• What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? - A Buffalo or A Cow?

• The secret of winning every negotiation - Be willing to walk away

• Interesting Read - Thinking is a Skill

• Tweet of the week

What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You? - A Buffalo or A Cow?

Storms are common in the wild and yes, they can be quite intimidating as well. So when the storm clouds roll in and the thunder rumbles, you can almost predict what the animals in the jungle do - they turn around and run from the storm or find a shelter to wait it out. Two animals are of interest here - The Buffalo and the Cow.

Both animals work in herds but approach the storms differently. When the cows sense the storm coming, they turn and run in the opposite direction. At first, this may look like the best strategy but cows are too slow to outrun the storm, and moving in large herds may protect them from predators but also means they can’t run so fast and leave their young behind.

If you consider this, then you already know that their best effort trying to outrun the storm is futile as the storm eventually catches up with them. The Buffalos on the other hand approach the storm differently. Instead of running from it, they turn around and run towards the storm. By doing so, they shorten their pain. Here is the take from this.

As an entrepreneur, storms represent challenges, and there will be many of them. You can’t run from it and can’t avoid it either, not if you want to succeed. The logical thing to do is face the challenge and deal with it. But dealing with challenges this way is not what our brains do naturally. We instinctively try to avoid difficult, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar situations as our brains seek out the path of least resistance.

But you already know how this ends. By trying to outrun the challenges, you’ll end up wasting time, energy, and valuable resources only to have to deal with the situation in the end. If this is so, why not be a buffalo from the very beginning? This way, you save yourself the agony of delaying the inevitable.

The secret of winning every negotiation - Be willing to walk away

Negotiation is one of the oldest skills in the history of humanity. I would dare say as long as humans existed, we have always had to negotiate in one way or another. Whether it is to end a conflict or strike a deal. My interest is in the latter. As an entrepreneur, one of the skills you must hone is knowing how to negotiate and I know just the perfect example for you - Steve Jobs - an icon in every way imaginable.

Jobs was great at almost everything he did, but perhaps his most impressive skill was how good he was at negotiating. In an article titled - The Power of Negotiation - I talked about the tug-of-war between Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Steve Jobs. It was indeed a battle between two elephants. Amazon had the upper hand with a pricing strategy that was hard to beat and the fact that they were pioneers in the E-book market.

But that didn’t stop Steve Jobs from attempting to snatch a big portion of the pie from Amazon. What is even more surprising is that Steve Jobs managed to do so despite taking a larger portion of profits made by publishers. Despite his autocratic form of leadership which most people frowned at, Steve Jobs’s negotiation skill was unrivaled. When Jobs reached out to HarperCollins, one of the biggest publishing agencies at the time, he needed to win them over to his side.

If he succeeded in doing so, then many other publishing companies would easily dump Amazon for Apple. But this wasn’t going to be an easy win. However, Jobs Stubbornly held onto his terms and refused to budge, and after exchanging several emails with James Murdoch, Steve Jobs got the deal.

His success was a combination of factors including the fact that Jobs knew his competition so well, even better, he knew their weakness. He understood his position, its advantages, and its disadvantages. This knowledge helped him to build a compelling argument which is a strong leverage to have during a negotiation. After all, you have to be able to convince the other side that your deal is the better one.

But if everything else failed, Steve Jobs had one more ammunition left, his willingness to leave everything on the table and work away. When striking a business deal, it is always important to reach an agreement that favors both parties. But many times, one party often needs the deal more than the other and this can be a very powerful leverage. Steve Jobs needed HarperCollins to join him, but he wasn’t going to bend over for them.

As an entrepreneur, this is a powerful lesson to learn because you will be involved in many negotiations and sometimes, you may find yourself at a disadvantage.

Interesting Read - Thinking Is a Skill

Have you ever seen or heard someone say something and then you stop and ask yourself, why didn’t they think it through? If so, then congratulations, you made use of one of the most advanced organs in the human system, the brain. This may sound unbelievable but most people are in auto mode and nothing opened my eyes more than this article titled - Thinking Is a Skill.

The author made a great point of trying to explain what thinking is and why it is a skill. According to him, the goal of thinking is to understand. For instance, you know why 2 + 2 is 4. The proof that you understand that simple maths problem is the fact that if any of the values are changed, you know the outcome will change as well. So 2 + 3 cannot be 4. You don’t have to guess.

Okay, I know math isn’t everyone’s forte but thinking should, especially if you want to be an entrepreneur. You will have a lot of data at your disposal and it’s your thinking skill that will translate that data into useful information. Business decisions can be tricky and understanding the dynamics requires thinking. Let’s say your competitor makes a move, what you do next will depend not only on the information you have at hand but also on how you apply this in your decision-making - ergo, your thinking ability.

A poor decision is the product of poor thinking and a great decision is the product of great thinking. Without thinking, your actions are comparable to drawing straws and hoping the outcome is in your favor. It is sheer gambling and guesswork, and the result will be inconsistent at best. But if you apply the right thinking in every decision, you take control of the outcomes of your decisions to the point that they seem almost predictable.

But first, you have to know how to think.

Like many other skills, becoming a skilled thinker takes time and practice especially if you have not been applying this skill in a long time. If you are or have been a student of philosophy, then you have an advantage. Logic is an important tool for developing critical and problem-solving skills and it is also a core aspect of philosophy. I would recommend every entrepreneur consider adding thinking to their skill list and if you want to know why, then read this article.

Tweet of the week

“Passion makes all the difference. Without passion it is work; with passion it is fun. Passion is what keeps you going when everything around you is telling you to stop. If you are not passionate enough, you may be tempted to give up just before the fun begins”