Surround Yourself with Brilliance

Guest Writer:  Lea Moore

If you are a wise business woman, who wants to succeed, you will put your egomaniacal tendencies on the back burner and surround yourself with brilliant people, of different personalities, backgrounds and cultures. In the long run, listening to what wise people have to say will make your endeavors a huge success.

In my years as a business owner, doing business with other small business owners, I have run across many people who have done just the opposite. They surround themselves with those who answer “yes” to everything and have no creativity of their own. This is done, as far as I can tell, out of pure vanity. No one wants to be told that the way they are doing things could be improved. But those type of people, the egomaniacs, are only hurting themselves.

We all have to remember our main reason for being in business. It is to make money. If our egos get in the way of our growth, we should really try to tame our egos.

Does it really make sense to hire a moderately intelligent sales person because you know they won’t challenge your techniques, when you could hire an inexperienced, dynamic personality with an IQ of 140 who will bring out the best (and maybe even the worst) in you?

Of course, we always want to hire the best accountants, attorneys, information technologists, marketing representatives, advertising firms and so forth. But what about your secretary, your administrative assistant, the entry-level office personnel?

The fact that a person has chosen one profession over another doesn’t mean they don’t have something to offer. Even the receptionist may have a brilliant mind for a particular facet of your business and if you listen to her ideas, sort through them, take what she has to offer and put it to use, it might just generate additional revenue.

Being the owner of a small business can be tasking at times. Entrepreneurs have a tendency to want to do everything themselves and to supervise every little detail. Surround yourself with brilliance and you might just be able to trust someone enough to handle the details while you work on making the business grow.