Entrepreneurial Profile - Scott Griffiths, 18|8 Hair Salons

In this second of my entrepreneurial profile series I’m going to profile Scott Griffiths, a buddy and enterprise colleague from my executive MBA plan at the UCLA Anderson organization college.

My last profile was of Matt Remuzzi, owner of CapForge.  Matt is a quiet, thoughtful, understated man with a dry wit, a very good listener who generally opines when he feels he has one thing essential to say.  In contract to Matt, Scott is a lively, gregarious, boisterous man given to loud aloha shirts and lengthy sea, interesting stories.  My level in drawing this distinction is that I’ve noticed all types of personality sorts in productive entrepreneurs, from introverts (on the Myers Briggs scale I go as far on the introverted scale as it goes) to extroverts, charismatic revenue individuals to people with various degrees of Aspergers syndrome.

Scott has been an entrepreneur for nicely over twenty many years. He has a quite powerful advertising and product sales background, and his newest and most productive gig has been as the co-founder of the 18|eight chain of men’s hair salons.  Scott started this venture in 2001 right after the MBA system and had a series of problems and setbacks, but his business has dramatically taken off by means of his choice to group with a franchise group and franchise out his companies.  In 2013 his goal was to promote thirty franchise retailers and he doubled that objective by offering 60 merchants.  In buy to begin this business Scott invested his retirement money and did a close friends and household fundraising.

Like nearly every entrepreneur, Scott has had his successes and failures.  His successes have included the 18|eight idea and execution, the Mitch for Guys brand, the Crystal Cruises brand, and the Vertu brand for Nokia.  His failures have included a microbrew known as Rhino chasers.  He had clear lessons discovered from this failure, nevertheless, and notes that the speedy growth of the Rhino Chasers brand triggered him to burn up via all of his friends and household funds and go to a Venture Capital company for money.  The VC firm demanded that he place in an “MBA CEO”, who very rapidly drove the company into bankruptcy, a story that I have heard from several entrepreneurs more than the many years.  This failure prompted Scott to go to the UCLA plan and get an MBA, to which he attributes significantly of his reason for accomplishment in his most current venture.

Scott is a brand and marketing guy by nature, but also counts as his core strengths a robust correct-left brain balance, (he describes this idea in his guide “Beyond Genius”), his tenacity, the capability to visualize one thing in his head as well as the information of how that picture will perform out in time, a “strong enough” capability in finance and math to be capable to construct numbers all around situations, the ability to articulate these situations in a compelling way to others, and the capability to stimulate and orchestrate other people.

His weaknesses are typical of a lot of entrepreneurs I’ve met.  In his words he “doesn’t endure fools”, can be impatient and arrogant.  Numerous successful (and unsuccessful) entrepreneurs I’ve met have these same weaknesses, although many would not label them as weaknesses.

With respect to his success with the 18|eight brand, Scott credits currently being a pupil of Starbucks and Apple – he tries to emulate and bring characteristics of people icons into 18|eight, specifically Steve Jobs’ layout genius and Howard Schultz’ revenue and advertising genuis.  Scott states that “Jobs was a enormous fan of style ‘design helps make a difference’, and that Schultz practices “retail and detail” to develop a merchandise that is better than the sum of the components, generating an expertise all around a commoditized cup of coffee.  Scott credits his success with 18|8 with emulating the two of those iconic firms.

“Men shouldn’t be going to a women’s salon” – with that as a premise, Scott came up with a organization idea.  “A guy spends $ 40-60 every single two-3 weeks to go to a women’s salon and really do not want to be there, so I decided to conceive what a guy would want to locate in an best men’s salon.”  Scott invested 10 many years creating and proving his notion, and the final couple of years perfecting the model for franchising.  Howard Schultz continually looked at the buyer knowledge and enhanced upon it, a practice Scott also emulates.  Scott’s self stated fashion of entrepreneurism is to create a brand. He started out doing this as a advisor, made the decision that he desired to do it for himself, and now has had a amount of successes and setbacks in the approach, and a very profitable ongoing enterprise.

In future blogs I’ll concentrate on other entrepreneurial profiles.  My purpose in carrying out this is to give enough examples to aspiring entrepreneurs to inspire them to comply with their own ideas to produce their own organizations.

Entrepreneurial Profile - Scott Griffiths, 18|8 Hair Salons

Could Your Entrepreneurial Passion Put You At Greater Chance of Burnout?

While some people picture that self-employment includes producing tons of income from a tropical seaside with a laptop, most entrepreneurs find the actuality is very distinct. Being your very own boss implies much more obligation, much more function, greater monetary danger, and no paid vacations.  .

The long hours, continuous tension, and lack of help sometimes lead to an entrepeneur’s eventual downfall. A analysis review published in the Yearly Evaluation of Psychology defined burnout as getting characterized by these 3 dimensions:

one. Exhaustion – Exhaustion is described as the inability to give to other folks on an emotional level. When individuals feel emotionally exhausted, they come to feel like they’ve place their heart and soul into their function and have practically nothing else to give.

2. Cynicism – Cynicism refers to feeling emotionally distant or detached from what’s going on. Passion turns to apathy when men and women really feel burned out.

3. Inefficacy – Incompetence and decreased productivity turn out to be evident when an individual is struggling from burnout. When duties consider longer to full, pressure increases and the dilemma perpetuates.

one. Frenetic Burnout – People struggling from frenetic burnout work prolonged hrs. They may be incredibly ambitious and struggle to separate perform from perform. Men and women who operate more than forty hrs per week – and nearly each entrepreneur I know performs way a lot more than that – are 6 times more most likely to build frenetic burnout.

two. Beneath-Challenged Burnout– A boring, monotonous occupation can lead to under-challenged burnout. Folks who function in administrative or providers staff are 3 times much more probably to expertise this sort of burnout compared to teachers and analysis workers. Sometimes, developing and operating a enterprise needs entrepreneurs to do the identical things in excess of and over again which place them at threat of feeling underneath-challenged.

three. Worn Out Burnout – Executing the exact same work in excess of the program of many years with little recognition leads to worn out burnout. A worker who puts in sixteen many years of support in the identical location is 5 times a lot more probably to expertise burn up out in contrast to a worker with fewer than four years on the task. Clearly, many entrepreneurs perform tough to build a profitable company but in the long run, doing work at the identical work may possibly increase their threat of turning out to be worn out.

So what’s an entrepreneur to do? Nicely, the first phase is to understand possible warning indicators that you are headed toward burn up out. It usually creeps up on folks gradually above time and by the time they genuinely observe the red flags, they are currently fried. So, shell out shut focus to how you are feeling so you can identify early warning indications of burn out. But if you’re going through burnout presently, it is not also late. You can nonetheless get actions to treatment your scenario.

Self-care methods, like taking time off, and functioning to establish clear boundaries amongst your operate existence and your private lifestyle, can support reduce symptoms of burn up out. Be ready to stage away from your perform and give your self permission to relax. 

Follow Amy Morin on Twitter @AmyMorinLCSW

Could Your Entrepreneurial Passion Put You At Greater Chance of Burnout?