The Evolutionary Hunter

This is the Momentum podcast. Over the past few days, I've had several conversations where the entrepreneurial personality type has come up, and I know this may sound odd, but I actually went back and read the first chapter or actually the preface for the book that I wrote, the entrepreneurial personality type. And I remember, you know, my good friend Dennis Welch, who's a writer, brilliant writer and incredible entrepreneur, helped me with this. And I remember when he sent me the final draft, reading this and feeling. So connected and so emotional and so blown away at how well he helped me capture the essence of the entrepreneurial personality type. And so today I'm going to try, without getting too emotional, to read you this preface to my book, The Entrepreneurial Personality Type. And I want you to listen to this and see if you find validation or confirmation or an energetic that tells you that you're one of us. Because if you're listening to this podcast, I know you will. I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum podcast.

Made for Empire Builders Game Changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Should we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will?

We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo. We are the minority. The few who are willing to hallucinate there Could be a better future. And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution. And we always will be. Preface The Hunters The Evolution of entrepreneurial behaviors. Years ago, the tribe knew knew them as the hunters. The tribe loved the hunters. They knew the truth. Hunters were essential for survival. Yes, they were different, but their differences was what made them great. Those differences made them willing to do what no one else would and to accomplish exactly what the tribe needed to survive. The Hunter was one of us. You know those people, right? Can't sit still. Motor always running, kill a wooly mammoth and barely get it back to the cave before thinking about the next big adventure. They wake up, energized every day, sharpen their weapons, and they go out to meet the sun and whatever peril that day may bring. I know this because I've always been a hunter. From as early as I can remember, I've gotten up before the sun biologically compelled to track prey or the opportunities and challenges ahead. I started in business. I started in the business world when I was eight years old, working for my dad as an awkward kid who was isolated and bullied at school. I found much needed solace and acceptance in the sales conversations and transactional nature of business. I understood the marketplace far better than the classroom. Even then, I sensed that business was what changed the world for the better, and I knew I wanted in. It quickly became clear that I had no choice. Business and commerce chose me, and I'm glad it did because it probably saved my life. I found comfort in commerce and built my life around business. Through the years, I've made a fortune and I lost it all. Then I made another fortune. And this time I figured out how to protect it and build on it. Now I'm No. Seven. I make big mistakes, but I've been right a lot too. My prey wasn't just business opportunity and sales, but also knowledge. I've read thousands of books and studied every great hunter from Plato to Benjamin Franklin to Oprah Winfrey. I am constantly consuming data and information and discovering new hunters, more people like us. Society tells us how different and unique we are as humans. But hunters are much more alike than we are different. While incorrigible, impatient, frustrating and confusing to the world around us, we have all been relentless in the pursuit of what's next. More than 10,000 tries to invent the light bulb, a completely natural pursuit for Thomas Edison. The master hunter built a car that redefines possibility on four wheels while simultaneously developing a space exploration company. Not a problem for Master Hunter Elon Musk. The list of hunters and their great accomplishments is endless, and their drive to continue contribute to the world has no limit. Still, the strengths that make us hunters, the strengths that make hunters so successful also make them crazy. But that is society's ways of make, way of making sense of them. How else can we explain Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, IKEA's Ingvar Kamprad, and as Brazil Airlines David Neeleman all being diagnosed with attention deficit, hyper hyperactivity disorder. And yet they have become captains of their respective industries. Henry Ford and Steve Jobs were diagnosed with dyslexia. Not in the book, but so was I. How did this stop the world from. How did this not stop them from literally changing the world? Pablo Picasso suffered from bouts of depression. Was this necessary to create some of the most transformative and valuable works of art the world has ever seen? Society needs such labels in order to understand the ways in which hunters don't conform to established standards of behavior. I suspect that all of the late and great legendary hunters throughout the ages would now be labeled with some type of identifier