My good friend Terry Gold is a fellow entrepreneur who started a successful company, Gold Systems. He is also the one who helped me set up this blog. We get together periodically to catch up, eat BBQ, and to share challenges and inspiration. He said a few things about entrepreneurs in general last week that I found myself really relating to, including the following:
- Entrepreneurs are risk managers, not risk takers. We don’t gamble. We take on risks when we have some control over the results.
- We’re “B” students. This was definitely true of me in college. We focus time on stuff outside of classes so we don’t get “A”s.
- We don’t have MBA’s. Once I graduated from undergrad I vowed to never take another test or write another paper. We learn more by doing than through classes.
- We’re not great people managers. I’ve gotten good at hiring (my staff is amazing), but I’m still not very good at managing.
- We don’t over plan, we anticipate unknown bumps in the road and have faith that our ideas and actions will work out. My staff can attest that I don’t like to spend too much time on planning. I usually know which direction I want to head and I want to see action asap.
Thanks Terry for making my life make a little more sense! I also like the nine high performance traits you discuss in your Jan 22nd entry. Especially #8 :)
Thanks Lee, you are a great entrepreneur and it's always fun to talk to you. For people wondering about #8, it is "No Whining." The link to my post is http://bit.ly/yZyTcu and the link to TC North's original article in CoBizmag.com is http://bit.ly/eqaflM
Thanks for being a great friend and for all the work that you and your team do in the community. -- terry
Posted by: Terry Gold | February 07, 2012 at 04:25 PM