According to an article on Entrepreneur1, it is a common misconception that being smart, motivated, and talented would make someone the best possible candidate for entrepreneurship. Actually, the opposite is true.The more successful you are and the more talents you have, the harder it is to run a business.
The article suggests that one of the most counterintuitive traits that can hurt entrepreneurs is smarts. The smart-people problem starts back in school when the dreaded “group projects” are first assigned. Knowing the 80/20 rule for work (80% of all work is done by 20% of the people), what do you think happens in every group project? The smartest and most talented people in each group decide that they are going to do the lion’s share of the work. They don’t want to risk their grade in the class by dividing the work equally and hoping that Timmy (the guy who is absent from class two days a week on average and sleeps through class on the other three days) does his part well, if he remembers to do it at all. In school, there isn’t any benefit in trying to get Timmy up to speed quickly. Forget that – the smart people just take over and do the whole project themselves. And thus begins the smart-people work cycle. The smartest people do just about everything better than most everyone else. They write better, plan better and reason better. They are better, until it comes to running a business. Then, they are not better; they are screwed 1.
