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Hopping over the Rabbit Hole summary

Name: Hopping over the Rabbit Hole
Rating: 4.1 (59 reviews)
Author: Anthony Scaramucci

Anthony Scaramucci

How Entrepreneurs Turn Failure into Success

4.1 (59 ratings)

23 mins

Brief summary

Hopping over the Rabbit Hole by Anthony Scaramucci is a memoir that shares the author's story of bouncing back from business failures. It provides insights on entrepreneurship and highlights the importance of resilience, passion, and dedication.

Topics

Entrepreneurship Success

Table of Contents

Hopping over the Rabbit Hole
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn how to overcome failure and make your business a success.

Let’s kick things off with a healthy dose of realism: running a business is not easy. Fifty percent of all businesses fail in their very first year of operation. By their fifth year, eighty percent will have gone under, and after ten years, just four percent of businesses are still up and running.

So if you’re a business owner or prospective entrepreneur, it’s probably time to take off your rose-colored glasses. But don’t despair. If you’re truly willing to accept the challenge of running a business, and to embrace the hard times, the bad press, and the long hours that go with it – you might just have what it takes to succeed.

The author, Anthony Scaramucci, definitely didn’t become an overnight business success. He failed many times, and the company he founded, SkyBridge, almost went under. But in the end, it didn’t – because he learned how to hop over all the little rabbit holes of failure in his path. And you can do the same.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why SkyBridge decided to hold a conference during an economic recession;
why you should give your employees soap and deodorant; and
how you can turn the word “no” into “on.”

Bold moves can pay big dividends.

The date was March 2009. The US economy was in shambles. Financiers on Wall Street were panicking, the S&P 500 had hit rock-bottom, and financial institutions were canceling important conferences left and right.

All of this chaos was terrifying for the author. He worried that the downturn would sink his company, SkyBridge Capital. But one day, his business partner, Victor Oviedo, proposed an idea: What if SkyBridge threw a hedge fund conference in Vegas?

At first, the author thought Oviedo was joking. “Come on, Vic,” he said. But he quickly began to warm to the idea. After all, what better way to prove that you and your business were creative, adaptable, and entrepreneurial than pulling off an event like this, at a time when other businesses wouldn’t dare to do the same?

The key message here is: Bold moves can pay big dividends.

The author and his partner named their conference the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, or SALT, and set a date for May. Two months before the conference, the author presented the idea to his other five business partners. They were not exactly thrilled. But being SkyBridge’s founder, the author had the final say. They were going through with it.

Remarkably, he and his team pulled off the planning and production of the event in less than two months. They managed to attract prominent guest speakers and fill the seats with investors, asset managers, academics, nonprofit leaders, and media personalities.

By all accounts, the SALT Conference was a major success. During a deep economic recession, SkyBridge had put together an educational conference that gave attendees hope for the future. It also proved to the world that SkyBridge wasn’t going out of business. But it went even farther than that. The conference brought SkyBridge mainstream attention. This led Stone to agree to read the manuscript of the author’s first book – and to write the foreword, too.

This shows that dire circumstances can be overcome. They just require bold and unprecedented moves. In just a year, SkyBridge had gone from near-bankruptcy to hosting a successful conference and appearing on top news networks. They could have easily fallen down the rabbit hole of recession and gone under. But instead, they rescued themselves by making the most of a bad situation.

When you face failure, you must adapt.

After the success of the early SALT Conferences, it only made sense for SkyBridge to start thinking about taking the conference overseas.

On a trip to Asia, the author and his partner Oviedo found what seemed like the perfect location: Singapore. The small Southeast Asian country had a thriving entrepreneurial spirit and a booming private banking industry. Plus, Singapore’s government was willing not only to endorse SALT, but also to assist SkyBridge throughout the planning process.

As an entrepreneur, you must ensure that you’re always focused on the right things.

Lots of prospective entrepreneurs have an overly glamorous idea of what it means to start a business or become an investor. They dream of being able to afford top-of-the-line sports cars, lavish mansions, or private jets.

