#4 - A serial entrepreneur journey to success through failures and iterations
In this episode, Greg talks to Enguerran Loos, who founded 3 companies, worked at McKinsey and in Venture Capital. Each step of his career helped him learn about what he really wanted to do and how to make better decisions. This led him to entrepreneurial success.
His journey has had its fair share of ups and downs. Enguerran explains how he bounced from the downs. He also shares that he is proudest of his resilience when facing seemingly insurmountable challenges.
The main topics of this episode are i) knowing and doing what you want to do, ii) a perspective on risk between starting your business and being in a company that may fire you, iii) learnings from starting 3 businesses and iv) failure, resilience, perseverance and iteration.
Below you will find quotes from our discussion.
Listen to the episode here or on your usual podcast platforms.
Key Learnings
Know and do what you really want
“Don't leave sex for the old age. Basically if there's something you want to do, you should do it now. I knew I wanted to start my own business. There was no question.”
“At McKinsey, when you become a manager, you have training sessions with great coaches. We did this exercise where you try to think of what gave you the biggest satisfaction. And you try to see if you can make this a bigger part of your life. And what gave me the most satisfaction at McKinsey was doing recruitments, giving people these opportunities to work in this company, which was an amazing experience for me. And also when I was managing a team, it was helping the people in my team who were underperforming get back on track.”
“It was great to help people improve their career. And it gave me huge satisfaction for the first 30, 40 people I've placed. But there's a point where that kick, that relationship, for me disappeared. So I think that was a huge part of satisfaction to help people succeed when it was, 15, 20% of my job, but that would not be enough to carry me full-time. I had a deeper aspiration around building something.“
“There are people who are going to be very well suited to the professional services business because they love to sell. They love the next contract, the next deal. They don't care so much about the building and that's going to be great business for them. Other people are going to be builders and that type of business is not going to work for them. And you don't learn that at school. I learnt that by starting a professional services business and realized that it was draining me at the end.”
“I was mostly attracted by the ability to build something. When you're like me, I'm not very good with my hands. So I'm not going to be a builder or even an architect. And I think the best thing I can build is a company. It's making a difference, making an environment that's going to serve a purpose. It's going to be a place where people work, which is a big part of their life. And if you do it well, you're going to make people happy, your client, and your team. And leave a mark.”
Perspectives on the risks of starting a business
“At the beginning, it's a bit scary. And then you realize, maybe what's risky is not to take that opportunity and to stay in that job that is going to turn me out after two years and I'll have nothing else to do.”
“People in general get a false sense of security by being employed somewhere, they have a monthly paycheck and they think everything else is being taken care of. It's not at all the case. The company has a bad year, you'll get fired. When you are 50 and they think you're too old or too expensive, you'll get fired and you'll struggle to find something else. If you're a trader, the only thing that you've learned is trading that specific instrument. After 15 years, there's no more trading on that instrument you're out and you've got nothing else to do in your life. There is a feeling when you're an entrepreneur of risk. But very quickly, it's actually lower risk than being at the mercy of someone else who employs you.”
“Then no more boss, no more requesting holidays, no more yearly reviews. You get to spend the time you need to get to manage the team the way you want to manage the team and spend the time and work where you want to work.”
“If you try and it doesn't work out, it's not because you're not good. It might be, but most likely not. It’s probably because there was not the right opportunity and you shouldn't feel bad about it. We need to realize that those who didn't manage to make it, it's not necessarily their fault. That's part of life.”
“Success is easy. it's failure and the downsides that are the hard part. The thing I should be proud of is having gone through those tough parts, where things were failing, regardless of the outcome.”
Learnings from starting 3 businesses
“When I did my first startup, I realized that at 21 years old managing 20 people I was clueless about making decisions and approaching new problems. So after this, I thought: I'm going to try to learn as much as I can. So I went to Venture Capital. I did an MBA in the US. I went to McKinsey. And after 10 years doing this, I felt: Hey, you know what? I've spent enough time trying to learn, now it's time to do something with that learning.”
“It's important to get yourself into the mix. You start a business, you find a topic. It might not exactly work the way you thought about it initially, but you're in the mix. You have the opportunities, you start talking to people and then you adjust, you change a little bit of what you're doing. And then at some point, through iteration, in a lot of cases, a new idea emerges, your positioning and your product. And that thing is going to work. And unless you roll up your sleeves and you get into it, that is not going to happen.”
“When I had client calls I had to hide in the bathroom. That was a tough time because I'd worked for a year on that venture, and I was yet to place my first candidates and make my first pound of revenue.”
“When you start a business, you need a big support network because it's really tough. I knew nobody. I had no friends. My wife was about to take a corporate law job working a hundred hours a week, two young kids. I don't think I was actually set up for success.”
“I think a good support network is people around who will understand what you're going through and probably are going through the same thing or have gone through the same thing. And care about your success.”
Failure, resilience, perseverance and iteration
“I cried a lot when this guy told me that I couldn't place any of these candidates. It happened when I was on holiday. I had a terrible holiday with my wife. The anxiety and distress you work on. You quit your job, you throw yourself in it, in a new country. They slammed the door in your face. From a morale standpoint, you just have to keep going, and things will get better. And they did.”
“The same thing happened: my clients started to tell me: "Hey, actually, we're going to stop everything because we over-hired, because we're going to do it ourselves, because we spend too much money." Except I had a team and that changed a lot. It's a help, but it's also a huge source of stress.”
“I was not in a good place. I was my back against the wall. I started to think: what can I do? I did a couple of interviews, I put my best effort in trying to convince them that I was the right person for the job. I would get out of these meetings with, something stuck in my throat or in my stomach. It just didn't feel right. My body knew that I'd be miserable if I took those jobs, because obviously it was not building a business. It was doubling down on the part of the job that I didn't like.”
“When you end up nowhere to go, you start to try stuff. So I said, okay, maybe I can start this little interview prep business on the side. I'll give it six months. I'll put in a bit of savings. In six months I'll make a decision whether I want to double down on it and go a bit further. I know there's a market already. Established players are already there. Maybe I can do better, but hey, what other options do I have? And then, six months turned into a year and now [after a few more years] we are the leading player.”
“It's helped me having my back against the wall. Sometimes people hesitate about starting their own business because they're not in that situation. You're employed they don't really like the job that much. It's not bad enough so they want to quit. It does help to have the physical "I can't do this anymore" or "you need to find income now". There's a bunch of stuff that are going to give you a kick in the butt and you're gonna go and throw yourself in it.”