The First Step to Being a Good Entrepreneur is Being a Good Person

As a general practice, I think the sentiment expressed in the header of this post is true for the layman. I'm a layman. No silver spoon here. By technical definition, any Entrepreneur is a layman, as a layman is one who does not belong to any sophisticated profession: unprofessional. As entrepreneur's, we are cultivating only the skills with which we have been born (ability to network, exact planning, etc.) and can offer no special skills besides the product we push on a consumer.

Therefore, the entrepreneur is very much a layman, and it is good advice for the layman to be either very nice or very smart (I think Jimmy Stuart said that in Harvey?) If you're an entrepreneur who is very smart, it may be wise to play the game in a cut-throat manor. However, it is important to keep in mind that the great deviates of history have been lucky more than they've been geniuses. To play a game of high risk, such as cut-throat entrepreneurship, is to increase one's chance of downfall; but also to increase the potential rewards of success.

What might work best for the rest of us, those perhaps more cautious, is a safer approach. By being kind, and extending a service by which all partners benefit from said service, it is more than likely that the party which makes the deals benefits the most. The economic term here is Pareto Efficiency. It means, basically, to limit one's risk by a series of safe decisions. For example, if I help a peer I am more likely to receive help in return. If I help several peers, then several peers will be more likely to reciprocate in helping me. Thus, while multiple parties are benefiting in small amounts from my, individual, help; I benefit in large quantities from the help of all parties. The same logic can be applied to a business deal. If I make mutually beneficial arrangements with multiple organizations, I benefit from all of them at once.

Thus, unless you stepped on a leprechaun, the name of the game might be to play it safe and friendly. Statistically speaking, this approach has a higher chance of success than being cut-throat. Besides, which would sleep easier on your conscious: knowing you made your money helping others or ripping them off?

The big names in history, the Ceasar's, Alexander the Great's and William Randolph Hearst's, got very lucky. Their game was a risky one and yet, by fate or odds, it played out in their favor. It is hard, however, to name those who achieved a comfortable state of living by safer means, as they are often lost to history, which favors excitement. This is a pity, because statistically, they're the smart ones.