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With a self-made net worth of around $2.8 billion, Marc Lore is an expert on building wealth. In a recent interview, he shared three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur who’s interested in doing the same. Here’s what Lore said, as well as some tips for applying his entrepreneurial lessons to your daily life.
1. Become Curious and Resourceful
Lore cites curiosity and resourcefulness as the two traits that have helped him succeed the most. He says anyone starting a business today must show openness and curiosity.
Curiosity drove Lore to embrace unconventional thinking to try to disrupt the status quo. This helped him differentiate his businesses from others on the market — a key step toward building wealth.
Ultimately, Lore recognized that he needed to think outside of the box to achieve the outsize results he wanted. This is something anyone can learn from. If you want to succeed beyond the average person, then thinking like the average person is the worst way to go about it.
But having the curiosity to create something new is just one step. Lore also says entrepreneurs must be resourceful. This means identifying and leveraging your unique strengths. For example, you might excel at creative thinking but struggle with public speaking. If so, you’d want to focus on business opportunities that highly value creative thinking and don’t require much time in front of crowds.
Building a network is another part of being resourceful, according to Lore. He says people should make strategic connections and tap into those networks as necessary. For example, if you have a hard time with public speaking, you might look for a business partner who excels in that area as you build your brand.
Curiosity will help you come up with valuable ideas, while resourcefulness will help you execute them. Lore says you need both to find true success.
2. Prioritize Vision, Capital and People
Next, Lore covers three key factors that have helped him grow his companies over time: vision, capital and people.
Vision is about knowing where you want to go. It means defining your high-level objectives and understanding the framework you’ll need to follow to reach them. For example, your vision might be to start a million-dollar business. Lore says the way you structure the company and the metrics you track should always reflect this high-level vision.
Capital is about securing the finances you need to reach your goals. That might mean attracting outside investors with a persuasive pitch deck. Or maybe you need to develop an internal financial plan to get where you want to go. Either way, Lore says capital should be a primary focus for every entrepreneur.
Finally, Lore recognizes that even the best vision, backed by plenty of capital, can succeed only if it’s executed by the right people. That’s why his final point of emphasis is to focus on attracting and retaining talented people.
For Lore, vision, capital and people are like the three North Stars of building a successful business. If you focus on these three things over time, you’re much more likely to achieve your goals.
3. Trust Your Vision and Act With Conviction
The last piece of the puzzle, according to Lore, is trusting your vision. To him, that means recognizing the value of your product or service and holding onto that belief even when things don’t go your way.
Lore says the success of any business depends on the conviction and confidence of its founder. In other words, you have to believe in what you’re doing before anyone else will. That includes potential customers, partners and investors.
However, the value of your product or service needs to have some basis in reality. It should solve a real pain point for your target audience. Otherwise, you could have all the conviction in the world and still struggle to get people behind your company.
With this final point, Lore emphasizes that success rarely happens overnight. It takes ongoing effort and persistent determination to beat the odds and build a valuable company from the ground up. You’ll need to pursue that goal with relentless effort to truly succeed as an entrepreneur.
