> All of us have strengths and weaknesses and we spend a lot of time talking about ‘areas of improvement.’ It can be easy to feel like the best way to advance is to eliminate all of those
I struggle with this. All the time.
I always find it difficult to strike a balance between leveraging my strengths and filling gaps in my weaknesses. For the large part of my career, my attention was directed on the latter: constantly trying to improve myself based off of feedback from friends, family, colleagues, managers, etc.
But now ... I'm a solo entrepreneur and lately, I've been actually flexing a lot more of my strengths, identifying characteristics about myself that give me an edge. Of course, I'm not blind to my weaknesses (I think about it all the time) but I do agree that we should lean more into our strengths.
For a solo entrepreneur I would argue it’s more important to be fairly good at everything than e.g. really good at programming and having no understanding of other things like sales and marketing. Instead of perfecting your Haskell skills, you’re far better off learning the basics of how to construct a good sales funnel, even if it’s not a natural fit for you. Some knowledge is a lot better than none.
100%. One of the conversations I've repeatedly had with my friend, a technical co-founder of his own company, is how difficult and challenging Sales really is. We don't really see eye to eye on this topic.
As a engineer and computer scientist, I appreciate all the work we do to build software that's robust, etc but to be honest, the more challenging parts (and equally rewarding, for me as a solo entrepreneur) is the Sales side of the house, business development, marketing.
A bit paradoxically, being a generalist is a particular strength, and as the article points out one of the things you can do to do better at work is work in areas that best utilize your strengths. Ergo, if you're the kind of person who is good at quickly superficially learning a wide variety of topics, solo entrepenureship is possibly the best place for you.
This makes perfect sense. Beyond just writing software and architecting systems, I find the most challenging parts (and rewarding) learning how to build a sales funnel, communicating expectations and deadlines with customers, etc the most rewarding. And as you mentioned, solo entrepreneurship might possibly be the best place to exercise these wide array of skills.
Well, a weakness is a weakness only to the extent that it neutralizes your strength. Like - is it important to spell? If you become very successful in your field despite not spelling well, then spelling is a waste of your time. On the other hand, if that flaw keeps you from getting jobs/being taken seriously then you need to fix it.
>a weakness is a weakness only to the extent that it neutralizes your strength
Agree wholeheartedly. Floyd Mayweather doesn't know how to read, or so I hear, yet he's one of the very best at what he does, and no one can take that away from him.
I struggle with this. All the time.
I always find it difficult to strike a balance between leveraging my strengths and filling gaps in my weaknesses. For the large part of my career, my attention was directed on the latter: constantly trying to improve myself based off of feedback from friends, family, colleagues, managers, etc.
But now ... I'm a solo entrepreneur and lately, I've been actually flexing a lot more of my strengths, identifying characteristics about myself that give me an edge. Of course, I'm not blind to my weaknesses (I think about it all the time) but I do agree that we should lean more into our strengths.