On February 20, Dr. Arthur Brooks gave a lecture called “Let’s Work Together: Restoring Optimism, Unity, and Opportunity.” The goal of the lecture was sharing of what he thinks are three secrets to successful entrepreneurship.
Dr. Arthur Brooks is well respected social scientist and musician, who is currently the president of the American Enterprise Institute or as other people would call, a conservative think tank.
He started of his speech by saying that there are multiple ways to achieve a success and two big problems that of looking the truly successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Firstly, this group is only 2% and out of those 2% only ¾ (75%) are capable running a successful enterprise. This means that out of 1,000,000 people only 2,000 are successful entrepreneurs. And out of those 2,000 people only 1,500 people are capable of running actually company. So the group was really small. Also, he found out that these guys are “nuts” – hypomania.
Secondly, what is the definition of success? Is it money, family life, happiness or property. For everybody the formula is very different.
Then he continued, to the first secret of success which is lifting someone up, not making someone richer. He referred to the prison entrepreneurship program in Houston that its purpose is to form enterprisers out of convicted felons, which does not really happen. But what happens is their return rate is much lower because it helps to get back on their feet and transfer to real life.
The second secret was serve others. He did a study where the people who donated money, they become richer. He taught that his numbers were wrong, so he asked his friend, who told him that it is well known for 30 years. It is because more one donates the happier one, which results in higher productivity therefore more making more money.
The third and last secret to success cultivate your weakness. In other words, one weakness is different and a good way to connect with someone else in the community. He gave an example of college bar. There is a weakness which is a lack of true college bar in the campus area. Use the weakness to connect with the community and start a bar.
Lastly, he also encouraged to take more risks and to say “yes” to a lot of big life decisions to be more entrepreneurial minded.