Is Entrepreneurship Risky For An Introvert?

2 August 2020

Are introverts better entrepreneurs? It depends who you ask. I’ve been an extrovert for most of my life, especially once I got out of my shell and really grew into being in love with being on camera around turning 16. I spent the weekend at a lake house with one of my good friends and had the chance to start reading Limitless by Jim Kwik.

The book is about teaching us how to enable our brains to learn better which is something I struggle with. I grew up always being told I wasn’t intelligent enough to be successful because I couldn’t succeed to the 10th degree during my time in middle and high school (besides English class). As a young child to a young adult, being told you will not be successful for whatever reason can eventually stick with you until you’re older, which is what happened from my childhood to now.

When I have to calculate business expenses or read a book that is difficult for me to read, I usually give up. I’m hoping Limitless teaches me how to strengthen parts of my brain that are weaker than others so that I can absorb information that I have struggled with understanding in the past. There is no reason I am “bad” at math or you are “bad” at science- we’re just not opening our brains up to be able to absorb information on topics we aren’t equally good at learning.

I bring up the book Limitless because reading it has opened my eyes to the fact that we all truly do choose the way we perceive the world. Certain events can happen, people will come in and out of your life, and though most of us blame those people or events on things that follow, it’s kind of the opposite.

I actually struggle more with having one on one conversations with people I don’t know more than I do standing in front of 100s of people on a stage presenting a talk. If I can find a way to stop enabling myself when I think “I’m bad at math, I’m walking away from this math problem” or “this conversation makes me uncomfortable because of that one conversation I had with a teacher in middle school where she told me to speak slower” for example, I’ll be able to overcome myself with that self-inflicted disappointment when I can’t perform. There is no right or wrong way to be an entrepreneur. There are extroverted founders and introverted ones. As Jim says in Limitless, the only limits in the world are the ones you put on yourself. Change your viewpoint and therefore you will change your responses from failures to learning curves you can overcome to understand.