Straight Shooter, your post sounds a bit like a call to entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship and aren’t you, ahem, a journalist?
Anyway dear, for those of us who are who are entrepreneurial by nature, there’s no other way to be. After all, we’re fueled by what Mark Cuban calls “The fear, the adrenaline, the excitement, the hope that every entrepreneur feels.”
The chemicals produced by the adventure intoxicate some of us. Cuban says that paired “with success, very often they are TOO intoxicating” and that some people begin to feel as though they’re invincible. Cuban includes himself; “I have been in situations where I have told myself that I’m smart, I know what I’m doing, that I will figure things out as I go, so it’s OK to take on this new opportunity. Those were usually the times I made mistakes.”
These are smart, smart words.
Anyway, he has developed a few rules/observations that he says are almost infallible. I’m going to filter my experience through them in the next few posts and hope for feedback. Here’s the first one:
1.Everyone is a genius in a bull market
Do I ever know this to be true. As someone who worked with the e-Companies of the 1998- 2002 e-era, I was surrounded by people who were sure they were charmed (and they were sure I was charming too.) Thank God I was old and experienced enough to seize and live in the moment. I worked eighteen hour days, loved every minute of it, and knew there’d be time to pursue my leisure activities when the tide lowered. I saved my money too, and that wasn’t hard to do, because I didn’t have time to spend it.
During this era, I also remember asking credible, respectable people (the kind you saw on CNN Money) if their companies were profitable and they’d answer “no, but it doesn’t matter, our wise VC investors (or Wall Street analysts) believe in our business plan. The market is growing so fast, our capitalization will take care of itself.” Some even claimed that traditional valuations were a thing of the past, “Just look at Google,” they sang.
I didn’t understand, but I wanted to believe. And who was I to argue? What did I know about the new e-conomy? The VC’s and market analysts surely knew things I didn’t; their guts were wired better than mine. So who was I to say? What was I to say? I said “Can I take your order?” Their customers said “How soon can we buy/” They ate huge steaks, drank McCallum’s (sometimes it was $60.00 a glass) and celebrated their genius.
I still do business with many of these folks. I got them jobs when they needed them. They’re all still smart, but they’re also much more careful. Today they tend to ride waves without crashing AND they know how to hang out in safe harbors until it’s time to catch the next wave.
What does all of this have to do with entrepreneurship and intrapaneurship? Maybe that it’s important to remain light, agile and flexible. Megacorps have a hard time at that.
It might also mean that genius mavericks, like the rest of us, must beware of getting “too big for your britches” and making a huge mistake a la Enron and Andersen.
And finally it’s important to have the mental muscle needed to get up if you fall. Yesterday’s business icons (here I’m talking 50-100 years ago) made and lost fortunes. Their bios make for good reading. But to live their stories, it takes guts,humility and probably even a big ego. And to have those genius moments, I’ll bet there’s nothing like it.
Your thoughts?
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