nod your head? Give someone a hug? Smile when they give you good news? Look sad when they give you bad news? The reason this is important to building a great culture is that people want to feel safe. They want to feel like they're not going to get punished for confronting somebody about a hard situation. And the more that you can show that you validate where they're coming from, the better that they will feel coming to you with those things. Leaders that exemplify high empathy have a much more effective high Performing team, because the team trusts them, they feel safe with them, and therefore they will put discretionary effort towards whatever the task at hand is. If you can make someone else's life better through your interactions with them, you should do that every time. And so I think that that is why it's so important to the workplace, is it creates a culture where people aren't going to hide things from you. They're not going to do things behind your back. They're going to be able to constantly bring things to you because they know that they're not going to be punished. So because of that, I would say that empathy is a tier. It's not the very top. Because I think that there are a few things that if you have those traits, which we will get to, will actually supersede empathy. So the next trait that we have is argumentive. Argumentativeness. Argumentativeness, the tendency to argue or disagree or argue with people in an angry way. You can probably think of somebody that's either in your company and works for you or has been in a company that you've worked for before where, like, every time there was something new, they argued about it, right? And because of that, that person stood out in the organization. And. And the reality is, is that over time, what happens is that that person doesn't actually stand out. What they do is that they suppress everybody else and push them down, which creates the illusion of them standing out. Because what happens when somebody displays anger towards others in an organization is that everyone else gets a lot quieter and they stop expressing their opinions. If you display your opinions in a way that is aggressive, you get worse results than you want. And so if you have a team, for example, where there's one person who's always disagreeing, and they're very verbal about it, and you have to be really careful with that, because what's happening is that you trade their one opinion for, like, the six others who are no longer going to share theirs. And I think that a lot of the best ideas come from people who disagree and then can see each other's perspectives, take those into consideration, and then come to a better conclusion. But to be angry and aggressive in your disagreement, I think actually just causes more harm than good. So an example of that would be something that I deal with all the time, which is me and Alex. We disagree on a lot of things. If every time we disagreed, I was like, you, you piece of. Then like, how is Alex gonna feel about being my partner? Right. If every time I disagree with Alex and he's like, you suck. And we're doing what I want to do. And you're wrong. And here's why you're wrong. Maybe 10 reasons why you're wrong. How often do I want to share my perspective with Alex? Not very often. The value of having more than one person in a company is that you have multiple perspectives. And those perspectives combined are often what create the best decision. The best way to disagree with somebody is. Is to state the facts. A lot of times what we do is state the facts plus our feelings. I really try to remove those from my vocabulary when I'm having a discussion about a decision. Oftentimes it just creates another layer of complexity. People are not just talking about the decision that needs to be made, but they're now having anxieties about making someone else feel bad. They're having anxieties about pissing someone else off. And so it actually creates, I think, worse decision making in an organization. And if you feel emotional about something, don't have the conversation until it goes away. Argumentative goodness. I would rank as F tier. I think it's a very punishing experience for other people to have to argue with somebody when we're just trying to get to the same result together. So the next trait that we're going to rank is curiosity. Curiosity is to be curious, to explore and discover, to take an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake. Being curious and open to change is imperative to growing an organization. So I'll give you an example right now. I have a theory for our portfolio of what will make it better. And so what I decided to do was put together an exercise with everybody which was like, what are the unknown or the unanswered questions about the business? You know, the assumptions that we have that are assumptions, they're untested assumptions. And so once we put it all down, it came down to one thing. Should we build or buy certain companies? And the question was like, I don't know if we should build or buy. We've bought a lot of them, but we haven't built them. What it led me to do was to put together a test of building one on our own, which we will deploy next quarter. And that all came from being curious, like, wow, you know, a wonder. You know, we're really great at recruiting talent. We have a ton of CEOs that follow us. We have a huge brand that we can use to push companies like, wow, would it be easier for some companies to start them on our own than to build them? And it was that curiosity that led to that Test. And that test itself is if it works better than our current model, might change the whole trajectory of the