Daniel Comp posted on February 26, 2010
You remember the fable from Hans Christian Andersen called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”? 
(14min )
It’s about an Emperor who hires two consultants to create the finest clothing in the world. If an entrepreneur specified the fabric it would be: ‘unbelievably light, inexpensive, durable, and easy to care for.’ They’d likely get a bunch of venture capital for a start up as well.
In the fable, the consultants claimed the fabric was so exquisite, that anyone who couldn’t appreciate (or see) it was ‘stupid’ or ‘unfit for royalty’. Unfortunately, the Emperor couldn’t see the fabulous fabric, and his ego insisted he pretend otherwise. The Emperor can't appear ‘stupid’ or ‘unfit’, so he lies. The Emperor's associates agree and lie to protect their jobs I suspect. Sort of like President Bush and Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction?
When the production con-men are finished, they dress the Emperor for his ‘public debut’ and off he goes, leading a procession. A child in the crowd calls out that the Emperor HAS NO CLOTHES, he is wearing nothing at all, and the cry is taken up by others. The Emperor cringes, suspecting the assertion is true, but holds himself up proudly and finishes his term in office. President Bush later said that the biggest regret of his presidency was "the intelligence failure".
Why bring up the story? Because entrepreneurs and enterprising couples believe and perpetuate a lie. We’ve been duped into a false belief.
FACT:
Small business and marriage failure is horrendously high. Just look at the statistics. What is interesting about marriage is that ‘more experience’ does NOT make for better success. The opposite is true for small business. Investors tend to prefer leaders that have learned from their failures – because a lot of angels and venture investors know failure well.
FACT:
Small business is HUGE. 20 million of the 27 million small businesses in the US have zero employees – and yet small business creates 79% of all new jobs.
Over half the SBA loan qualified small businesses fail in the first five years – before their loans are paid. That’s a huge amount of bad debt – and broken families – averaging 10% of all businesses per year. Huge!
MYTH:
Small Business and Marriage failure is NORMAL.
With that false conclusion, comes the reasoning; there’s not much you can do to do avoid divorce AND business failure. I completely disagree. Here’s my reasoning; the history of human suffering through disease.
EXAMPLE:
The U.S. Census Bureau publishes that the average life expectancy at the beginning of the 20th century was 47.3 years. Today, it’s increased 60% to 77.85 years, due largely to the development of vaccinations and other treatments for deadly diseases. Before 1995, chicken pox was a rite of passage for kids, with an itchy rash of small red bumps on the skin.
Smallpox killed more than 300 million people in the 20th century alone, but once vaccination eliminated the chances of the virus spreading, the disease disappeared; in fact, the United States hasn't vaccinated for smallpox since 1972. Scientists declared the world free of smallpox in 1979.
These diseases to have been cured in the 20th Century through vaccination and information:
Chicken Pox
Diphtheria
Invasive H. Flu
Malaria
Measles
Pertussis
Pneumococcal
Polio
Tetanus
Typhoid Fever
Yellow Fever
Smallpox
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passed on through coughing, sneezing and direct contact.
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spreads through coughing, sneezing and shared personal items.
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spreads when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks
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a parasitic infection of the liver and red blood cells.
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a highly contagious viral illness that spreads through coughs or sneezes.
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whooping cough, is a highly contagious respiratory infection passed by coughing
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passed by coughing or sneezing
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a virus that enters the body through the mouth, usually from hands contaminated with the feces of an infected person.
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spores are found in the soil and enter the body through a skin wound.
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spread when food or water has been infected with Salmonella through contact with the feces of an infected person.
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spread by mosquitoes
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Smallpox has been wiped off the face of the earth, except for samples of the virus held in labs
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MORAL:
Just because a problem is BIG doesn’t mean it can’t be MANAGED.
Saving humanity turns out to be quite simple:
“Cover your mouth when you cough, and don’t eat dirty ‘stuff’
Observation:
Entrepreneurs and enterprising couples fail through isolation. “the death of the entrepreneur is solitude” says Dr. Ernesto Sirolli. Eccentricity; being on the ‘edge’ of society has been an acceptable part of the problem. Granted, most of us have arrested development at the root of our personality and our marriage/business troubles, but the gross failure rates ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE when the cure is so readily available!
Getting connected to a peer group to exchange ‘fixes’ to technical stuff is a part of our practice – so why do we hide our personal issues?
“I can’t disclose how my business or marriage is failing, because that will be the final straw.”
“If I keep my problems a secret, then I can survive just a little longer.”
“If I tell anyone, then everyone in town will know, and I’ll be finished”
So tell me; what’s the richest athlete in history doing these days? The greatest golfer is going back to basics – to get his personal issues in order. Good for Tiger. What about the rest of us?
Conclusion:
Awareness and Action.
We start the Enterprising Cycle with setting the foundation for a strong inner-dialog, beginning with self-awareness. Self-awareness is literally half the battle. Unfortunately, It’s the tougher half. Here’s what Leo Tolstoy wrote about it:
"I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."
So, you as an entrepreneur or enterprising couple must cloth yourself in some NEW BELIEFS and NOT ACCEPT FAILURE as NORMAL.
Get with your tribe… DO NOT ISSOLATE… It’s a simple principle, just like “cover your mouth”. Trust us!
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