We’re all good at some things and bad at others things. The sooner you can figure that out and be humble enough to accept that, the sooner you will know what to focus on and what you need help with. I think being self-aware is like having a superpower, especially in entrepreneurship.
These are some self-awareness examples from my own life.
Slow and Steady Can Indeed Win the Race
All throughout my schooling, from elementary school all the way through college I did not do well. I remember in elementary school the report cards were long carbon copy papers with grids where the teachers fill in the subject criteria boxes with a letter grade. Mine rarely had As. There always seemed to be a lot of Cs and Bs. I was never one of the smartest students in any of my classes. I even failed an economics class in college that I had to retake. I am slow at most things, including learning.
Slow is often seen as a negative and that is probably true in most cases. In sports no one wants to be the slowest. In school no on wants to be the slowest. At work no one wants to be seen as slow. It’s not a desirable trait.
However, there are some cases in which being slow is beneficial. The thing about being slow is that it has taught me to be patient and take my time and not rush. When starting a business, most people want and expect to be making millions months after they start a business. Bootstrapping a business and growing it over many years to become very profitable with zero debt is something very few people can do. I was able to do that with my tortoise like speed. That slow growth mentality ended up creating tremendous financial wealth and more importantly, a sustainable business that allowed me to have the lifestyle I wanted.
Problem Solving like McGyver
I can’t really recall learning a whole lot from my college classes. That’s at least 50% my fault though. I probably wasn’t ready to learn. Unlike elementary and high school, I managed to get a little better grades in college. What I realized was that my classes were more like problems that I had to solve. The better solutions I came up with(for homework, testing, assignments, etc.) the better the grade. So I would figure out how the class was graded (ie. testing, essays, group work, projects, homework, quizzes, etc) along with how strict or lenient the professor was and would see how I could get the highest grade, which usually wasn’t that high. I was a bad test taker, so I would try to make up for that with all the other smaller graded work. I would offset harder classes with easier classes to help my GPA. The point is, I learned that I stink at academic-type learning, but I’m good at problem solving. In school (and even corporate America) you have one problem and one chance to answer it correctly. If you get the question wrong, you can’t redo it or try again.
In entrepreneurship it’s quite the opposite. It’s very likely that you won’t get the answer right the first time. In fact, you will need to try multiple times to find the answer. Being resourceful and finding solutions is undervalued. So many answers are at your fingertips through the internet, so it’s no one’s fault but yourself if you can’t find them. Whether you want to start a business or repair things around your house, you have to be the modern day McGyver to solve problems.
World’s OKest Manager
My first job after college was an Assistant Food and Beverage Manager at a hospitality management company. The company managed event centers and boutique hotels. It basically meant I was a junior manager that worked along side a senior manager managing servers and other event staff. The hospitality industry tends to have high turnover, and the senior manager position was no exception. That position was filled and vacated 3 times during 18 months there. That meant I took on added responsibility for that department with quite a lot of people to manage.
Managing people is not easy, especially when you’re young and inexperienced. I think the combination of inexperience(in work and age) and lack of passion for the work left a less than desirable memory for managing people. Even after running a business in which I managed people, I didn’t think I excelled at it for various reasons. I thought I did improve but still would not considered myself great at it and have a lot of improvements to make.
Managing people is not a talent that I possess and I can accept that. This is one skill among many others that I’m not good at. Just as it’s important to know what you’re good at, it’s equally important to know what you’re not good at.
Gradual Ascent 