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What is Your Entrepreneurial Intelligence?
Did you ever have a EUREKA
Moment? That is the moment when you really get it. It's when
everything becomes clear in your mind and you understand for
the first time like you never understood it before.
That happened to me today in a
way I never expected. I was having a wonderful and interesting
conversation with my one of my daughters. She is a very bright
and capable pharmaceutical sales rep for a major international
drug producer. She understands business both big and small and
she mentioned how shocked she was when some of the doctors she
calls on don't run very efficient practices and are either not
reaching their financial potential or losing money needlessly.
Why does that happen she asked?
These people are very bright and should know better. Then it
hit us that just because someone is bright doesn't mean they
have the thought process, the priorities, or focus that
someone with Entrepreneurial Intelligence has. Actually, we
had never heard of the term before but later we did Google it
and it has been played with but never formalized with a book
or website.
We got involved in a lively
discussion about why some people succeed while others don't.
The question was why don't really bright people always succeed
in business over others of less intelligence?
We agreed that we have always
been very envious of really bright people-- how they can
understand complex concepts must faster than we can. But many
of these people are rarely the biggest financial winners in
business. What is it that they are lacking? What is even more
important than that is why people of very average intelligence
can succeed where others with high intelligence don't? What do
they have, what quality do the average intelligence people
possess that make them winners in business?
Please understand we are only
talking about financial success in this piece-- we can talk
about other types of success at another time.
So as we drove the car on a 3
hour road trip we came up with this list of qualities of the
entrepreneurial intelligent:
1. They are opportunistic in
nature. They look at problems to solve as business
opportunities. I think President Kennedy said it best when he
said, "Some men look at things and say, why? While others look
at things and say why not?"
2. They are passionate about the
project. They create an emotional attachment to any project
they are involved.
3. They are risk takers and are
not satisfied with the status quo.
4. They are not afraid of failure
because they fail many more times then they win.
5. They stick to it. They go
beyond logical involvement.
6. They generally will take on
more projects than they should because of the thrill of the
idea.
7. They are rarely detail
oriented. They look at the big picture. They focus on what can
be done as opposed to how it can be done.
8. They leverage their strengths.
They will surround themselves with bright people that have the
capabilities they need. They will leverage their personalities
to attract these people and then honor and respect them to
create the perfectly balanced team.
9. They know the financial
benchmarks it takes to make money and if they aren't met they
move on to the next challenge.
10. Most true entrepreneurs will
have a love affair for the start-up. They will lose interest
in a project. That is the reason that many of these folks that
possess Entrepreneurial Intelligence fail. They need to start
it and get out. They are not strong at follow through and the
day to day running of a business is considered
boring.
Most of the people I work with
possess Entrepreneurial Intelligence. They paint the world in
broader strokes and leave the details to someone else. They
love the thrill of the idea or concept over the everyday
plans.
I believe the difference from a
successful entrepreneur who is respected and admired in their
community and someone who goes from some "get rich scheme" to
another and is referred to as a "fruitcake" or "loser" is
simply one thing-- success. Sometimes they see things before
the market does and it fails, or sometimes because of their
list of losing attempts, they are never able to gather the
resources together to succeed. Sometimes they give up just
before the try that would have put them over the top.
Let me end this piece with this
thought. No entrepreneur ever succeeded without someone
telling them "that won't work". Next time that happens, thank
them because they might have just given you the best
motivation to make it work. Entrepreneurial Intelligence
ROCKS! I wouldn't leave home without it.
For more articles by Rick Segel,
please press here.
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