What are the core things you are forgetting in your scaling-up journey? Too often entrepreneurs get distracted by their passion projects and forget the essential principles of success.

Sean Castrina is the founder of The Weekend MBA, a serial entrepreneur, having started more than 20 companies over the last 20 years, and still seeks to launch a new venture annually.

He is the author of four bestselling business books including 8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success, The Greatest Entrepreneur in the World, Developing The Entrepreneur Within and World’s Greatest Business Plan.

Sean’s entrepreneurial journey began when his first dream job told him they were “going in a different direction.” As a result, he looked around for a need and founded a very unsexy car wash business that made $30,000 in the first year. He has since repeated his simple startup formula again and again for over 30 years and has no problem building companies that he doesn’t feel passionate about.

Entrepreneurs don’t have to be passionate about the business they start, they just have to be willing to be objective about the business opportunities that are presented to them.

A desire to be passionate about your business is the first mistake entrepreneurs make in what Sean calls the Bermuda Triangle of business-building. The second mistake is hiring friends and family, which often leads to mediocrity from the start, and the third problem is with the personality of the founder themselves. Unlike Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, most founders need to have a winning personality in order to win in their business objective.

Finding a problem and figuring out how to solve it — in a way that’s better than anyone else — is the key to startup success. Sean shares several examples of his startups that did something different that worked, from an onsite car wash service to handyman work and digital marketing.

If you know what to look for, you can always find an opportunity for a successful startup business. The right business proposition combined with the willingness to take risks and bet on the right people to work with just might be all it takes to achieve next-level success.

Interview Links:

Sean Castrina

8 Unbreakable Rules for Business Startup Success

Resources:

20,000 Scaleups

Scaling Up Summits (Select Bill Gallagher as your coach during registration for a discount.)

Bill on YouTube

Scaling Up is the best-selling book by Verne Harnish and our team...

Sean Castrina — Founder of The Weekend MBA

Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher