Reflection: The Entrepreneur Mind

This book again, intrigues me with the different off beat strategies it contains about entrepreneurs. In this post, I will be reflecting on one different strategy Johnson touches upon. This strategy is not bound to be the key to success for everyone. It is designed to guide a struggling entrepreneur along the way who may need help in a specific area. 

The strategy is called, "Ignorance Can Be Bliss." When I read the title of this strategy, I was quite shocked how Johnson thought ignorance could be a good thing. He explains reasons and scenarios in which ignorance is beneficial, "perhaps your outside perspective enables you to see things in a fresh way, seizing dormant opportunities" (58). I will admit that sometimes your knowledge of something can get in the way. Often times, when a person thinks they know something they rarely do outside research. This can lead to errors in work and not a happy ending. I am sure this is the case with many entrepreneurs. Most of the time, entrepreneurs can be cocky and think they know everything about their field. They expect they will have to do little research about their business because they have so much knowledge about it. After realizing this, I now understand why ignorance can be good. If an entrepreneur is ignorant about the business they are willing to open, this forces them to take another step, to go deeper. Ignorance can force  someone out of their comfort zone. It requires an entrepreneur to do extensive research about a given service. An entrepreneur will continue to do research until they understand, because all they want in life is to be successful. For example, imagine an entrepreneur is starting a hair salon business. They have always been fascinated by hair salons and how they deal with customer service, and have regular customers who come in consistently. Amelia, the entrepreneur starting the business has little knowledge about hair salons. Because I have little knowledge about hair salons, I must do the extra work to understand the business. This forces me to learn everything there is to learn about hair salons. My ignorance just benefited me because, now I know exactly what is behind a hair salon business and what keeps it running. However, say if I thought I knew everything about hair salons, and therefore, did not conduct any research, that would in the end probably cause the business to be a failure. Since the Entrepreneur Mind, is about Entrepreneurs and businesses, ignorance is okay in these cases. Reflecting on Johnson's idea I do not think ignorance is okay in any other fields. I will tell you why. Senior year has a little bit of flexibility with course selection. There are many different math classes to choose from, and I thought why not try a new type of course. For the first few days of school, I was in a math class called "Perspectives of a Mathematical Mind" this class sounded like a good idea because there were few tests and we were mostly graded on homework assignments and projects. I went into this class completely ignorant having no knowledge about any of the math we were doing. I felt like a failure and my ignorance was not a good thing. I ended up switching to Statistics because it was a better fit for me. 

After reading this chapter, I have come to the conclusion that ignorance can be good in some fields, and extremely harmful in others. I am excited to read this book over break and hope I find more strategies that I can reflect on and critique!