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[MUSIC PLAYING] What are the components of a good entrepreneur. Well, there are many different types of entrepreneurs. So what are the characteristics of entrepreneurs that you want to emulate? Maybe it's risk tolerance. I don't view that as necessary. I don't see myself as a big risk taker, particularly in business. Maybe it's comfort with high stakes. Probably some basic numeracy.
0:33
Knowing how to add and subtract is helpful-- multiply and whatnot. Negotiation-- the ability to deal make. I would tackle these separately, and those are very much teachable or trainable. Those are two different things. Like negotiating might just be offering you a script that you can use to increase the price that you get for acts or whatever might get a better deal with a supplier.
1:02
The other piece of it is conditioning and training. You have to desensitize yourself to high stress situations as an entrepreneur, I think. So you can practice that by doing something really simple. Like one of my friends, Noah Kagan, who's the CEO of SumoMe-- this is his company. But he encourages would be entrepreneurs, like Want-A-Preneurs-- people who want to become entrepreneurs-- to do the Coffee Challenge.
1:28
And the Coffee Challenge is just walking into a coffee shop and ordering something. It could be a coffee, tea-- it doesn't matter- and asking for 10% off. And it's like the smallest thing imaginable. They're not going to call the cops on you. Nothing's going to happen, except they will say yes, no, or something in between. That's it. And it makes most people so anxious to do that.
1:56
And therein lies the value of the exercise. Because you want to desensitize yourself, inoculate yourself against these types of unfounded fears by practicing. That's the only way. By knowing that it's not a big deal, you will not be able to modify your behavior. But if you do that type of thing over, and over, and over again, negotiating-- it's like state fairs, for instance, or a farmers' market.
2:20
It is great practice for negotiating the big stuff. But you have to condition yourself. So it's skills and it's conditioning. And thus, there's sort of declarative, like factual stuff, that you can pick up. Then there's the procedural, skill-based stuff that often requires some type of conditioning. Just like going through buds for Navy Seal selection or anything else, it's like it weeds out people who have the knowledge but not the conditioning very often.
2:48
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