Emotional depth, mental resilience, self-belief need to be present alongside strategic thinking, technical expertise, logical planning.

Nobody tells you this when you start a company, but the real curriculum isn’t in the pitch decks, the accelerators, or the overpriced “Founder Mastermind Retreats.” The real learning happens at 2am when something breaks, someone quits, or you realise you’ve accidentally built a monster you now have to ride.

Founders love talking about strategy, markets, and “runway extension frameworks” (whatever those are), but the skills that actually keep a business alive are far more human, far more uncomfortable, and far more earned. You don’t learn them from a textbook. You learn them from being repeatedly punted in the shins by reality.

Take resilience. Not the LinkedIn version. The real kind. The type you develop after hearing “no” so often you start treating it like background music. In the Navy, you learn to stay calm when the weather turns. In startups, the weather turns daily. Sometimes hourly.

Then there’s storytelling — which isn’t about pitching like a TED speaker. It’s about persuading smart people to believe in something that doesn’t exist yet. “Here’s a dream. Please help me make it real.” Founders who can’t tell that story end up walking alone.

Prioritisation arrives as a slap, not a lesson. You start with ten priorities and end with one: survive. Everything else is admin.

Persuasion shows up everywhere: hiring, fundraising, convincing a customer to try you instead of someone safer. You quickly realise persuasion isn’t about winning. It’s about alignment, clarity, and showing people you’re not insane — or at least insane in a productive direction.

And finally, self-awareness. The toughest one. At sea, you learn fast that you’re not the centre of the universe. In startups, the ego tries to make a comeback. Self-awareness is the ballast that stops you capsizing.

These skills don’t arrive gently. They arrive with bruises. But once you’ve earned them, nobody can take them away.

I don’t spend anywhere near as long with my team, face-to-face, one-on-one as I’d like to. But my senior leadership team is excellent and embody the characteristics discussed above - I believe this goes a long way to infusing, subconsciously strong culture into our company.

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