Why the owners of emerging growth businesses are different; and why corporates, bureaucrats and politicians just don’t ‘get us’.

Toward the end of secondary school my Grandfather paid for me to go to Outward Bound. It was 21 days that left an indelible mark on me, and 4 stitches above my left eye (but that’s another story).

One of the lasting memories I have was not of the course but when I got back. People would ask me about my experience, and it struck me that they just couldn’t ‘get it’. Most had been on a bush tramp, sailed a boat, paddled a kayak, and/or camped and for them it seemed to me they understood the activities, but not how the experience had shaped me, and the other members of my watch.

I started having that feeling again in 2021 as we went through COVID lockdowns. There was plenty of coverage of the impact on ‘SME’s’ (a term I hate), and plenty of talk about being kind, but I had no sense of any genuine empathy or understanding from media, commentators, or politicians.

As you know, I work with communities of emerging growth companies and the people who support them. One of the reasons that these communities work so well is everyone ‘gets’ one another. So with weeks in lockdown, I got to thinking about what makes us different… what is it that shapes us and make us distinct? And why don’t politicians, bureaucrats and corporate employees ‘get us’? I settled on a few things –

Business Is Personal

You have probably heard the corporate saying ‘it’s not personal mate, it’s just business!’ or a bureaucrat saying, ‘it’s not personal, it’s just the rules!’ – well, business at our level is intensely personal, we know our people, we have met their families, we know our suppliers and we know our customers.

We have no lofty views from the 29th floor, we see these people every day. We are incredibly conscious that the decisions we make, the things that we do have consequences on people, and we feel those consequences personally. Our decisions and actions are not abstract concepts in a board report.

We Eat Last

Simon Sinek wrote a bestselling book called ‘Leaders Eat Last’… I haven’t read it, and I don’t need to, this has been my life for nearly 20 years.

We all love the good times, but most of us also remember the hard times, selling a car to make wages, putting tax on the credit card… the simple maths of business ownership is you get the money left over, so we all eat last.

And this is where it ties into the point above, business is personal, our spouses/partners and family are along for the ride here, like the families of the amazing farmers that feed us, the whole family get to experience the good and the bad, no matter how much we try to shelter them.

Cogs in a Machine

I think about bureaucracies and corporates as machines which are designed to have interchangeable cogs. It is the role of our universities to make these cogs for the corporate and government machines.

The cogs are labelled. That label is your identity in the machine – your academic qualifications, your job title.

Here is a great question I got asked the other day – what are the qualifications of the business owners in your community?

Hell, I don’t know, and in fact until someone asked me that it had not even occurred to me to ask. I like to think of our community as a genuine meritocracy – everyone is in the room because of what they have achieved. They have built and run businesses, they employ people, and they live in the ‘wild’ like the rest of us.

For us it is all about ownership and achievement - not academic qualifications and job titles.

We are not cogs!

We Are Often A ‘Bit Different’

When my older brother was two he had a high fever and then had a stroke. This left him partially paralysed on his left side and he later had challenges learning in school. My amazing Mum put a huge amount of time into supporting him and it was during her search for proper help that she discovered my brother had Dyslexia.

At the time I was seven or eight. I was top of my class in math's and bottom in English, I could barely read. So Mum got me tested, and I was dyslexic as well. With the help of trained SPELD teachers I learnt to read and write, and ultimately got degrees in business and law, albeit with terrible handwriting and even worse spelling!

I am immensely grateful to my brother and my mother for the diagnosis. And I am equally grateful for having Dyslexia. For some reason I see connections and patterns others don’t see, I just seem to see the bigger picture and connect the dots more easily. This is my superpower.

In our business communities we joke that half our owners have Dyslexia, and the other half have ADHD!

Statistically we are overstating it a bit. Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder is six times more common in entrepreneurs than ordinary folk. In the Freeman study, 5% of adults surveyed reported having ADHD, while 29% of entrepreneurs reported to having it. And in a report compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she surveyed, 35%, identified themselves as dyslexic.

So yes, maybe half of the owners of emerging growth businesses have ADHD, Dyslexia, or both. And when you look at the strengths of these people it is not surprising they often succeed in business.

Business Owners with Superpowers

Dr Edward Hallowell a leading authority in ADHD has said that it is so common for an entrepreneur to have ADHD, the disorder could be renamed ‘the entrepreneur’s trait.’  He noted that the parts of ADHD that don’t get talked about, the positive parts, are what come into play here – “people with ADHD tend to be creative, think outside the box, tenacious, visionary, dreamers, ground-breakers, inventors (Edison was classic ADHD), pioneers (the people who colonized USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were also likely classic ADHD), imaginative, flexible, and unstoppable.” ADHD has its superpowers.

Yet in corporate, university graduates with ADHD on average earn less per year than their peers, change jobs frequently, are more likely to be fired, to miss work, and to have troubled relationships with co-workers. In business ownership ADHD can be an asset, in corporate it is the opposite.

Dyslexia is known for its seven superpowers - Seeing the bigger picture, recognising complex patterns in images, spatial awareness (the ability to manipulate 3D shapes in your mind), thinking in pictures, creativity, thinking outside the box/problem-solving, and of course entrepreneurship. They are also often significantly better at communicating ideas and connecting with others – both very useful business skills!

I have also met a few business owners who identify as having Autism. I suspect we will get to see and hear more about this over the next few years.

Our Tribe - A Weird Menagerie of Misfits

The corporate worker, the bureaucrat and the politician don’t get us. There is no shared experience. They have no superpowers. To borrow from Harry Potter – they are muggles.

So, here we are, a menagerie of misfits that no one understands! This is your tribe. It is up to us to pull together, support each other, and become part of a community of business owners… the only ones who get us.

I end with a quote by Rob Siltanen that Steve Jobs (who reportedly had Dyslexia) made famous –

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Good luck out there.

And don’t forget to have fun!

About The Author: Ben Marris runs communities for the owners and leaders of emerging mid-market ($2m to $20m) growth companies and the advisors and suppliers who support them. He believes that these companies are vital for the prosperity of our communities in a fast-changing world. He loves red wine and a good story. He is also dyslexic, so if there are any spelling mistakes or grammatical error blame his spell check, he does.

Ben Marris © - September 2021 Part of Ben's Emerging Growth Business series