How to Live Like An Entrepreneur
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Noam Wasserman writes that entrepreneurs will find the same skills they learn in their personal lives when they are able to take on new challenges.
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About the author Noam Wasserman is the dean of Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business and a former professor of entrepreneurship at the Harvard Business School, is the author of The Startup Life: What the Founders can Teach Us About Making Choices and Managing Change.
I was a student in my Harvard Business School Entrepreneurship course years ago. A month into the semester, he came up to me to tell me that he didn’t think he could start his own company.
“Sorry,” I said, “maybe you’re taking the wrong course.”
“Not at all!,” he said. “Your course has already changed my marriage!”
Naturally, I asked him for explanations.
He explained that he and his wife struggled to make a new life together as newlyweds. They tried to determine who played which roles and how decisions were made, as well as how each could contribute equally to the family.
They aimed for equal effort in their initial endeavor to ensure a fair division. They rotated between cleaning and cooking the apartment each day.
But in my class, students learn that it’s often a mistake for startup founders to insist on equality with co-founders. Partners play to their strengths in the most successful ventures.
My student noticed that the food he prepared ended up being burnt, and the floors were still dirtied after he was done. The husband was better at cooking than at cleaning, and the opposite was true for his wife—his “co-founder of life.” Henceforth, they decided he would cook and she would clean. No more keeping score.
In other words, he applied the lessons from our class on how to partner in a start-up to his marriage. They worked.
He thought he was seeing an entrepreneurship According to the student, it was actually a course in The meaning of life. Or rather, it was a course on how to apply an entrepreneurial mindset in everyday life. He helped me see the bigger picture.
As an entrepreneur professor, I have always seen my role as teaching the next generation about starting a company. Like other business-school faculty members, I hadn’t realized how students can benefit from adopting an entrepreneurial mindset beyond the business environment.
Traditional entrepreneurial education has focused on how to start a company. Aspiring entrepreneurs are taught to research the market, write a business plan, raise capital and create a business plan. However, the characteristics that make an entrepreneur successful can also be valuable professionally.
An entrepreneurial mindset consists of certain attributes—skills and attitudes—regarded as essential to success in business. Entrepreneurs are able to see opportunities and capitalize on them. They are able to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity well and make sound decisions even when faced with uncertainty. They are resilient enough to absorb setbacks—more than 80 percent of all start-ups fail in the first three years—learn from mistakes, get stronger from misfires, and pivot quickly to adapt to unexpected challenges.
Entrepreneurs are exceptional at “divergent thinking,” otherwise known as thinking outside the box, often leading to unconventional ideas. They’re also strong in “convergent thinking,” taking a linear, analytical approach to generating a solution to a problem. Perhaps above all, they can get out of autopilot.It’s too easy to take for granted that any service or product can—and should—be improved.
These skills can be useful in marriage, friendship, and even the maintenance of a house. Beyond the innovation incubator and corporate boardroom, entrepreneurs can also be valuable in our personal lives. Let’s face it: life itself is an entrepreneurial enterprise, whether we’re deciding which college to attend, when to marry, whether to have children, and how to pursue our careers. You can use your entrepreneurial spirit to help you buy your first house or lead a board of directors for your church or synagogue.
If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you will be able to learn how to collaborate and take risks. It is possible to resolve differences, address tensions and reach common goals. You can both plan for success and learn from failure.
You will live your life 24/7. In forging ahead as an entrepreneur, you’ll discover that all the skills you’re in the process of mastering between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.—whether how to manage time, money and stress or improving your emotional intelligence—will be just as important in how you live from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. As my student taught me, entrepreneurship can impart concrete rewards that spell happiness in the workplace and everywhere else. I now know. And so do you.
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