The tale of two brains

Spending countless hours with new entrepreneurs, I discovered a pattern in people.

There are two hemispheres in the brain: Right and Left.

The Left brain is responsible for analytics and logic.

The Right brain is responsible for creative thinking.

We all tap into both sides of the brain but our go-to hemisphere is where we generally live our lives.

Here's the problem. 

If you're a left brain thinker, you use logic and analysis to solve problems. You have an amazing ability to set goals, attain them, and schedule your day to day life to a level of efficiency that demands respect from all who observe you go. Your business or your career grows because you take charge of it.

If you're primarily a right brain thinker, you like to go to the creative side to solve problems. Creativity can't be quantified or measured. Time can look like its wasted for the benefit of obsessing over the IDEA. The person can be seen as a goofball as they seemingly waste time to find the idea. The process is discouraged by left brain thinkers.

Both types are equally effective but limiting.

An entrepreneur needs to equally tap both sides of the brain.

This rarely happens.

Instead the person remains handicapped. He may find initial success but his ultimate success is based on the ONE key thing: As business grows, who is the first hire?

Most entrepreneurs will hire an accountant, secretary or salesperson. The decision is based on hiring someone to do the tasks the entrepreneur has no time to do or doesn't want to do.

He identifies this as his weakness. And he's wrong. His weakness is tapping into the other side of his brain. 

The first hire for an analytical entrepreneur needs to be a creative type. The first hire for a creative entrepreneur is the analytical type.

Most entrepreneurs have heard that they need to hire people who can produce in areas where they are  weakest. The analytical entrepreneur can figure out accounting, process, and systems. If an idea is presented, he can figure out through systems how to implement them.  He needs a legitimate creative person on his team.

Creative entrepreneurs are scared of accounting. They don't understand the setting of goals. They are worried about process and system. It hurts every aspect of their body to follow these rigid guidelines. Coming up with ideas is easy and fun for these people. The challenge is implementing them. They need a strong analytical person to keep them on task. Someone like an office manager.

Steve Jobs was a creative entrepreneur. He would not have had success with the analytical Woz. 

Walt Disney was also creative. His brother Roy was the analytical business manager.

Ray Kroc was the creative sales guy. Harry Sonneborn was the brilliance behind financial decisions McDonalds made to make them one of the largest owners of property in the world.

An entrepreneur cannot do it alone. There is always someone, equal but opposite in thinking, who propels the company forward.

If you have employees, the same holds true. Finding a mixture of both brains is where success within the department will be found.

The analytical entrepreneur will discount creative ideas thinking they cannot be done. He will analyze and critique the idea into oppression.

The creative entrepreneur knows the analytical ideas are important but they will avoid them at almost all costs. Usually at the detriment of their bank account, the government's collection system and suppliers looking for payments.

Shelly (not her real name) is a creative entrepreneur who does amazing work. Her clients love her work. But the biggest frustration her clients have is her inability to keep her own deadlines.

She sets deadlines to have her work done and then fluffs them off until some later date. Deadlines are movable targets. Deadlines are based on not real. Ideas don't listen to deadlines. They come when they come. Her creative clients understand. Her analytical clients get pissed off. One of her analytical clients was her friend. Her creativity was so good, he continuously forgave her for overpromising until one day he realized her inability to work within deadlines was hurting his business. The relationship got rocky. The client friend had to chose between working with her or keeping her as a friend. He chose the friendship and fired her. After the business relationship ended, Shelly called her friend for advice. He wasn't the only person upset with her moving deadlines. There were others. Many others, including Revenue Canada. Shelly wasn't paying attention to their tax filing deadlines and owed them a bunch of money. She was in trouble. Her bank accounts were frozen. Her clients couldn't pay her without Revenue Canada taking what they thought belonged to them.

Shelly is terrible at account management, accounting, bank reconciliations. She is awesome at creating. Shelly needs to hire an office manager who can handle the linear work required to stay in business.

On the flip side of this brain equation, Paul is an analytical person who owes no one anything. He has no debt. He's worked his whole life to make sure the bank doesn't collect interest of his hard earned money. He decided to get into business for himself factoring in how much money he would have to earn to maintain his current lifestyle. His kids are all grown up. His house is paid for and he drives a motorcycle in the summer months to keep the vehicle costs to a minimum. People like Paul because he's a no nonsense type of guy. But he suffers from an inability to grow his business. He's had some success. But it's limited. He doesn't understand why people wouldn't choose his product over his competition when he offers the exact same product only cheaper.

A friend approached Paul and told him that he needed to break a few rules. But rules is all Paul knows. He's the f-ing poster child for living within the rules. He doesn't understand that rules create conformity, sameness, and boringness. He doesn't understand that his marketing effort needs to be focused on living on the other side of that fence. But he's not that type of guy, so doing that is not only outside of his comfort zone. It's outside of his authenticity. The only way Paul can pull his entrepreneurial dream off is if he hires a creative person to see past his own limiting beliefs.

Paul is terrible at creativity, thinking outside of the box. He's awesome at managing his bank account, setting goals and making sales calls.

Both people living in different brains have the equal but opposite effect. Their business is stale because they don't play enough on the other side of their heads.

80% of businesses fail in the first five years of opening. Is there any question why?