I have learnt throughout my career that entrepreneurship is about willingness, not intelligence.
At nine years of age, voting day for me was pay day.
I grew up across the road from a primary school. On voting days in the 90’s, I would spend whatever little pocket money I had to buy cheap mixed lollies and spend the night before voting making a hundred or so lolly bags.
General punters would park their cars up the street and need to walk past our house to get to the school to vote. I would have my table and chairs on the driveway with a sign selling lolly bags for a few dollars each.
Generally, I would make a couple hundred dollars and split the earnings with my siblings.
Until I was an adult, I never believed I had a disadvantage.
Honestly, never up until this point in my life.
I believed your reality can become negotiable. I believed you choose your future.
Fast forward a decade or so to the starting point of my career.
Still to this day it was the only time in my life I was burdened with few years of doubt.
I believed I had a partial disadvantage.
Why?
My introverted personality.
I grew up with a single mother on a disability pension and was the eldest of five kids. This wasn’t what scared me.
The scariest thing for me was that I was an introvert…
We've been conditioned to admire the person with the loudest voice in the room, or the smartest.
Or the one with the quick one liners, the natural networker. And don’t forget the individual who doesn’t sweat bullets when asked to introduce themselves to the group.
This is self-inflicted deceit.
Truth is, the loudest in the room doesn’t make you better than anyone else. We all shit from the same place...
Here is a simple unconventional recipe for success (any point of success).
Ingredients:
Average intelligence,
Consistent persistence,
Not giving a fu#k about failure, and,
Rolling up the sleeves with winning endeavour
Method:
Slap it together in no particular order with years of incremental improvements and ignorance to setbacks.
By following this you will run rings around the majority who are much smarter than you.
Its clear-cut that progression doesn’t come from what you do occasionally, it comes from what you do consistently.
I was once under the impression that introverts like me could not have successful careers or be in leadership positions.
Imagine believing that your inherent personality traits put you at a career disadvantage.
That is the perception someone with an average intelligence like me would think.
Embrace the average IQ and do the reps!
Intelligent people may know the path to take but they can often overcomplicate things.
It’s not about being smart, it’s about being brave and willing.
There are millions of people with a much lower IQ than you who are more valuable to a company, wealthier, and happier doing what they love simply because they were brave, took risks, and built resilience.
My early career mentor insisted public speaking become part of my personal development plan to improve my shy personality. I wasn’t shy about directed thrown profanity as my first response.
Even though I had a few years of self-doubt, I was driven by the fact a company would PAY ME for 38 hours a week to acquire new skills.
Why do you think I would do an additional 20 hours or more per week (for free)?
No matter how skilled, or how intelligent you are, you will continually doubt your potential if you lack confidence to try.
When it feels scary to jump, that is the precise moment you should jump.
I reckon my nine-year-old self selling lollies would be proud.
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