Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck

What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business

Anthony K. Tjan, Richard J. Harrington, Tsun-Yan Hsieh

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781422161944
• eBook ISBN: 9781422142318
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

What’s your entrepreneurial profile? Do you have what it takes to build a great business?In this book, three prominent business leaders and entrepreneurs—now venture capitalists and CEO advisers—share the qualities that surface again and again in those who successfully achieve their goals. The common traits? Heart, smarts, guts, and luck.After interviewing and researching hundreds of business-builders across the globe, the authors found that every one of them—from young founder to seasoned CEO—holds a combination of these four attributes. Indeed each of us tends to be biased toward one of these traits in our decision-making, and figuring out which trait drives you will lead to greater self-awareness and likelihood of success in starting and growing a business.So are you:
• Heart-dominant, like renowned chef Alice Waters or Starbucks’s Howard Schultz?
• Smarts-dominant, like Jeff Bezos of Amazon or legendary investor Warren Buffett?
• Guts-dominant, like Nelson Mandela or Virgin’s Richard Branson?
• Or are you most defined by the luck trait, like Tony Hsieh of Zappos (and a surprisingly high proportion of other successful entrepreneurs)? Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck includes the first Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test (E.A.T), a simple tool to help determine your specific profile.Though no single archetype for entrepreneurial success exists, this book will help you understand which traits to "dial up” or "dial down” to realize your full potential, and when these traits are most and least helpful (or even detrimental) during critical points of a company lifecycle. Not only will you know how to build a better business faster, you’ll also take your natural leadership style to the next level.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Advance Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Our Purpose and a Guide to This Book
• 1 Traits and Profiles of Great Entrepreneurs
• 2 Heart: Winning with the Heart
• 3 Smarts: IQ Is Only the Beginning
• 4 Guts: How to Initiate, Endure, and Evolve
• 5 Luck’s Inevitable Role in Business-Building
• 6 Business Archetypes and Iconoclasts
• 7 Putting It All Together
• 8 True North Questions for Reflection
• 9 Wisdom Manifestos
• 10 E.A.T.: Take the Self-Assessment Survey
• Wrapping It All Up
• Notes
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors