Chapter 2: Know Thyself

First Things First

Before the business plan, before the pitch deck — the most important question an entrepreneur must answer is who they are.

Keywords

know thyself, self-assessment, personal values, entrepreneur identity, first steps

First Things First

All right. So I think you’re in an entrepreneurship class, so you’re interested perhaps in being an entrepreneur. I hope that’s true. I’m a big proponent, I’m a big fan. I spent my whole career doing this.

Because I think what is true with people who are entrepreneurs is we have maybe a different relationship with risk. That’s one of our characteristics. We have maybe a different relationship with risk than people who work in large corporations and do very specific jobs in very specific segments of a business. Entrepreneurship requires that you generally have a broader skill set — or be willing to develop a broader skill set — and you tend to be more of a risk-taker generally.

And once the business is up and running and operational, it becomes less interesting. At least it did for me. And the entrepreneurs that I hung out with, the people that I worked with throughout my career — once we got something working and operational, we would turn it over to the operator. The person who makes things work. And we’d go on and do something else. We’d start something else, look at another business, and go do it again. And do it again.

The Self-Assessment

I think — and this is maybe my perspective only — there are two very different people. There are people who like the challenge of something new, the excitement of building something. And then there are people who are really good at settling in and making it work. And they’re often not the same person.

I’m generally not the same person. I can do operations; I don’t love it. It’s not my primary thing. I’m more of the “let’s get something new started” type. I have a healthy respect for operators, because a good operator is just wonderful and beautiful to watch.

So the questions you would ask yourself — I think the first question is: how comfortable am I with risk? We’ll talk more about risk in a minute. And: what gets me up in the morning and gets me to go to work? What am I interested in doing? What’s exciting? What’s gonna hold my interest? Maybe it’s long-term projects and operations. Or maybe it’s “wow, let’s go find something new to do.” Only you can figure that out for yourself.

And sometimes, like in my case, I didn’t know this about myself. When I left school, I thought — like I said — I was gonna be an accountant or an analyst. I didn’t know that I had this in me. Until my second boss sat me down and said, “I really need you to do these three things” — two of which I knew nothing about. And he said, “Can you do that?” And I said, “Sure, I can do that.” And I figured it out.

But I had a good group of people to work with. I had good people I could call on to help. And I found it to be much more interesting to me than the daily accounting work I had been doing. And that’s what kind of got me up and going every single day.

So this is a conversation you have with yourself — and maybe with your parents, maybe with your friends, other people you trust. “Who am I?” Because only you can figure this out. And honestly, you might surprise yourself. It was a big surprise for me.

Any questions or comments?