business. I would say that one of the advantages you have to bringing new people on the team would be that you can ask them, what looks up here? What big obvious things are we not doing that if we did do, would grow the company further? Most innovation stems from a place of curiosity. Oftentimes in the beginning, entrepreneurs are too curious. It's like everything should change all the time, every other day, versus being curious for the sake of looking for better, faster ways to do things and, and constantly saying, are we playing to our unfair advantage as a company? What are the assumptions that are creating the results I have right now that if I tested, could change the whole business. Just because you find something interesting or you hear about this big new trend, that doesn't mean you should change everything all of a sudden. Any directional change in business warrants a lot of testing and research. You don't want to let curiosity get the best of you, but you want to have a tasteful amount that can drive the business forward. So because of that, I would rank curiosity at an A. And I think I'd probably rank it at an A because I might be so busy paying attention to being patient in the long haul, et cetera, that I can recruit in my leadership team to kind of test assumptions, ask the unanswered questions. So I think that as long as somebody in the company is curious or multiple people are, and they can address the curiosity and test, I think that that's what we want. So the next character trait that we have is unathleticism. I don't think this is necessary to being successful in business. One side effect of people who are athletic as leaders is that it definitely stems down to the team. So, like, I've seen that, you know, I walk a lot, I work out every day, and the people on my team start doing that when they start working for me because they realize, oh, she makes time for it, like, that's okay for me to make time for it. And so I do think that if you are being healthy and just like doing things that are good for your body, generally, other people in the company will do it as well, which sets a great example for everybody. A lot of very successful people definitely don't work out. You know, no judgment from here. If you can eat cookies all day and smoke cigarettes and still build a billion dollar company and love your life, you know, maybe you'll live longer than me. I think it's going to. It's going to go over here. If you don't identify as an athletic person, you can still be successful. So next one we've got is loyalty. I would define loyalty as a person's devotion to a person, thing or circumstance. A lot of the times people are devoted to one of three things. Either the business and maybe like, the financial metrics of it. The employees and wanting to make their lives better, or the clients and wanting to make their lives better. Most of the times the best leaders have loyalty to all three of those parties. If you want loyalty from others, I think that you have to first display that loyalty. For example, there is a company that when we first started working with them, they had such high churn in their team. When I looked at the leader, it was clear that he didn't speak to them in a way that demonstrated loyalty. When something wasn't getting done on time, he might send a message in Slack and say, like, I've got 20 people here. Like, why the isn't this done? Like. And so he had people take clients behind his back, start up their own businesses, like, all sorts of stuff. And he always would get so mad and say, like, I'm just hiring idiots. And I was like, are you hiring idiots or are you creating them? Because the way that we treat people has a consequence, and it's usually the consequence is how they treat us. Your team is just a reflection and so is your client base of the effort that you're putting in. If I ever see a lack of loyalty in the workplace, I asked myself what I've done to cause that in that person. You know, did I ever say something? Did I do something? I think remembering that loyalty is an action. It's to act devoted, to speak in a way that displays that devotion to people. And if we do not exemplify that, then we are not going to get it back from our customers or our employees, and therefore the business won't reflect it either. If you would like to get better at loyalty, I would say act in a way that shows that you are devoted to your employees and customers. You know, talk about what's going to be happening in five or 10 years. Don't talk about the fact that I'm going to fire somebody if I don't get an answer. Loyalty, we're going to rank as S tier. And I ranked it there because I think that loyalty brings continuity to a business both within the customer base and the employee base. And without that, it's really hard to make progress when things are constantly churning out. You have no Compounding effect of the business. The next trait we've got is introversion. Introverts are the people who prefer listening instead of speaking, who innovate and create but don't like self promotion, and who favor working on their own over working in teams. So this came from Susan Cain. It's interesting because I feel violently opposed to the concept of introversion and extroversion. I don't subscribe to these labels. I think that people who are introverted have a preference for being alone. And you probably have preferences to be alone in the context of certain situations and not others. I too like to be alone when I'm surrounded by people. But when I'm around cool ass people, I like to be extroverted. You can still build a business, it just might be harder if you surround yourself who are the opposite. Right? So