that supposedly helps the rest of the world understand them better. Troublemaker. Disciplinary problem. Workaholic. Manic. Bipolar. ADHD. Compulsive. Obsessive. Hyperactive. Anxious. Disordered. Even disabled. The problem is that these labels in and of themselves can create enough pressure and noise to cause the symptoms they describe. They become self-fulfilling prophecies. Many of today's star hunters were not eager students in the traditional sense. Some used their keen drive to gain advantage to game the system and succeed. Others are highly sensitive or future focused visionaries who appear constantly distracted. Schools were set up for compliance, and hunters just can't comply. They are always thinking about how to do things better, and that doesn't sit well in an organization clinging to tradition and standardization. Hunters resist and avoid this kind of constraint because they know they can do better and nothing will stop them from trying. I tried. I spent most of my school years wandering the hallways or sitting in the principal's office. Rarely was I rewarded for being a hunter in school. Too many of our. Young hunters today find themselves combined confined to an educational system where the goal is sitting still, memorizing equations and taking multiday standardized tests. Those who fail to comply because they simply can't find their natural strengths and abilities suppressed, unable to forge their own path. The paths the most sensitive and demonstrative hunters are rejected, attacked and backed into a corner, forced to react as any hunter would. The proof is in our overflowing juvenile detention facilities and the young adults crowded into our prison facilities. It's the nagging question How do I get ahead that compels us to gain some sort of advantage in the world without guidance, protection and support? This question drives us some this question drives some of us to break the law. I wonder where these people would have been if they had only recognized their so-called issues are truly strengths. Could seen themselves as leaders, not outcasts, have saved them. Growing up, I struggled. I stood in the shadows a lot. I tried not to be noticed and barely scraped by in school. And sometimes I didn't know if I would make it. I finally, finally found success because I realized that when made me different could be used to build to build something amazing. The hunter is hard wired to contribute and support the tribe. Evolution has physiologically conditioned hunters to care. Because without each other. Nothing. Nothing they do matters. Around the world, we see creative works, charitable foundations, endowments, public entities, and public institutions set up as monuments in memory of great hunters who have shared their fortunes with the tribe. In our world today, our tribe knows one hunter by another name. The entrepreneur society calls them the 1%. It thinks they made their money fast and easy. They seem to lead one successful company to start the next just because they can. Everything comes to them easy, right? The historical arguments that the wealthy create human suffering must be updated and corrected. Entrepreneur is not a dirty word. These hunters are creating wealth and in unprecedented amounts and previously impossible timeframes through Mark Zuckerberg, through Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has connected people all over the world and helped facilitate social revolution. Hunter Jessica Alba, unable to stop her compulsion to contribute, transitioned her focus from this over svelte silver screen to establish the honest company helping families live toxin free. The Hunter is a momentum based, been seeking and thriving on the sensation of moving forward and believing the impossible is possible as the masses desperately cling to the status quo. Hunters press on in search of innovation and contribution the same way our species seeks oxygen after being held underwater. And so to all you hunters who feel broken in some way because of an itch you can never scratch, because you constantly dream about the next adventure, because you look out the window and swear you can see what could happen if everything went perfectly. Sharpen your weapons, rally your teams, and set your course. Because here, here's the welcome news. There is nothing wrong with you, and you are not alone. Thanks for listening to this podcast and sorry I stumbled and tripped a bit. It wasn't as clean as an audio book should be. But then again, this is a podcast, not an audio book. And if that message resonated with you and you haven't read the entrepreneurial personality type book yet, it's available on Amazon and we will also ship you a free copy. If you pay for shipping, you can go to EAP Booking.com. Like entrepreneurial personality type bbc.com. And check it out. And if you do, please let me know. And thanks for listening. And if you're an entrepreneur, I'm so glad you're here. And I'm so glad you're doing what you do in the world because it doesn't matter what crisis, what challenge, what frustration, what issue we face in the future of the world. As long as we have entrepreneurs like you and I, we will overcome them like we always have.