SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

??? Episode Overview:
Tom Antion discusses the key traits that successful entrepreneurs tend to have. Drawing from his own 48+ years in business without ever holding a traditional job, Tom shares personal stories, practical examples, and blunt advice to help listeners evaluate and improve their entrepreneurial mindset.
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?? Core Entrepreneurial Traits:
1. Fairness – Treat customers, employees, and contractors with respect and integrity. Even when mistakes happen, be fair in resolving them.
2. Persistence – Keep going when others would quit. Tom stresses that many successful entrepreneurs succeed because they simply outlasted their challenges.
3. Ability to Work Alone – Entrepreneurs often start solo. You must be productive without external motivation or supervision.
4. Work Ethic – Don’t be a “clock watcher.” Problems don’t follow a 9–5 schedule, and your success depends on going above and beyond.
5. Dependability & Consistency – Be reliable. Customers and partners need to trust you will show up and follow through.
6. Adaptability – Things will go wrong. Be ready to pivot quickly, handle disruptions, and adjust to new trends or circumstances.
7. Quick Decision-Making – Make decisions fast. Perfectionism and overthinking lead to stagnation.
8. Continuous Learning (Kaizen) – Always be improving. Tom requires his team to share how they’ve improved themselves each week.
9. Vision – Have a broad direction for your business. Tom doesn’t focus on static goals but on continuous forward motion and helping more people.
10. Attention to Detail – Small things matter. Overlooking details can harm your credibility and results.
11. Multitasking – Entrepreneurs juggle many tasks. Being able to handle multiple responsibilities is essential, especially early on.
12. Focus – Balance multitasking with the ability to shut out distractions when something important needs to get done.
13. Self-Awareness – Honestly evaluate which traits you lack and work to improve them.
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?? Notable Insights:
• Creativity isn't mandatory — You can succeed by offering what people already want (his “pizza shop theory”).
• Don’t delegate too soon — Learn every aspect of your business first before handing it off.
• Forget work-life balance clichés — Tom embraces an intense, driven pace he calls his “winning pace.”
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?? Resources & Mentions:
• Free Automation Book (v3.0) – screwthecommute.com/automatefree
• Mentorship Program – GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
• Speaking Course – Based on 3,000+ paid speeches in 12 countries
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?? Closing:
Tom encourages listeners to reflect on which traits they already have and which need development, then take action. He reminds everyone that success in entrepreneurship is built—not inherited—and offers to help through his mentorship programs.

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Episode 1021 – Traits Of Great Entrepreneurs
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1021 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today I'm going to talk about traits of great entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs in general usually have these traits if they're successful. I'm hoping to miss episode 1020. That was easy video editors. You wouldn't believe the kind of stuff you'll be able to do with very little skill because of templates and and all the crazy things that these editors are do. So check out 1020. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 1020 and pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Get version 3.0 because 2.0 is now obsolete. So 3.0 is out. So grab it even if you have 2.0. And check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:01:27] All right, let's get into it. Traits of great entrepreneurs. Well, I'm not going to sit here and call myself great. Okay? Somebody else can do it if they feel like it. Uh, but I feel pretty confident that I'm one of the best people in the world to talk to you about entrepreneurship. I mean, the title of this podcast is Screw the Commute, because I've never had a job. I've had a, I think three summer jobs in high school and college. One, I cut grass on a golf course. The other I cleaned the bottom of boats and got copper paint in my hair.

[00:02:11] It's terrible. And the other one? I was a hooker. And if you didn't hear the previous episodes about hooks, I was a hooker in Pittsburgh, which I would worked at homestead, homestead, steelworks and over, uh, hooked the overhead cranes onto the I-beams and put them on trains. All right. So. So I was a hooker. So that was the only three jobs I've had. And I actually owned apartment buildings and a hotel, starting with nothing before graduating college. And, uh, never had a job since. And the last 31 years. Yeah. 31.5 years have been online and speaking around the world. Uh, but before that, even before that, I was doing real estate and, uh, professional speaking. And, you know, long before the internet came along and I had an entertainment company, had a print shop, had a nightclub, you know. So it was always, uh, something where I was in charge. So that's a little bit of my story. But one of the things that's usually on people's lists of traits of entrepreneurs is you got to be creative. And I did a lot of creative stuff in my day from the nightclub years, the promotions we had and, you know, all the the promotions I've had online since and all that stuff. And, and of course, the, the practical joke company I had called Prank Masters, we custom designed practical jokes, and I wrote custom humor for six years straight and just had a blast.

[00:03:47] And I delivered over a thousand comic performances myself. So yeah, that took some creativity, but that's that's not the normal person's going to do that kind of stuff, but you will see creativity on everybody's list of traits of entrepreneurs. But I'm going to stand here and tell you or sit here and tell you that you don't have to be creative if you have all these other traits. Basically, you give people what they want. You throw your hat in the ring on proven products that people already want, for instance, and I call that my pizza shop theory. I, you know, I have a lot of different theories that I developed over the years. That's my pizza shop theory. And that's that means if you do a good pizza and everybody likes it and you run your business properly, you know you're not being that creative. You're just doing a good job at what somebody already wants and you'll be successful at it. And I and I tell people about when they come to the retreat center here, they see this table with a six foot banquet table, three feet high with tennis training videos and I, you know, I'm a tennis nut. I haven't been so much lately since Covid and and my tennis courts got potholes in, but I hurt my back. But other than that, I'm a tennis nut. And I got all these tennis videos and, and, uh, DVDs and books and everything on tennis.

[00:05:17] And 90% of them say the same darn thing, but tennis nuts are people interested in a particular topic will buy everything on that topic. So if you just do a good job, like the pizza shop thing, you'll get your fair share of the business. Now, if you have all these other traits, you'll do better and better and better and better rather than just get buy. Okay, so you don't have to be that creative if you are awesome. But don't let your creativity stifle all these other traits that are necessary for you to be successful. So let's let's get into it. So one of the the traits and these aren't in any particular order, but I will uh, I'm kind of known for being fair. So fairness is the trait. And I'm not talking just to customers, although that's critically important. I'm talking about to employees and to contractors, because if you treat them right now, some of them are going to take advantage of you. That's just the nature of business. But it won't be your fault. And many of them will say, well, I'm I'm going to, you know, work harder for Tom because he did this for me and he jumped my car when I was stranded and came and saved me. And I mean, just stuff treating people right, you know? So so fairness is an important trait.

[00:06:43] And then if something goes wrong where you mess up, oh, you fairly take care of it for the person you know, you just don't say no. Sorry. Too bad. Buy another one if that one broke. It's your fault, you know. And maybe it is sometimes. And. And I don't want you to be a, you know, taking advantage of all the time. So I'm. Firmness is also an important trait. But fairness if you if you lean towards the fairness and it's always going to pay off for you. All right. Next thing is persistence. This means that you keep going when the average person would quit. That's the people that are successful. You. You. Interviewer. Listen to some of those 500 interviews I've done. If you just go to the homepage of ScrewtheCommute.com and click podcast, I've done over 500 interviews with entrepreneurs, and almost all of them are saying, well, they they kept going when the when the going was tough say. So persistence very important trait. And it's not being developed in a lot of young people nowadays because the parents jump in and say, well, we're going to make it better on the kids, you know, and don't put pressure on them. Just give them a big allowance and don't force them to do stuff and to learn that they have to work for what they're they're going to get. But but anyway, if you have this trait, great.

[00:08:05] If not, it's going to be it's going to be tough on you. All right. In the beginning I suggest the trait is the ability to work alone. So many people go to work because they want people around them. They want to gossip at the water fountain. I tell people, you know, get it? Rent a water fountain from the local water company and stand there and gossip to yourself if that's your problem. But in the beginning, you pretty much. Unless you're really well heeled and got lots of cash, you're going to be working alone on a in the beginning a lot. So you have to be able to be productive when you're alone. All right. Not clock watchers and have a good work ethic. Yeah. You can't as an entrepreneur. You can't just say, oh, it's 5:00, I'm leaving, and then your building's on fire and or and the the supplies didn't show up, and now the customers are mad, and nobody's taking care of them. And, you know, there's there's stuff happens. So you can't be a clock watcher and and you got to have a good work ethic. My dad, right from the beginning, from the time I could crawl taught. And that's what, uh, if you ever see a video portion of this, you see a baby behind me crawling over pillows. My dad taught me as a young as before. I could even walk to overcome obstacles and to keep going.

[00:09:27] And that's persistence and work ethic. You know, you can have whatever you want as long as you're willing to work for it. Next thing is dependability and consistency. And this is where I kind of butted heads with some of these Gen Z idiots that are saying, well, you know, time is, uh, is just a fluid with us. And that's where I say yeah. Okay, so my store is supposed to open at nine, but on the door I put a sign that says, well, we're supposed to open at nine. But if the employees don't really feel, you know, the feel at that time, maybe it's 930, maybe it's ten, maybe we won't even open at all today. No. That's bullshit. All right. Be on time. Be dependable and be consistent. Like my, uh. Like I had a mechanic that was brilliant, but I had to shit CanAm because he, uh, he wasn't dependable, couldn't depend on him. Wasn't consistent. The one I got now. Beautiful. He's. He's his shop's Monday through Friday, 8 to 6. And if I have an appointment and something comes up, he alerts me ahead of time. You know, that's dependable and that's consistent. I know I can depend on this guy, see, and that's the the people that get all the business. I mean, I could spend money anywhere in this town, but I spend money there because the guy is dependable and consistent.

[00:10:51] Okay. All right. Adaptability. So when you're, you know, I gotta tell you, from 40 now, eight years in business, all right. And 48.5 years in business, that shit happens. All right, stuff happens. And so you got to be able to go with the flow. You know, like, for instance, uh, I'm busy doing, uh, a bunch of hooks and and video stuff and podcasts and, and I get word. Hey, the refrigerator is only holding 50 degrees. Like, ah, do I need this? We found one on Facebook Marketplace to keep it until we get to this other one fixed. Okay, I had a job. I had to go find the keys. Uh, hook up the trailer, go find the place, give them cash, haul it back, haul it in, and, you know, it's knocked out 3 or 4 hours of my day that I was supposed to be doing other stuff. But this is the stuff you run into. You still have to take care of business. And and finally, the refrigerator was fine. It's just that I hadn't taught to people how to operate it properly. So. So, uh, anyway, uh, you got to be able to adapt. And same thing with trends. If, if, if you're working on this product you've been working on for a long time and all of a sudden something else comes up that could sell faster. Now you might have to switch. And this is not in contrast to one of my traits called focus, because sometimes you have to just focus and get things done.

[00:12:28] But sometimes you got to be able to, to, uh, to switch up on a dime. And so these are the kinds of skills and traits that you can develop over time. So adaptability decision making, fast decision making is usually better than slow. Think about it for the rest of your life and it still might not work. All right, so I make decisions very quickly. Am I right all the time? No, but I'm not agonizing and perfectionism to the point where it kills you and you don't get any progress. Because even if I make the wrong decision, I learned something from that wrong decision. And then I can, you know, remember that for the next time. See? So you got to be able to make a decision you can't wishy washy around as an entrepreneur. It'll kill you. And one thing I've been preaching to myself and my employees and contractors is continuous learning and continuous improvement. The Japanese call that kaizen, and I'm always well, we have two weekly meetings on zoom, and at the end of each person what what they accomplished. They have to say how they improved themselves. And it's not just business stuff. It's like, okay. Mark has got a pop up camper and he didn't know about, um, you know, the, uh, the chains and stuff.

[00:13:55] He's never pulled a camper before. So we all discussed, you know, those things of pulling a trailer and what to check on it and all this stuff. And it's a good bonding experience with your employees to is, you know, encourage them to improve themselves all the time. And you do it too. So I every week I have to come up with my thing too. And I've been doing it my whole life, so it's not that hard for me to come up with stuff. Continuous improvement and continuous learning is how great entrepreneurs keep moving forward. Another thing is vision. They have to have an idea. Okay, where are we going with this? In my case, I don't really have that one stop El Topo vision where I reach a certain thing. In fact, when all these people tell you to have goals. All right, here's another thing that's counter. You know, counterintuitive. I've never reached a goal in my whole life. Never. And you say, well, gee, you pretty successful, you know? But yeah, but here's the thing. The way I keep moving forward is I play mind games on myself. So I've never reached a goal because as soon as I get anywhere near it, several other appear past it. So I'm always clawing and scratching to go forward, forward, forward. And some people say, well, you're going to burn yourself out and you're going to, uh, you know, you should be more what do they.

[00:15:19] I can't even think of the term. Oh, balanced. Yeah. I like laughing people's faces. I heard one person say one time, you know, screw you. This is my winning pace. I forget where I saw that. I would give him credit if I could remember it, but, yeah, this is my winning pace. I stay up late at night studying. I sleep in in the morning. All right. And I just started working out every morning to. For the health stuff. Because, you know, I've been sitting too long in front of this computer. And so my vision is to keep doing good in the world. It's not a specific goal. Like, I'm going to reach so much money and then retire or any crap like that. All right. But I do have a vision that I want to help more and more and more people and that and I help myself at the same time. So having a vision where you're going and then, um, I'm not the greatest. Well, you know, I don't want to self evaluate myself here, but attention to detail, you know, in some things I'm extremely detailed, like when I'm editing a book or something, you know, the commas in the sentence structure and everything else is, you know, in the misspellings. I catch all that stuff. Some things I'm more laissez faire in And that, hey, it's good enough. Let's go. Let's get this done.

[00:16:41] I don't have time to piss around, you know? So. And then sometimes I have to have somebody else have the attention to detail. Like when we take the car in Monday to get some work done on it. That's their problem. Now I'm paying somebody else to have attention to detail, so. So, uh, but it's a good trait to have because if you miss a lot of details, you can really screw your business up. Right? So attention to detail. And then these next two are I'll call them the last two. They seem like on different ends of the spectrum. And they are. But if you have both of these traits then you'll really be able to do a lot in your business. And that's focus slash multitask you say well that's such so opposite Tom. How can those be any good. Well first of all having the ability to multitask without getting overwhelmed is great because as an entrepreneur, so many things are on your plate. I mean, just I can just think a couple of them here, I got to run this, you know, $2 million retreat center. We're under renovation. So decisions have to be made on what to do, what to buy, what the, you know, uh, Home Depot or Lowe's or, you know, or ordered online and, uh, all these mentees that need help, you know, in one on one consultations with me and the staff, all that the vehicles have to keep going.

[00:18:11] We're in a car accident 3 or 4 months ago. Now. I'm trying to fight to get the money back from the insurance company. You know, it never ends, all right? And that's been that way for 31 years. All right. Not the exact same things, but very a lots of things going on. All right. So what's the other end of that spectrum focus. There's times when I shut everything out and I gotta focus. I gotta get something done. And that means if I'm writing an e-book, I gotta shut the world out to get that thing done. If I'm doing a video, I a script. I gotta shut the world out and get that script done. And then I gotta get the shooting script done. Then I got to get the cameras out and or get Mark over here, or, you know, whoever else is going to hold a camera if I'm moving. That takes focus to get it done right. And then it's got to be edited and then distributed in these podcasts. Same thing. See, I got a focus today. I'm focusing on episode 1021. As soon as I get done recording it, I'm going to edit it really quick and then send it off to Larry. And then my focus is done for this until Monday when I do it all over again, being able to focus, get stuff done. Being able to multitask means you don't get overwhelmed and run over by all the things that are going to come to you in the course of a business, and especially in the beginning, for most people, you can't afford to hire people to do everything that needs done in your business.

[00:19:48] The only time you should hire is when you can afford. You have enough money to come in to afford that to be done. And again, I get crazy when I see these idiots on stage say, delegate everything. Only do what you're good at. When I say if what you're good at is making you broke, maybe you should rethink that stupid idea. All right. You need to have as much knowledge as you can and have done what you're expecting other people to do. Unless it's just too technical. That's why I have Larry for stuff that's so technical. It's just not worth my time to learn it. All right. And that's why I have marked I can video at it a little bit, but anything really critical, I ship off to Mark and Travis and you know those. And Jennifer handles accounting and and all the book work and the taxes and all that stuff that I could do, but it's not worth my time. Say I'm more I'm better off making money. But in the beginning, I did all of that stuff, every bit of it that I just mentioned. I did it myself. All right. So having that ability to multitask and to focus will really, really help you in a long way.

[00:21:02] So. So that's all for this episode. Uh, you know, go through and and listen to it again and jot down what do you really you know, and one more I should put on there is self-awareness. Do you have these traits? Do you have the persistence trait? Are you able to work alone and really evaluate yourself honestly, and then work on the ones that are going to get you towards your goals the fastest? Okay. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. This was episode 1021. The traits of great entrepreneurs. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com if you want one on one help with all this. All these thousands of things you need to know to be successful online. And we also have one for professional speaking. I've done 3000 speeches in 12 countries and have the the best selling ever course on this. You see some of these people selling your course, how to make money speaking and they never made more, you know, two nickels compared to sometimes I did 275,000 in 1 speech. Never did less than 100,000 in the last 20 years. See, so I have a mentor program there and a course on that and everything. So I'd be glad to help you with that too. All right. We will catch you all in the next episode. See you later.