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Only very few people have all the necessary skills to successfully build a business from the ground up and grow it, and that's OK, really. In this case Jacques
by gizmo 17y ago
Only very few people have all the necessary skills to successfully build a business from the ground up and grow it, and that's OK, really.
In this case Jacques has a few character traits that are real liabilities. So it's easy for us to laugh from the sidelines... knowing that we would never make those mistakes ourselves... (oh, the naivete) but we're all making critical mistakes, and only very few of us are introspective enough to realize what our real weak points are. (We tend to dismiss those things we're bad at as unimportant and we overestimate how introspective we are compared to other people. I'm no exception).
It wouldn't surprise me if the mistakes Jacques has listed are pretty inconsequential in the big picture. Sure, it only takes one big mistake to kill a project, but in the course of 24 years everybody is going to make so many mistakes that it becomes easy to lose the forest for the trees.
Too gullible? That's not the end of the world. Everybody gets burned occasionally. Well, almost everybody. People who never get burned tend to be pessimists who never see opportunities, even when they're looking right at them! Maybe in this case there is a different problem, such as "doesn't make contingency plans" or "too impulsive". Even if you trust everybody completely you can still become hugely successful in 24 years. I suspect "gullibility" is only on the list because you feel like a fool when you get taken advantage of, not because you've been consistently cheated in the past 24 years. I also suspect that if you had become hugely successful you wouldn't feel so bad anymore about trusting the wrong people.
Or take "seeing potential in people, not reality". Perhaps in combination of the above this can be simply summarized as "bad judge of character", if that's not too harsh. Other things hint at this as well "surprised when other people zone out", "surprised when people burn out", etc. Or maybe you do see the reality in people, the "spark" as it were, but perhaps you just don't have the reality distortion field to turn those people into passionate followers.
Anyway, I admire the way you've described some of your mistakes, but I don't believe, not for a second, that these mistakes are actually what have kept you from getting the success you want.
- pw0ncakes 17y agoSo it's easy for us to laugh from the sidelines... knowing that we would never make those mistakes ourselves... (oh, the naivete) but we're all making critical mistakes, and only very few of us are introspective enough to realize what our real weak points are. A lot of these mistakes sound exactly like ones I would make, particularly #1-2. People, in general, tend to be pessimistic and overly wary of "strangers" but overtrusting of individuals. The same syndrome is seen in politics, where people have a negative view of "politicians" but think highly of their own representatives-- this is why incumbents have such a major advantage. One irony is that people who have great character tend often to be poor judges of others' character, because they don't have the "spider sense" that indicates a sketchy character. If you're like this (and a lot of people are) you need to find the rare people who have good character but who are able to detect bad character in others, and ask for their opinions of someone before trusting that person with too much.
- jacquesm 17y agoFunny, I think I've actually been quite successful, possibly much more than what I ever deserved, but I always wonder what the road behind me would have looked like if not for these things and I'm ok with making mistakes as long as I learn something from them. This is just one attempt of many at analyzing and learning from past issues. Think of it as a single step in a 70 year project of self improvement.