The secret of professional entrepreneurs
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur or business man/woman, you need to understand a fundamental trait of professional entrepreneurs. They always listen to themselves and their intuition above the opinions of others.
Yes, professionals have carefully chosen mentors who give them advice, but most of what they hear they don’t believe without their own research and experience on the subject.
When I talk about finances and business with most people, I find them to be incredibly negative and ignorant. They want you to fail in your business because it justifies their existence as employees. In fact, most people I know, even my closest friends, told me tons of rubbish when I was starting my business. They thought I was wasting time and money.
Sure I failed time and time again, but eventually I figured it out like I knew all along I would. However, my friends didn’t see that, they just saw the failure and thought I was crazy. But every time I fell I got one step closer to my goal.
Most of the people you know base most of their opinions on:
* What their friends and family tell them
* What they see and hear on television
* What they read in the newspaper
* Their fears
Fear can be defined as: false education that seems real. Most of what you hear from people’s mouths is simply their ignorant point of view, rather than fact or educated opinion. Most people will also dismiss something simply because they don’t understand it.
Henry Ford got it right. When he wanted to mass-produce the automobile in 1900, people told him he was crazy. At that time, no one imagined that one day everyone would be able to afford and drive a car. Henry Ford did it. Good thing he didn’t listen to everyone who told him he was crazy.
When Henry Ford wanted to build a V-8 engine, his engineers also told him that it was impossible to build an eight-cylinder engine. Mr. Ford also had no idea how to build a V-8 engine, but he believed it could and would be done.
After more than a year and a half of struggle, frustration, and repeated attempts to tell Mr. Ford that the task was impossible, his engineers finally developed the V-8 engine. Only their high salary kept them working on the project for so long. Once again, it’s a good thing Mr. Ford didn’t listen to anyone but his own inner voice. He also had much more persistence than his engineers.
The idea for Federal Express was started years ago in college by a student designing his own business for a thesis. He saw an opportunity to fly packages instead of just shipping them overland. In this way, packages could be shipped across the country overnight and around the world at a much more efficient rate.
He got an F on the assignment and the professor told him it was the dumbest business idea he had ever heard of. The dean corrected the grade and gave it a B- because it was well written. But he too laughed at the student who thought packages could be put on planes and said, “planes are for people, not packages.”
Because this student didn’t listen to them, he revolutionized the way the world sends mail, started one of the world’s most successful mail carriers, and opened lines of communication around the world.
I’m not saying don’t take advice, just be careful who you’re taking advice from, and always listen to yourself and your intuition above all else.
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