I know a lot of people who have, for example, software companies and they do no meetings, they only do slack, et cetera, et cetera. I would say that every single person at company identifies as an introvert. They don't like being on meetings, they like working alone, they like being siloed. That works because everybody has the same expectation and the same preferences. Whereas I would probably say that I am more extroverted and I like having a workplace where we are more collaborative, we talk more, we work on teams, we see each other more. Both work and I have seen both create multi billion dollar companies. More companies I have seen be created from people that are extroverted. But I also think it depends on what is your role. You might say that within the context of work, Alex prefers to be introverted because he works in silence, in a closet with no light, with no people. Right. So he likes working alone. But the moment that Alex is done with work, all he wants to do is talk to people. So is Alex introverted or extroverted? Alex has preferences of wanting to work alone because he sees that that produces very good results versus he also prefers to surround himself with people because he has a lot of people he really likes. You know. Whereas I might be the opposite. I like to work around a lot of people because I've also been reinforced for how much more I get done done. The more times I talk to people, the more conversations I have. Whereas after work I might want to be introverted because I'm tired and I want to preserve my energy for the day and get ready for the next day. I don't think that this is like a trait that anybody needs to have or not have. I think you just need to be Aware of. If it's your business, you can do whatever you want. And I think it's also good to be aware of when you hire people, what their preferences are. But in no way do I think that one person is better or worse than the other, whether you're extroverted or introverted for that reason. I think that I don't really think it fits in here. I think this is a preference. I don't think it's a trait. I think it is something that people exemplify from time to time. And there's nothing good or bad about it. It just is what it is. So the next trait that we've got is manipulativeness. Okay, so what is that? It is attempting to influence the behavior or emotions of others for one's own self interest. There's a difference between influence and manipulation. Influence is looking to change someone's behavior for their own interest. The best leaders are great at influence. They ask the person, what do you want? What are your desires? What are your goals? And then they use their influence on that person to help that person achieve those goals. I think that a lot of people are manipulative because they don't have the skill of influence. I think that it takes a more intelligent person to influence people than it does for somebody to scare people. Like, I think about my manager when I worked at Subway, you know, and I remember her yelling at me and telling me she was gonna fire me if I didn't do X, Y and Z. And that's a form of manipulation. She lacked the skill of thinking, is this in that person's best interest as well? And if it's not in this person's best interest, how could I make it so that it is? How could I create a win, win situation? We just got an office, and a lot of people, you know, when they say, like, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna tell people to come in the office? You're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, you're gonna say, if you don't work in the office, then X, Y and Z happens. And I was like, no, I would love people to come into the office. And so if I would love them to come into the office, then I'm going to build an environment that makes it more likely they will come into the office. And then I might get what I want, which is more people in the office, and they might get what they want, which is like a cool place to work with people. They like being around with work environments that they enjoy that make it easier to do their job. The best companies in the world always are thinking, how do I make this a win for everybody? Rather than how do I get this product person to do something for me? So I would say that being manipulative would be enough. When you don't have the skill of influence, you default to being manipulative because you are in a place of authority, and it's a cheap way to get people to do things. Okay, the next trait we've got is bravery. So bravery I would define as confronting difficult challenges, fears, or threatening situations. So I think that bravery is really important to starting a business because essentially, if you're waiting to feel good, you're. You're going to be dead by the time this business starts. If you're watching this, you haven't started a business because you're scared and because your situation is so different than everybody else's. I just want to remind you that it's not and that everybody all has, like, their own thoughts and fears, and they all appear differently in your own head, but they are all the same. And we all feel terrible when we start our business. But I think it's really important when you start the business to confront that, because that's the only way you can get started now as the business continues to grow. The reason being brave is so important is because if you've never had a business that's gotten to this size, then you're constantly in situations you've never been in where it provokes a lot of fear because it's unknown. And fear doesn't have to be like, oh, my God, I'm gonna fall off a cliff, or, oh, my God, someone's gonna