Have attitude
If you want to disrupt an industry, you better bring some sass to the table. Attitude is key to a start-up’s success, and there are certain attributes that make up the mindset for achieving greatness. An insatiable passion for what you’re doing and a willingness to work stupidly hard. Fearlessness in the face of failure, the ability to bounce back from setbacks and daring in droves – enough to spend most waking hours outside of your comfort zone. Ever wonder how the underdog comes out in front? Attitude. And the best part is, it doesn’t cost a penny.

Fail fast
If you want to live big, prepare to fail. A lot. Because, as any entrepreneur worth their salt will tell you, failure is the stuff of success – the jolts and jabs that build up the resilience and learnings you’ll need to make it big. So I’ve made a habit of falling flat, but make no mistake, if I’m going to fail, I’m going to do it well by doing it fast. Snap out of the doom and gloom quick smart, take stock and set off on more informed course of action. Do you think James Dyson would ever have invented his revolutionary vacuum cleaner if he’d spent time wallowing over the 5126 failed prototypes that came before it?

Be gutsy
I made a pretty ballsy launch speech and a very loud, purposeful statement when Collective Hub magazine began, all about how we were going to shake up the media landscape. I said it, point blank, to a crowd of over 200 of some of the smartest media and business minds in the country, and that wasn’t the only time I backed myself with every ounce of guts and gumption I could muster. I also rented an office space that could have housed more than eight times the amount of staff I had at the time, and I also courted big names  to partner with us on the ride.

Expose yourself
Steve Jobs once said that success “comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing,” before citing Picasso, who had the saying: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” While I don’t ever want to steal anything, there is gold in the principal that inspiration and leanring is all around you. Bag yourself some top-notch loot by flooding your mind with fresh information from courses, seminars, books, podcasts and things you mightn’t normally pay attention to. My best ideas come when I break out from my normal routine (the seeds of my magazine took root on a rooftop in Marrakech), so expose yourself to different situations, people and places to help you be a better version of yourself.  

Dream big
Game changers follow their hearts, not their heads. Heads say rational things like, “I don’t have the money to do this” or “but this has never been done before”, and when it comes to ideas, you need to give yourself permission to dream big. Banish the budget barrier and negative thoughts from your head and always go the huge, visionary, dreamy picture first, then work your way back to figure out how to make it happen. When I launched a magazine into a ‘dying’ print industry, I didn’t know if it was going to work but I sensed there was opportunity and followed by gut, one of the best things an entrepreneur has in their arsenal. So I let myself dream that it would work. And guess what? It did.

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Lisa Messenger's book Daring & Disruptive. The secret sauce with entrepreneur, magazine editor and author of newly released Daring & Disruptive, Lisa Messenger.