Since launching his first venture at the age of 19, Sydney-based entrepreneur Dale Beaumont has learnt the key to startup success is all about people: whether it’s your team, or your family, founders should always take time to encourage, listen, and grow with those around them.
It’s this approach that’s inspired Beaumont to take three months off a year to travel the world with his family, while still running his latest startup BRiN — an app that provides users with business advice based on artificial intelligence-driven (AI).
The startup is growing its user base at a rate of 15-20% month-on-month, according to the Beaumont, who says regular travel helps him balance work with spending time with his family.
BRiN was founded in 2015 out of Beaumont’s professional development program Business Blueprint. Since launching in May 2016, Beaumont says the startup has amassed 40,000 users, secured $1 million in investment pre-launch from high net worth investors, and employed a team of 18 across Sydney, Cebu and New York.
Business Blueprint runs professional development courses for aspiring entrepreneurs, but after Beaumont realised it “wasn’t possible to scale globally” with that offering alone, he launched BRiN, an app-based offering that “could help millions of business owners around the world”.
BRiN harnesses AI, which Beaumont describes as “the next tech boom”, to provide tailored education and support to entrepreneurs around the globe through a voice-recognition platform.
“We decided to combine the best of education, the best of technology, and the best of artificial intelligence to create BRiN,” Beaumont tells StartupSmart.
Beaumont is no stranger to life as an entrepreneur; since founding youth-development organisation Tomorrow’s Youth International at the age of 19, he has also gone on to found PR firm Kapow Media and Business Blueprint, and written 16 entrepreneurial-advice books in his ‘Secrets Exposed’ series.
Despite this busy run-sheet, Beaumont prioritises spending time to spend with his wife and two young children, and over the last 10 years has travelled to more than 70 countries with his family, spending one month travelling abroad for every two months spent working in Australia.
It’s an arrangement that’s ideally suited to startup founders, Beaumont says, because the interconnected nature of the world means startups can be run with a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection.
“I travel and work. The great thing about running a tech company is that you can run it from anywhere in the world,” he says.
“During the day we spend time visiting places and creating experiences with our kids, then when they go to sleep I can do four to five hours of work.”
While Beaumont says in his 20s he worked “seven days a week and rarely took breaks”, he realised when his children were born that “there’s only one opportunity to be a parent,” and it was important to balance his commitment to growing his startups, with his commitment to his growing children.
“Someone said to me, ‘you’re going to blink and the kids will be grown up’,” Beaumont says.
“There is a 15-year window where you need to be really active in your children’s lives: there’s always going to be mountains to climb after [raising children].”
For entrepreneurs looking to live a jet-setting life, or even take more time out to spend with family while still running a startup, Beaumont says time is of the essence.
“It’s going to be really important at the beginning to work hard, prove your business model, and establish your source of funding,” he says.
“You need to work as hard and fast as you can; tech moves quickly, you can’t afford to be too slow.”
While Beaumont manages to juggle travelling with running a startup, he says it’s important founders wait until their busienss is up and running before taking to the skies.
“It’s important to not try and be a hands-off entrepreneur before you’ve got your business established and running — those first few years are really important,” he advises.
For founders who want to run their startup while travelling the world, Beaumont says establishing a good team back home is also crucial to keep operations running smoothly.
“Build a team of great people as quickly as possible,” he advises.
“As a founder you want to be the thinker, the visionary, the coordinator, rather than the one doing all the work all the time.”
To surround yourself with a good team, Beaumont says it’s crucial to create a company culture where your employees thrive.
“There’s lots of lessons you learn from years in business; you have to have a strong work ethic. But further down the track you realise there’s only one of you, and the real success comes from the efforts of others,” he says.
The secret to startup success is “finding a way to attract great people to your business,” he says, adding that “creating a culture and an environment where people can grow is really important”.
“As an entrepreneur, you need to create a reason for everyone to come together each day and bring their best,” he advises.
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Angela is a journalist and content marketer from Melbourne. She primarily covers Australian small business and HR news.
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