die. It could be like, oh, my God, how do I file taxes? It could be like, oh, my God, how do I hire a cmo? And so I think that bravery is a trait of the best leaders. They're able to confront those situations even when they feel scared. I have lots of decisions on a consistent basis. I'm making that freak me out, that scare me. Every day. There's something I'm doing that's provoking a lot of anxiety. But I know that it's making the business better, it's making the team better, and it's making me better. If you want to get better at being brave, what you want to do is celebrate the times that you conquer your fears. And I think that a lot of times, the reason that people have a hard time consistently doing things that scare scare them is they beat themselves up rather than like, yeah, good for you for actually doing the thing. And so I think that the better that you can get at rewarding yourself for doing those things and celebrating when those things are done, the better of a leader you're going to be. And also think about the tone that sets for your team. Nobody's ever going to be perfect. People are always going to make mistakes. But wouldn't you want to congratulate your team when they do something that scares them? You know, treat yourself the same way you would treat them and give yourself a little bit of grace. And I think that you will see it penetrate the organization and lots of people will feel more compelled to do things that scare them. Uncertainty is a condition of business. To try and constantly seek out certainty is just going to slow you down. I would rank bravery as S tier. So the next trait we've got is jealousy. Let's define jealousy. It would be resentment against arrival or resentment against another person or their success in itself. A lot of people say that they're competitive, but they're actually just jealous. I think that jealousy often derails more entrepreneurs than it does help. And I think that a lot of people go one of two ways. Either they're like, feed me the haters and the competition. Like, I eat it up and that's my fuel for everything, right? And then on the other side, people like, I don't look at what anybody's doing. I don't want to look at anybody from the outside because like, it's all in here. I actually have probably been one of each at some point in my life and have come to a middle ground of I look at people who I envy, right? I want something they have as inspiration. Without that person existing, how would I know it's possible? It's like the four minute mile. Nobody even knew it was possible to run a four minute mile until the first guy did it. I have gratitude for people who are ahead of me and who have things, things I want because they show me the catalog of things that are possible and I get to say I would like what that person has and then I get to study how they might have gotten there. Being jealous of somebody is purely a distraction. Why not instead find people that you idolize, who have things you want and then reverse engineer how you might get those things that you want that they have. I think that jealousy has become more prevalent in entrepreneurship because people create a self fulfilling environment that creates their jealousy. You know who you follow on Instagram, the feed that you're scrolling through? I think people have lower resistance in terms of like, they have a hard time not looking at their newsfeed. They have a hard time unfollowing people. They have a hard time not snooping and looking at people's pages who they don't like. If anything makes me feel icky when I consume it or makes me feel angry or resentful, I don't want to look at it. If anything makes me feel jealous, I will make it as hard as possible for me to consume that content. Jealousy in itself. We're gonna rank it F I don't think that on its own is useful, the next one we've got is rigidity. I would define being rigid as refusing to change. I think that there are ways in which rigidity serves us if we want to make progress towards a goal. Once we've defined a plan that can accomplish that goal, to stick to it rigidly until we hit it can help us achieve that goal. When, though we are so rigid that we try to control the situation and circumstances around us, often we become very upset and we can piss ourselves off because we demand things to be a way that they are not a person who decides they want to lose weight and sticks with the plan to get there. Every day they get to the gym at 6am Every day they eat the shake. Every morning they do this. That's great. I think it's good to be like, hey, I'm going to wake up every day at 5am and do this thing. No matter what. What? No matter how I feel, no matter what's going on, I'm going to do it. But what about when you wake up and your kid is throwing up and it's 5am do you have to go at 5am to the gym? You know, or maybe you wake up and you're throwing up. Are you still going to go to the gym? On the other side of rigidity is flexibility. When I think of rigidity, it's like, I have to do all these things in this order at this time, in this way, otherwise I will be upset. Whereas I think flexibility is. I would very much like to do all of these things. When am I going to do them and in what order and at what time, under what circumstances. I will understand that I have a preference for how I would like to get these things done. But it doesn't always have to be at the same time in the same way every day. When it comes to growing a business, it does take a little bit of rigidity in that we want to be persistent in paving a path that allows us to make it as easy as possible to achieve our goals. But when something impedes that path, if we