DISQUS

debbym · 2 months ago

My three sons are all entrepreneurs. Since their early years were filled with turmoil their entrepreneurial spirit may have evolved in accordance with your theory. As a mother, I always regretted those early years; however, they may have served there purpose. Also as a single parent it was also a fact that they needed to produce an income to sustain the lifestyle they desired--not many hand-outs.

ken · 2 months ago

Someone once said "The world is changed by unreasonable people". A reasonable person would look at the status quo and accept it. Only an unreasonable person would try to change it.

Is an unreasonable person dysfunctional? To some extent, I would think so.

pemo · 2 months ago

Wow Steve I was almost shuddering reading this. I came from an extremely dysfunctional family, my father in my teen years became an alcoholic. I was the oldest of 4 and was given the responsibility to raise my siblings a lot of the time, including being in charge of them flying first time out of the country from Sydney to Fiji when I was the grand old age of 12 years old. I have to admit love being a troubleshooter when everything has gone to hell, a strange calm comes over me. Thanks for this post it is incredibly self revelatory. Best Pemo Theodore, AstraMatch Blog

janice · 2 months ago

Yep. I've made this observation about my own entrepreneurial career: Channeling all of the family dysfunction into a healthy (rather than destructive) form of chaos.

Dr Laraine · 2 months ago

Thanks for sharing Steve's interesting observations.
Most important: This is a great invitation for all who lacked early and healthy nurturing to recognize the potential in those survival skills. Many realize their own capacity to cope, yet do not feel competent. Finding resources and support to turn all that tenaciousness, agility in chaos, and passion into success is gold. It can make the difference between a self-destructing entrepreneur, and a founder who can cross the divide from the adrenaline of early chaos to long-term scalable success. That's resilience.

1232 · 2 months ago

In the above quote. I believe it went like this.. "The reasonable man adapts to the world, the unreasonable man adapts the world to him. Therefore all change depends on the unreasonable man.

Great thought. I hope you can expand on it more, maybe write a book. In addition to those points, being raised in those families also meant they were denied access to their material wants, and I believe (depending on the personality type) they may take 2 paths. 1 developing a submissive mentality to material wants, and 2 relentlessly and creatively getting what they want. Resolute AMBITION is the seed to tenacity, resilience, and so on. Without ambition, one does nothing.

Also, I believe casino gambling at the mid to extreme can develop emotional characteristics of an entreprenuer. Especially, capital risk and being emotionally balanced in the highs and lows.

1232 · 2 months ago

Exposure to volatile environments, strengthen mentalities. Through these experiences, people are able to judge the context of chaotic situations, making it easier. Having these frames of reference to decide "hmm.. well this isn't as bad compared to driving through a mine field when I was in the marines..."

This is powerful to any entrepreneur. Just think of the worst possible experience in your life, or the worst that could happen in your life and use that as a baseline. Just keep that in your head at challenging moments and everything will be a little easier.

Geoff H · 2 months ago

Anecdotal evidence: +1

Ben · 2 months ago

My parents' relationship issues; the loss of my dad, brother, and both sets of grandparents; and other fun-filled life events have definitely given me a knowledge of how short life is and, because of that, taught me two lessons:

* Tell the people you love what they mean to you, and...
* Don't live your life like it's a trial run. You and everyone you love are going to die, so there's not much to fear. Losing your home, your loved ones, your health-- it'll happen. Until you don't wake up one morning, you might as well shoot for the moon and try to change the world.

Great article, Steve! On another note, a local entrepreneur was telling me about your book just earlier this week. I'm looking forward to it!

PressM · 2 months ago

Hi Steve, Press here, hope all is well. Thank you for the article and the insight. It made me think of one of my favorite quotes by J. Krishnamurti who said, "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." Of course this implies that one's recognition of the insanity is a necessary step towards sanity. The "Leave it to Beaver" camp is closed indefinitely for repairs. To your point Steve, children subjected to insanity (dysfunction) at an earlier stage would be required to either sink or swim, adapt or snap! In time, I recognized that the dysfunction within my own family was, sadly, the norm. Even those seemingly "perfect" families eventually showed how strange and dysfunctional they actually were. Perhaps this is a good thing because it will be the ingenuity and adaptation of American entrepreneurs who will re-build the legs of this economy.

TrickleWW · 2 months ago

What does dysfunctional really mean? Isn’t that particular to an individual?

I have seen plenty of dysfunctional families output failures and successes within the same family and circumstances. My only conclusion is that it all depends on the genetic make up, and competitive nature of an individual.

Success is relative depending on a person’s natural ability, but not judged that way: (
Aren’t individual ventures at any level, entrepreneurship? So what’s the “one size fits all” measure of success anyways?

As a 24 year-old self-made millionaire, I realize that without the distribution scale technology had allowed I would not be a millionaire. Take Facebook as an example, without the distribution scale they had available, would you give Zucker the same measure of success? Let’s give more credit to outside forces rather than the individual.

How much entrepreneurship could have been achieved on Giligan’s Island? How do you measure it?

Dennis Tracz · 2 months ago

I'm also from a dysfunctional family. I wonder if being forced to figure stuff out by yourself develops an ability to dostort reality? A VC once said to me "We look for entrepreneurs who can distort reality long enough to create a business and you seem to have it. I didn't understand a word of what you said about your technology but we are in for $2 million"

Joseph B · 2 months ago

I believe Entrepreneurs come in all sizes and shapes but believe there is alot of truth in what you said. Yy own family was very dysfunctional and sometimes I believe I have a chip on my shoulder trying to prove something a quality often seen in most entrepreneurs. I know that survivors of concentration camps like Auschwitz went on to be very successful in business as to many immigrants from poor countries. Let's face it if you were raised in a nice family in America and had things relatively easy you are more likely to work for a large organization getting paid good money rather than doing something really risky or hard. Many Entrepreneurs I have met were societies misfits and could never fit into a corporate culture.
Having said that, there is another type of Entrepreneur who do come from good families and do all the right things like go to Stanford and work at a big company that do succeed as an entrepreneur. I attribute their success to having alot of self confidence/ego, great connections and the ability to communicate with people in high positions with money..

Alan Peters · 2 months ago

Steve - thanks for this.

As an entrepreneur from a dysfunctional family I have often speculated on this. And I especially appreciate your comment that it's predominantly destructive and that some of us have the silver-lining of entrepreneurial capabilities.