WHEN NOT KNOWING IS GOOD
Entrepreneurs have to be amazing people, especially the successful ones. Starting and running your own business is not for the faint of heart. The entrepreneur must be passionate, focused, resourceful, efficient, persuasive, energetic, and wise. It doesn’t hurt to have lots of cash or many other investors. Even with all those advantages, the costs are many.
Alex Blumberg left his long-term career gig with National Public Radio to start his own business. Upon reflecting shortly after taking the plunge, he articulated a paradoxical truth about entrepreneurship (Hank Gilman. “Lessons of a Serial Entrepreneur” Money . September 2015, pp. 84–87):
“ If anyone fully understood the magnitude of starting a business—the costs personally and financially—they wouldn’t do it. ” (p. 86)
I have often pondered that we live to the limits of our knowledge. The flip side of that truth is that we are constantly living at the edge of our ignorance. That is either very funny or very dangerous. Perhaps it is both.
Blumberg reminds us that to be an entrepreneur, you never have any excuse for not doing your homework. Nevertheless, as important as that is, perhaps there is some strength in not knowing some things. Otherwise, we might never have any new businesses.
