How Great Entrepreneurs Are Built

It starts with making a decision to do things differently. This is a decision to match your outer expressions with your inner experiences. Yes, you may get into trouble for doing this, but do it anyway. The things you say and the things you do need to match with the things you actually believe. Tell your team what you believe not what you think they want to hear. This is not just a situational decision. Make this a daily choice.

This is about serving first and leadership second. You have to make a decision to serve first. Serve others in how you think, speak and act. You have to think of your team more than you think of yourself. I call this servant leadership. I believe servant leadership is how you truly build a high-performance team.

In his 1970 essay The Servant as Leader, Robert K. Greenleaf defines servant leadership as,

“The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served."

I will go a step further. To me servant leadership is not about positions, it’s about your character. You may not like what I am about to say, but I am writing this to me. There is a word of scripture that comes to mind in the book of Ephesians when I think about servant leadership, “Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free.”

I am not suggesting you become a slave of any man or woman. I am suggesting you think of others. As Paul the Apostle writes in The First Epistle to the Corinthians, “Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.”

I believe that’s how great entrepreneurs are built. Decide you’re going to be a human being not a machine. This is more than just deciding to be appropriate and thoughtful in your interactions. Your thinking and behavior need to reveal your humanity. Your heart, soul and spirit. Decide how you’ll show up in business and in your life. Decide that you’ll allow your team to see the real you. Be genuine. Be believable. Be approachable. Be seen. Be experienced. Be human while you go about the business of building your business.

This is a process of finding your authentic voice and using that voice to serve others. I have learnt more about finding my authentic voice from studying big corporate brands. When I think of companies with authentic brand voices, McDonald’s, KFC, Google, Apple, Walmart, and Starbucks come to mind. I know you may disagree with what these companies stand for, but they have fans who believe in what these companies believe.

I don’t know if you remember the 2015 drama over Starbucks’ plain red holiday cups when some evangelical Christians declared the design wasn't "Christmassy" enough. While some people were offended by Starbucks' decision to simplify their red holiday cups and called it a "war against Christmas", a lot of people came to Starbucks' defense including me. Starbucks didn't budge and rightly so. In response to this controversy, Jeffrey Fields, who was then Starbucks’ vice president of Design & Content, said in a statement. "This year (2015) we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories."

If it was part of Starbucks' values to have inclusive stories then they made the right call by changing the design of their holiday cups. Most people disagreed at the time, but I was a fan and I was rooting for them. I still do. It’s because companies like Starbucks have taken the time to define their brand’s values. They are not perfect, I know, but I respect how focused they are on creating an authentic emotional connection with their audiences.

You also have an audience as an entrepreneur. That audience is your team. It’s unfortunate that as entrepreneurs we don’t take the time to define our values. Your values are your voice. Your values are how you make an emotional connection with your team. It’s the emotional connection you make with your team that truly defines the authenticity of your voice. I believe what you need most as an entrepreneur to get big things done is not another social media campaign or some clever marketing techniques. You need to find your authentic brand voice. You need to start telling your team what you truly believe. These questions may help you.

Who are you, really?

What do you care about the most?

What is important to you?

McDonald’s, the fast-food company helped me answer these questions early in my self-discovery journey. Most people get really surprised when I tell them one of my favourite companies in the world is McDonald’s. That's because most of what I have learnt about finding your authentic brand voice has come from studying this company.

In 2014, I was struggling to find my authentic voice as a young entrepreneur so I did a little research on McDonald’s and discovered that according to the 2014 Authentic Brands report by global communications and public relations agency Cohn & Wolfe, McDonald’s was ranked number one on their Top 20 list of the world’s most authentic brands. I wasn’t very surprised when I read this because McDonald’s had managed to create emotional connections with its audience by communicating honestly about its products. A case in point is the McDonald’s Canada’s Our Food, Your Questions campaign in 2012 in which the company answered consumer-submitted questions about its products.

In one of the videos released as part of this campaign, McDonald’s Canada showed how their Chicken McNuggets are made. While there was some controversy around this campaign, I think many critics were missing the point. By launching this campaign, McDonald’s was not trying to say that their Chicken McNuggets or any of their offerings were a healthy food and that we should be all over them. They were simply saying healthy or unhealthy, that’s up to you, but here is who we are. And that’s what having an authentic brand voice means to me – not being afraid to show who you are even if that might offend other people.

I dug deeper at the time and found out that these brands also made it to the Cohn & Wolfe's 2014 Top 20 Most Authentic Global Brands List, Apple, Samsung, KFC, Walmart, Google, IKEA, and Starbucks. It’s not that McDonald’s, Starbucks, KFC or any of these brands are really, really real. What’s real are the experiences and the connections that these brands have allowed their audiences to make.

I believe at the end of the day that having an authentic voice is not about being perfect. It’s about being responsive and transparent. No entrepreneur, business or brand is immune to a crisis, but history has shown us time and time again that those brands that act with honesty and integrity recover faster and are more respected by consumers than those that don’t. In fact, across all 12 markets surveyed by Cohn & Wolfe in 2014, authenticity in business was far more superior than product utility or innovation. I know it’s 2025 and I believe authenticity is more important now than ever. In his 2022 article on Forbes.com, Keith Nealon, CEO of Bazaarvoice, a leading provider of product reviews and user-generated content (UGC) solutions, noted that authenticity is now the most important asset a company can possess. In other words, it doesn't matter how innovative you are, if you are not being perceived as authentic, you are in trouble.

You too can learn from the brands above as an entrepreneur. If you want to truly elevate your business and your team, you need to be perceived as being authentic. The global marketplace has become noisy and crowded. Your brand voice and its authenticity are prerequisites to becoming a great entrepreneur and building a high-performance team around you. Whether you are just starting out as an entrepreneur, or you already have a voice in the marketplace, this applies to you.

If you are ready for more in your business and in your life and want help finding out who you truly are as an entrepreneur, what you want and how you’ll get there, book a free consultation call with me. I promise, you’ll feel better after our call. You’ll know how it feels to build your business differently and pursue the right goals. You’ll stop wasting your time on people who don’t value you or people you can’t make a difference to.