Who Wakes You?
You may be familiar with the following Persian proverb- and if not the whole proverb, at least the third line.
He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him;
He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child, teach him.
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep, wake him.
He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise, follow him.
Recently an aspiring entrepreneur called to describe an idea. He wanted to know if the idea was worthy enough to quit his job to pursue it full time. He had a long tenure in the very specific industry and had firsthand knowledge of the issues that he was talking about. He had spent years mulling the idea in his head and felt he was ready to launch. His elevator pitch was credible and passed my initial smell test.
That is when things got interesting. Every time we tried to dig for some holes in the idea, he would go back and dwell on the strong points of the plan. His focus always returned to the strengths.
This is not an uncommon trait of the entrepreneurial personality. To build up their courage and passion, entrepreneurs often focus mainly on the good things, their strengths. In this process, they often ignore or shortchange the consideration they give to other vital variables. The risks that they don’t know or knowingly ignore may the very Achilles heel that kills them.
The biggest task of a mentor is to wake them up to this reality. In my mentoring experience, I have found that before we can do any of that we need to establish two things at the very onset of the potential relationship:
1) You are squarely on their side. With all kinds of experts and consultants available to them, they might be wary of yet another advisor. Convince them that whatever you say or do is for their benefit.
2) Testing vulnerabilities is for their benefit. The purpose of poking holes in their ideas is to test the risks that might be lurking underneath. Creating a successful venture is a multi-variable process. Success comes from doing a little bit better in a number of things. Alas! Failure can come from doing any one of a number of things poorly. All this poking is not so much to kill the idea (although that might happen) but to reduce those risks before we go too far.
Entrepreneurs are no fools to be shunned, but more like a child who is asleep. Mentors are there to wake them up to face reality.
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Dr. Rajiv Tandon is an Entrepreneur, Educator and Mentor. He facilitates peer groups for CEOs of fast-growing companies in Minnesota. To learn more, sign up to get the email newsletter.