fight it and we fight reality and, like, do everything in our power to get it done, I think we waste a lot of energy that could have been put towards doing something more productive. So for that reason, I would probably put this at a B tier. A little bit can go a long way, but more than a little bit, I think is pretty detrimental to, honestly, just people's stress levels. The next one we've got is gratitude. And I'm actually going to say that the more correct term would be grateful. I thought it was going on the table. Grateful, I think, would be demonstrating a deep sense of thankfulness for a person, a place, a thing, a situation. I think that expressing gratitude toward people that are around you creates a more sustainable work environment. Constantly saying thank you, even though you pay people to do the job, I still think expressing the gratitude to them only creates a positive environment rather than a negative. Showing gratitude is probably one of the best things you can do as a leader. I think it sets the tone for the culture of a team. So showing that you are grateful for people doing things. People do a lot of things on a daily basis when they work in a company that are unrecognized or, you know, they do every day, day in and day out, and it feels like nobody ever notices. And so I think that thanking people for simple things that they do on a consistent basis goes a long way. Because if our work is never rewarded, it gets very hard and arduous to do the work. If you feel like you're not good at that, I think that you have to remind yourself until it becomes second nature. I think that burnout is often the result of not getting any sort of benefit from your work for a long period of time. You know, a lot of people say, layla, I'm feeling really burnt out. I'm like, of course you've gotten no reward for your work, no recognition, no monetary reward. You have. You haven't seen the company grow. And I think that we have to be very intentional about creating an environment where we facilitate the positives. Otherwise, sometimes it can just feel like it's all negative. The only thing that will be there putting you, like, getting you through that time is the things that you put in place to reward you in the short term. Until you can get through that rough patch into a better spot, we will put gratitude on the A tier. So the next one we've got is humor. I would say that it is anything that you do that makes Somebody else smile or laugh. Different people smile or laugh for different reasons. So different people find different things funny. Often what it does is it makes light of a situation, it creates a sense of camaraderie, and it creates an environment where people feel less drudgery. In some of the best CEOs that we've talked to and that we've partnered with, they tend to have a good sense of humor. Humor can balance out the intensity that some very driven people have, and it can bring a sense of relatableness and lightness to the workplace. It can be learned because the way that you learn what is funny or how to be funny is just by the reaction of people. You make a joke, you see if somebody laughs or not. If they don't laugh, you probably don't make that joke again. If you make a joke and people do laugh, you probably make more jokes like that joke. There was one time when I did a speech and I did the same speech in the span of two weeks. I made a joke in the beginning at each event, and at one event the whole crowd died laughing. And so I made a bunch more jokes like that. Whereas at the other event I made the joke and nobody laughed and I was like, oh, fuck. So I didn't make any more jokes. The rest of that speech, I learned that within the context of the situation I was in. This is what these people found funny, and this is what these people didn't find funny. And the same goes for the workplace. I personally like to find what my team finds funny and other people find funny. You know, I just want people to smile. I want them to like working here. I want them to have positive experience. Making someone laugh or smile is a positive experience. And so if you have the ability to make someone's experience working for you better, I don't know why you wouldn't do it. Some of the best leaders that I look up to have a fantastic sense of humor. And it makes me really want to be around them more. I think I will rank it. It's tough. I put it like here. It's like a, A B. It's not like necessary, but I think it's very much a preference when it comes to getting done. The next one is skepticism. Skepticism is the attitude of doubting knowledge claims set forth in various areas. Skepticism is valuable in business. You will probably actually be more right than you are wrong. Somebody who's skeptical. There's 10 situations in front of you say that you doubt all 10 of them. You are going to probably be right nine out of 10 times. But there is going to be that one out of 10 times and you miss that opportunity because you are skeptical. And so I do think that it serves people more times than it doesn't. The question is how do we deploy open mindedness while also being skeptical. And I think that the answer to that, that is to also force yourself to take the red side approach, which is basically be the person that says you're looking at a situation. You're saying like this is why it won't work. Okay, well what I want you to do on the opposite side of that is give me an argument for why it would work. If you can do that and you can balance both sides of the equation, I think that you can really use this to your advantage rather than disadvantage. I think that I would rate it B. I think it's important and useful. I don't think it's going to make or break. The next trait that we are going to talk about is optimism. Optimism is a mental attitude characterized by hope and confidence in success and a positive future. You need a good balance of optimism and skepticism or pessimism. If you go to the extreme and you're consistently optimistic in all situations, I think that you don't take proper measures to prepare for the worst case scenario and then therefore it's a self fulfilling prophecy and you fail. If you're constantly pessimistic and then you might behave in a way that perpetuates nothing ever working. You want to be optimistic about the future and I think that it inspires others. And if other people feel that the leader doesn't believe in the future of the company, then I think that it's very difficult to move people forward. The issue is that I've just seen a lot of new entrepreneurs be overly optimistic, therefore not take the precautionary steps to protect against the downside and then the downside occurs. I actually feel that pessimism is more useful in situations than optimism. Optimism should be embraced once you have taken all necessary measures to protect against the downside and do your homework on the situation to become informed. And the irony of it is the more informed you are, the more you can see reasons why something wouldn't work. But you carry on despite that. And I think that it's more useful to pair the two together if you feel like you're very pessimistic and want to be more optimistic. Deploying a little bit of encouragement, encouragement is probably a great place to start. You can be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. It's a dichotomy to manage. Most people think I have to be one or the other. Whereas I think it's just like what would be more useful given the context of my situation right now. I would say that optimism, I'll put it at a B. I think it's important, but it goes hand in hand with being skeptic. The next trait that we have is initiative. It's really the ability to use your judgment to make decisions and do things without being told what to do. It is important that leaders take initiative, but it's also really hard because I think that it's very hard for somebody to take initiative in a situation that they are new to. Because when you're new to a situation, you have less ability to predict what needs to happen next. Taking initiative results when you have experience in the past in similar situations that you can pull from to then say, this is probably what I need to do next, therefore I, I can do it. I know for me, when I was growing gym launch, like the only way I was able to take initiative is I had people light years ahead of me telling me this is what you want to be doing next. If you don't know how to take initiative, it's probably because you haven't been in the situation for or one similar. And so find somebody who has and get their advice, ask them for help or even just reverse engineer how they got to where they are. I would rate initiative A because I think it's important. Important. The next trait that we have, neuroticism. Neuroticism is a personality trait characterized by sadness, moodiness, emotional instability. So they tend to have like a lot of mood swings. I don't think this trait serves anybody. In business, people create a lot of superstition around being neurotic and how it might drive success. And I think that the reality is that they might not have the skills to not be neurotic. And then they also don't have a reason to acquire those skills because they things are working for them over a long enough time horizon. I have seen it kill more businesses and entrepreneurs than not. I don't think that this is something that leads to success and I don't think it leads to a happy life either. I would probably put that one at the F tier. Not necessary. The last one is creativity. It is thinking of new ways to do things or doing things in a way that hasn't been done before. Typically a creative person generates ideas or concepts that are novel or unheard of. I think that a lot of people Say I'm not creative. Right. They identify that way. But the reality is that they have put themselves under circumstances that make it very hard to be creative. You know, myself, for example, would it be reasonable to think that Layla would be creative if she has 10 to 13 meetings a day, and she does that six days a week and then has all these other things she does in the days in between? Do you think that she has time to think of new ideas? The answer is probably no. So I know for me, if I need to think of new ideas, I have to change the way that I operate, and I have to create an environment that makes it easy to think about new ideas, as in, less on my calendar. I don't think it's a coincidence that Alex tends to be more creative than me when he has much less on his calendar. He has more time to think about new ideas and novel ways to do things. If you want to be more creative, engineer an environment that makes it easy. Go. I would say, like, take two days, go on a trip, get out of the same scenery you're in. Get somewhere that inspires new ideas. Right? Change your stimulus. I think that a lot of people think of new ideas when they have less to do. And so if you want to be creative, make more time for that. I would say that creativity probably goes somewhere around here and say it's between an A and a B. Make more time. So if you're still here, hopefully you can pick, like I said at the beginning of the video, the three traits that, if you acquired those skills, would drive you forward the most in your life and your business and your entire entrepreneurial endeavors, whatever it may be.