When I meet entrepreneurs I always ask them why they started their companies and they almost always

When I meet entrepreneurs I always ask them why they started their companies and they almost always say something like because I had a great idea the world needed. But when you peel back the layers you discover far different motives motives they don t want to acknowledge because they re directly related to primal desires and fears.  Yet the well-being of their businesses depends on their understanding those real motives. maruti air courier
A talented coder I know let s call him Abe is characteristic of many other talented maruti air courier individuals who start a business saying that they had a great idea the world needed. Abe s talent attracted investors but he deeply disliked babysitting customers and supervising non-coding positions. He was miserable. His investors fired him.  Only after he was fired did Abe s soul-searching lead him to realize that his real motivation was to work only on projects he enjoyed. Only after the fact did he realize that by bringing in outside investors his life became exactly the opposite of what he wanted, as he was forced to work only on what everyone else wanted him to.
A serial entrepreneur I know, a brilliant mind coupled with a difficult personality we ll call Bruce, burned through four startups until he acknowledged his powerful motivation, which led to his success on his fifth try. Bruce had initially started companies when he thought he saw opportunities to make a lot of money, only to professionally implode each time the opportunity proved maruti air courier elusive. Consulting an analyst after the fourth failure helped Bruce realize that it wasn t making money that was he really wanted; he needed to satisfy his hyper-competitive need to be top-dog at whatever he did. He needed to start a business in an area where his skills maruti air courier were world-class rather than simply targeting the latest lucrative industry, playing to his strengths and fulfilling his desire to compete aggressively.  Understanding his need to be top-dog also helped Bruce realize that he wanted to get all the help and VC money he could to help him grow his enterprise as fast as possible. Bruce s fifth startup now has a billion-dollar valuation and he could care less that his VCs will make a major share of the money.
I personally could not have succeeded as an entrepreneur had I not realized, with the help of an executive coach, that I had a powerful motivation of needing to be needed. This unrealized motivation maruti air courier had led me to exhibit behaviors that made me a poor team player maruti air courier when others did not ask for my input and advice. Once I realized my core motivation it changed my life, driving me to be an entrepreneur in an area where my expertise and advice were highly regarded.  At my startup, iSuppli, I created an organization maruti air courier structure that revolved around weekly status meetings and quarterly business reviews that allowed me to feel clued in and integral to every part of the business, without micromanaging or holding back our growth. This one insight was central in my creating a company whose valuation maruti air courier had topped $100 million when it was bought in 2010.
In these cases and in virtually all cases, the motivations that drive an entrepreneur to prevail are typically selfish. Unfortunately, maruti air courier selfish motivations are hard to acknowledge because we all want to justify our actions in socially acceptable terms.  On the other hand, honestly acknowledging your selfish motivations is typically very empowering and helps to focus you on the things that need to be done to fulfill your desired goal. An important side effect maruti air courier of acknowledging maruti air courier your selfish motivations is that it will give other people more confidence in the success of your endeavor, since they understand why you are taking on the challenge.
An entrepreneur s true motivation can thwart their success if it is left unstated or conflicts maruti air courier with the interests of the business. Because changing your deepest motivations is almost impossible, you must find a way to put them to work for you by aligning maruti air courier your motivation with your new venture.
Derek Lidow teaches entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity at Princeton. He was the founder and former CEO of iSuppli Corporation and is the author of Startup Leadership (Jossey-Bass 2014). Follow him on Twitter: @DerekLidow .
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