Hideosity: Part I
What is entrepreneurship, really?
There is a lot of discussion of what constitutes entrepreneurship within the myriad social media channels out there. What I’ve been reading echoes what I’ve read before, and what has been written about even centuries ago. This new wave of social media interaction is breeding mediocrity, or rather, hideousity. I’ve clicked on countless twitter profiles in which I generally come to the conclusion: “I’ve seen this before.” Those without true innovative talent manipulate social media in order to sell something. The mediocre entrepreneur is like a miner during the gold rush, panning in the same streams as everyone else, using the same tools, and desperately hoping to get very lucky. Sound familiar?
And indeed we have seen one person after another brand themselves as an entrepreneur. It’s easy to do, for it doesn’t require any credentials. Rather, it requires a bold proclamation, often emphasized on the front of a business card. The fact that market barriers don’t exist to potentially bar one from becoming an entrepreneur simply means that mediocre talent is likely to be the rule.
Unfortunately, mediocre entrepreneurship talent takes many forms. The first form is evidenced with the supposed entrepreneur never having an original thought in his life. The Entrepreneur (and I use that word oh so loosely) merely catches the next economic wave (in this case, it appears to be social media) and sets up shop. Suddenly the person is an expert, and along with his comrades, offers his services, usually by mass marketing them. It is unlikely that the entrepreneur and his team are experts; rather, they are expert salesmen. They know how to wind up a pitch and throw it faster than Nolan Ryan, the grandfather of the 100 mile an hour+ fast ball.
Again, what is entrepreneurship, really?
Forget all the jive about taking risks. Everyone takes risks every single day. There is a higher probability of dying from an automobile accident TONIGHT than most would wish to believe. Risks, schmisks. True entrepreneurship has very little to do with risks over the long run. Getting sucked into what everyone thinks entrepreneurship should be will guarantee that you’ll end up thinking just like them.
Entrepreneurship is a commander in a battlefield in which his men are clearly outnumbered. The probabilities of success are low, they are surrounded by all sides, and the enemy has superior technological capability. The commander is essentially in a no-win situation. The enemy takes no prisoners, the result of defeat means slavery or certain death. With time running out, the commander has to abandon his previous battlefield plans and in an instant adopt a new strategy. His men are on the line. He chooses to adopt a strategy that is so unexpected, the commanders on the other side are unsure of how to react. This lack of action, even for a moment, creates a window of opportunity. This hesitation communicates to the losing commander potential weakness. If this weakness is exploited, the other sides’ battle plans and system begin to break down. Although previously winning, in struggling to re-adapt, channels of communication are lost and the other side flails.
If the outnumbered commander repeats this a few times in quick succession, what was once an impossible battle turns into a victory.
A solid, modern entrepreneur is much like that battlefield commander. He knows that the odds are against him but he doesn’t care. His mind is capable of throwing precious plans out the window. He can invent new plans very quickly or has other alternatives. It’s not just that he’s an out-of-the-box thinker, but he exists on a planet where boxes are contraband. It might be a stretch to say that potential competitors are his enemy. That’s too easy. His real enemy is any old, deprecated system. It’s the barriers that naturally come his way when he sets out to try something innovative.
Thus, a really talented entrepreneur knows how to hack social systems and be adaptive.
A true entrepreneur is a social ninja.