The author fell into this trap, too, when he was young. In 1986 he was in his senior year at university, and was dreaming of a three-week trip to Italy. To finance it, he planned to make use of Hood Ice Cream, a company that allows individuals to rent ice cream trucks and buy inventory to sell to customers.

Put your team to best use by delegating, empowering, and creating accountability.

When it comes to team-building, you might be tempted to seek out a bunch of geniuses. But this is a mistake. Those geniuses often want to pull in different directions, which ends up wasting valuable time and creating conflict.

It can actually be much more effective to build a team of modestly intelligent people who are great at working as a team. Choose employees who possess a collective spirit and don’t care who gets the credit for a big success. And once you’ve found them, make sure you give them everything they need to flourish.

Don’t go through life with a chip on your shoulder.

When the author’s career first began, he had a huge chip on his shoulder. He was a middle-class Italian kid from Long Island, and he didn’t enter the business world with a ton of connections or skills. So when he was fired from his first job at Goldman Sachs, he was convinced it was because he was different. But in reality, he just wasn’t the right fit for the job and lacked the necessary technical skills.

It hurt for the author to reckon with his own shortcomings. But he had mountains of school debt to pay off, and he simply didn’t have time to victimize and pity himself. So he took personal responsibility for his circumstances, and decided to live in the present rather than the past. You should do the same.

Use media exposure to your advantage.

Do you have a thick skin when it comes to taking criticism? You might think you’re immune to negative feedback. But the truth is we all care what other people think – at least to some extent. And that’s actually okay! But when it comes to your business, letting people’s opinions influence you can quickly become detrimental.

The world’s greatest entrepreneurs, like Arianna Huffington, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, all get healthy doses of criticism and negative media coverage. But their entrepreneurial visions have made them willing to challenge public opinion and push on with their dreams – even when many people have been critical.

Being a good salesperson requires relationship-building skills.

Whether or not you’re in sales, you’ll almost inevitably have to sell something during your career. It could be a new business venture, a fund, or a more traditional product like dishwashing liquid. So you probably can’t avoid sales forever. But you can change the way you approach it.

Many people think of selling as a kind of tug-of-war. As if you, the salesperson, are trying to drag unwilling people away from their money. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Instead, you can sell honestly and ethically. All you have to do is build relationships.

Don’t be afraid of sticking your neck out in public.

Many novice businesspeople squirm at the idea of networking or speaking in public. Even the author admits that underneath his brash public persona, he’s actually quite shy.

The prospect might be terrifying, but it’s important to use any networking opportunities that come your way. Don’t think you have to be the most fancily dressed person in the room in order to make an impression. Instead, just go for it. Remember that in any networking situation, other people are likely to be just as uncomfortable as you are. If you simply walk up and introduce yourself to people, they’ll probably be grateful that you did.

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What is Hopping over the Rabbit Hole about?

Hopping over the Rabbit Hole (2020) is an honest, straight-talking look at what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. The brutal truth is that the vast majority of businesses fail – yet many budding entrepreneurs still operate with their rose-tinted glasses firmly in place. But by following a few crucial tips – drawn from a successful business career with its fair share of mistakes – you’ll be more likely to survive, rather than succumb to failure.

Who should read Hopping over the Rabbit Hole?

Young entrepreneurs and salespeople
Prospective business owners searching for a realistic take on running a company
Mid-career entrepreneurs who’ve experienced failure and want to avoid doing so again

About the Author

Anthony Scaramucci is an entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience on Wall Street. He is known for founding the alternative investment firm Skybridge Capital and is the chairman of the Skybridge Alternatives, or SALT, Conference, a global thought leadership forum that takes place every year in Las Vegas. In 2017 he served briefly as White House Communications Director under the Trump administration. He is the author of several business books, including Goodbye Gordon Gekko and The Little Book of Hedge Funds.

© Anthony Scaramucci: Hopping over the Rabbit Hole copyright 2020, John Wiley & Sons Inc. Used by permission of John Wiley & Sons Inc. and shall not be made available to any unauthorized third parties.

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