There is a clear “market correction” occurring in entrepreneurship. If you have been following the TPE blog recently you will know exactly what I am lauding. And, this change is being led by women. But before you get your undies in a bunch fellas, this is in fact good news for BOTH the boys and the girls.
Here are the three biggest changes occurring in this market correction:
1. Embrace
The old way of doing business was to beat the competition, finding any method you could to destroy them. It so ingrained, that the first question you still hear when starting a business is: How are you going to BEAT the competition?
The new way to grow your company is to embrace the competition. Specifically, the method is to collaborate so that BOTH businesses come out ahead. To learn how to collaborate you need to watch women. Women have a natural gift for community building and the guys (me included) need to learn to do the same. And don’t confuse this with old school business networking (guys excel at this). This new form of community building is led by a “give first” mentality.
2. Intuition
The old way of doing business was through cautiously calculated, metric supported moves. Data was king. I mean, it is the Information Age after all. But now there is one big problem, there is TOO MUCH INFORMATION. Data is no longer king - it’s a maniacal dictator. There is so much data that it constantly pulls you down tangential, irrelevant paths.
But alas, there is a rapid and fluid way of reaching decisions and it is called intuition. There is no denying, women are masters of intuition! They naturally read many situations in a blink, where a guy (or perhaps it’s just me) misses it completely. Intuition can’t really be learned, but what you do already have can be enhanced (hint: start by reading a lot of behavioral psychology books) – so get to it!
3. Pain & Patience
They say overnight success takes 15 or 20 years, right? Now it takes a lifetime, or better said it takes a lifestyle. Women are natural masters of patience (think raising children) and masters of pain tolerance (think giving birth to those rug rats).
Want to make it in the new landscape. You need to go into entrepreneurship for the long haul, and not because you need to grind it out to achieve success... but because the journey itself is the success.
The grand market correction of entrepreneurship is occurring and things will never be the same. The winners are the ones who will embrace their competition, trust their instincts, and recognize that just being in the game is winning. If you think this all sounds strange... you are so 2008.
By Mike Michalowicz, Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur
