Language Leads to Action: The Key Words Used By Successful Entrepreneurs
By Executive Director, Dan Cohen, Ph.D
We have a bold ambition at Wake Forest University’s Center for Entrepreneurship—we want to develop an entrepreneurial mindset in our students.
A recent paper titled, The Language of Successful Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Starting Point for the Entrepreneurial Mindset, takes a unique and valuable first step towards defining the entrepreneurial mindset.
First, the authors studied outliers. They compared successful entrepreneurs to average entrepreneurs and examined how their language use differed. Researchers are typically trained to ignore or even remove outliers from data sets because their results can skew data and are often not generalizable to the general population being studied. I argue that successful entrepreneurs ARE outliers and, if we want to learn about their mindset, they need to be studied. I applaud this research team for this approach.
It should be noted that successful entrepreneurs were defined as those who had raised at least 20-million in venture capital and employed greater than 30 employees. While this definition likely excludes many successful entrepreneurs, the criteria are clear, and it’s hard to argue against those metrics—it’s hard to raise 20-million dollars and scale to 30+ employees without being a successful entrepreneur.
Second, the research team did not have a theory to prove or hypotheses to test. They simply studied differences in language used by successful entrepreneurs versus average entrepreneurs and reported the significant differences after coding into relevant categories. In my view, this is a real strength of qualitative research, in that they are not out to prove anything. Rather, they are reporting observations and, while there is error in any type of research, there is a certain purity to the approach used in this paper.
Below, I have summarized the key categories that exhibited significant differences in language used by successful versus average entrepreneurs. While some of these categories may not be surprising, especially to those who know successful entrepreneurs, it is key to keep in mind that both the sample group and the control group were made up entirely of entrepreneurs, and yet the differences were still significant.
Action Oriented: Great entrepreneurs frequently used words like: built, build, will, create, first, and start compared to average entrepreneurs.
Future Oriented: Compared to a control group, successful entrepreneurs used future versus past tense significantly more. They might say, “Have to” instead of “had to” for example.
Collective Focused: Successful entrepreneurs used collective words such as us, we, company, partners, and team significantly more than average entrepreneurs. Similarly, they underused words such as I, me, they, him, and his. Successful entrepreneurs were very concerned with the collective whole—the constellation of company, customers, suppliers and investors and their language reflected that collective, holistic viewpoint.
Customer Oriented: Successful entrepreneurs used language related to their customers and the success of their customers much more so than average entrepreneurs did. While it may seem obvious, remember that the entire sample was made up of entrepreneurs and the language difference was significant. I had dinner recently with Chris Elmore, Co-Founder of the billion-dollar startup Avid Exchange. He mentioned that when he was building the company, he had twelve hundred customers and knew them all by name! In the words of the great management scholar Peter Drucker, a company ignores customers at their own peril. Successful entrepreneurs get that, and it shows in the language they use.
Growth/Learning Oriented: Successful entrepreneurs used language consistent with a growth mindset. They used the word, experience three times as much as average entrepreneurs and underused the words good or bad. This is interesting because it suggests that experience equals learning, whether good or bad. They also exhibited language that suggests that successful entrepreneurs are more curious than average entrepreneurs. Successful entrepreneurs use language that suggests they value learning, experience, adaptation and growth over time.
While the journey to becoming a successful entrepreneur involves a variety of steps, it can be said that the entrepreneurial mindset is a key factor throughout all phases of growth, leading to a thriving and vibrant business venture.
If you are interested in reading this article in its entirety, please see the citation below:
The Language of Successful Entrepreneurs: An Empirical Starting Point for the Entrepreneurial Mindset: Matthew Lynch¹ ², Uladzimir Kamovich³, Gunnar Andersson¹, and Martin Steinert²
¹Engineering Department, University College of Østfold, Fredrikstad, Norway
²Department of Engineering Design and Materials, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
³School of Business and Economics, UiT-The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway