The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur

March 28Your Tribe Is

The latch-key which opens into the inner chambers of my consciousness fits, as I have sufficient reason to believe, the private apartments of a good many other people's thoughts. The longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons. When I meet with any facts in my own mental experience, I feel almost sure that I shall find them repeated or anticipated in the writings or the conversation of others. This feeling gives one a freedom in telling their own personal history they could not have enjoyed without it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.—Over the Teacups (1872)

Find your tribe. That's advice dished out these days to anyone starting something akin to an entrepreneurial venture.

And so it goes—you share your story, sometimes in a reserved manner, sometimes freely, in the hopes that others will acknowledge your unique contribution.

Do it long enough, however, and you are bound to encounter those who get you and perhaps, more important, feel that you get them.

Maybe that's your tribe, but then you look up and they seem so different from what you had imagined. More diverse, odder, perhaps a little abnormal even.

Management consultant and author Tom Peters advocates hiring what he calls freaks: “Highest accolades should go to those who have the guts to hire the Deviants.” At some point, you'll discover how much you have in common.

Some come to this realization much earlier than others—the longer we live, the more we find we are like other persons—