Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Creative Entrepreneur?

When I was a high-school teacher, I saw three types of students.

When I was a CEO, I liked to hire people who had been the #3 type of student.

1. Those going to Harvard

2. Those not going to Harvard

3. Those not going to Harvard, but the Harvard students would end up working for them

What makes the third group different (the Entrepreneurs), and how can you be like them?

1. They are not afraid to fall, and if they did, they know how to fall because they had fallen many times before, and they know it only hurt for a little while.
2. They have empathy, the kind you get from the quote, “You never really understand a person . . . until you climb into their skin and walk around in it.” from To Kill a Mockingbird.
3. They ask questions incessantly about EVERYTHING until I thought their heads would explode — they were human sponges.
4. They are creative and funny which was a direct result of all their questions because they can connect and associate using their head full of diverse ideas — they squeeze their sponges.
5. With their breadth of ideas, they know how to teach, lead and motivate, and they can ask (not manipulate) a person to go to hell and back, and that person would be happy to be on their way.
6. They follow a philosophy of try it, fix it, do it.  Or, as the saying goes in hockey, “you miss 100% of the shots that you do not take.”