So I was sitting with an entrepreneurial mentor of mine at a restaurant (whom I very much respect). I hold him in high regard for two reasons. 1) He has a great business mind (successfully sold a company and built another large one) 2) He is always brutally honest with me (honesty is what I always admire in people).
Anyways, at the time I was telling him about a brilliant friend I had and how I liked her business ideas. "She has the work ethic and is certainly smart enough to make money" I said. After I said this, he responded with a patient, but slightly annoyed look on his face: "You know you might be pushing her on this path, not many people are like you or me and meant to do this."...I know for a fact I wasn't pushing anyone, she came at me with her business idea...At the time I let that comment slip by though because I had other questions and topics I wanted to discuss. He has succeeded a lot and I recognized the rare opportunity I had. Since that lunch though I think about his comment a lot...I've seen the "natural born" concept hit over and over and over again by business people. Do you really think you're that special?
Mark Cuban talks about how he was selling garbage bags at the age of 6, Gary Vaynerchuk says he always had the business DNA owning 6 lemonade stands at age 13, people speak about Bill Gates' natural born genius in his biography, the man I was speaking to said he was very successful very early on as well, Gurbaksh Chahal sold his first company at 18, Donald Trump always says about how he was, well you know Donald...It seems to me people think they're very brilliant from the start. I can go on and on with the young success examples; Elon Musk is noted to have sold a startup at a young age. These people can all argue they were "born" entrepreneurs.
What about people that made it later in life? Surely not everyone was born with it. What about Ford creating his first prototype car at age 32? (Note he still wasn't successful at this point). Sol Price (had a big part in creating Costco, Sams Club and Walmart) didn't start FedMart until he was age 38. Rose Blumkin (Sold her two companies to Warren Buffet) didn't start Nebraska Furniture Mart until age 44. At age 24, Duncan Bannatyne (worth over well over 200 million now) was in jail. Coincidentally Barbara Corcoran (the short haired blonde on Shark Tank) just started her own business at 24. These are the people you can argue weren't born entrepreneurs, but became successful later down the road.
I come from the side that thinks this game isn't about DNA...I think you can start out doing bad, but dramatically turn things around. Henry Ford, Sol Price and Rose Blumpkin plus many more didn't have big successes early on and still all became very financially wealthy. I don't think there's any secret genetic code to being an entrepreneur and I think its pretentious of people to think they're different. You can say there are natural born geniuses that give people a head start, but then again there are people with 180 IQ's who you've never heard about in life with no major accomplishments; Plus, not many entrepreneurs on the high IQ list either.
If I wanted to bad enough or if someone held a gun to my head I'd learn how to program javascript in a month (been putting it off for a while now) and it would give my business a big advantage. I'd argue effort plays a huge role in developing your entrepreneurial success and is by far the most major contributor. Everyone knows that effort is important. As the adage goes the harder you work the luckier you get...yet, sadly we don't have a way to measure effort so you can't tell when someone is bitching or really failing.
So are entrepreneurs born or made? I think made because all of them have stories about their trials and tribulations, none of them speak as if they didn't have to sacrifice everything to get to where they are. As Malcom Gladwell wrote about the 10,000 hour rule on any field, I think sheer dedication is most important for success on entrepreneurship. Happy to hear your agreeance or disapproval.
-Vlad
https://twitter.com/VladMkrtumyan
No comments:
Post a Comment