> If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know

> If you’ve ever taken a sales or business or networking course, and seen the people that take the advice literally and act like creepy wooden weirdos, you know why. Business “skill” is intangible, partially luck obviously but partially “game” that you can’t just systematize. It's really only 3 things: - Empathy - Intelligence - Sociopathy The reason there are so few people good at it (high-level sales, high-level business management) is that those qualities rarely coincide in a single individual in a useable way. Empathy is required because you cannot communicate with someone without understanding their individual perspective. Otherwise you end up with {generic response}. Intelligence is being able to know what to do with the signals empathy picks up. Doesn't matter if you see opportunity if you can't come up with a creative solution to take advantage of it. And finally, sociopathy is common, but rarely balanced out by the other two to the right degree. Definitely a knowing-when vs when-not issue. But critical as novel solutions look a lot like batshit-crazy ones to everyone else.