Emotional Liars
Entrepreneurs, by nature, are emotional liars.
Our nature is to get so excited about our vision, adopt an unstoppable optimism, and refuse to face the realities of market factors. We get emotionally attached, and we lie (not in the malicious sense) to ourselves and others when market truths scream that something is wrong. It’s a classic formula for failure.
Here’s why this isn’t all bad; the truth is, your initial failures associated with emotional business decisions can eventually be the key to your future success. Ford’s famous Edsel was a massive flop in 1957, but because of it, the Mustang emerged in 1964.
The idea is that you want to fail fast, learn quickly, and hopefully the failures, while painful, are not fatal. In the case of Ford, they could afford to learn this painful lesson without going out of business. In the case of an independent entrepreneur or small operator, you might not have as much room for error, so you must consider this carefully. (Want some extreme examples? Recall the great flops of the late 90’s.)
So, keep this in mind…first and foremost, don’t get too emotionally attached to your business idea. If you find yourself defensive or angry when someone effortlessly pokes a hole in your concept, or if you have to work real hard to “prove” that it’ll work–you’re in very dangerous territory. Second, understand that there are a thousand ways to get where you want to go, and often the first idea might not materialize, but a new solution or idea will eventuate in ways you could never have planned. It’s amazing how this happens.
You’ve just got to stick with it and keep learning.
PS-Need some more evidence that “liar” can be an appropriate term for eager entrepreneurs (hey, I’ve told many standard emotional lies myself!)? In a classic post, Guy Kawasaki provides a list of The Top 10 Lies of Entreprenuers from the perspective of a seasoned Venture Capitalist.
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Tags: Business, business honesty, business ideas, emotional business decision, emotional liars, Entrepreneurship, idea, ideas, initial failure, Jeff Chavez, learn from failure, learning from failure, northstar
March 30th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
This information really resonates with me. Mixing optimism and passion while maintaining a focus on market factors in the right mix is critical to success.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:47 am
You are right Jeff, most entrepreneurs will ignore what the “market” may be telling them.
I think in a lot of cases it leads to failure, even if just temporary; but on the other hand I can not think of one truly great company or business that did start out with what “most” would consider a crazy idea and passion.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:45 am
I have been in a agreement with you about the opinion ” your initial failures associated with emotional business decisions can eventually be the key to your future success.”.The more failures we have, the more optimism we have to be in. The cold dark passing is the appearing moment the warm light of dawn, that is a subjective rule of the nature. The problem is that we must catch these changing rules, it means that we must be aware of and seize the turning moment of the dark into the warm light.
Think of these please and i trust that we are in the most feasible fruits.
Thank you for considering my comments.