Small Company and Brand From Scratch. Owner

¶ … small company and brand from scratch. Owner is a woman from South America, with limited knowledge about business. She decides to go to college to learn economics while growing the company. Company produces organic products with raw material imported from South America

Some problems: Import and customs problems, branding problems, trademark problems happened

Company establishes good reputation, solid returning customers thanks to the knowledge and strategies the owner learned in college

Discuss: Education helps but are there any other factors contributing the result?

There is a poem entitled "All I really need to know I learned from kindergarten" (Robert Fulghum) with the poet's shrift being that education plays only an insignificant part to success. There have been many business tycoons who have never graduated -- or even attended business school and been enormously successful, Henry Ford being one of them. And numerous others -- graduates of the Ivy Leagues -- who became homeless addicts and out-and-out failures.

I disagree with the adage that "all I need to know I learned from kindergarten." Too many factors are involved here including the type of kindergarten the individual attended, the teachers and peers in that kindergarten and so forth. Some kindergartens can teach you destructive habits. It seems that many productive qualities are innate and others learned from experience.

Reviewing the woman's problems - Import and customs problems, branding problems, and trademark problems happened -- I notice that they share the commonality of excellent customer relations and social skills. An individual possessing these qualities could win over the most disgruntled of customers and turn a flagging business the right way up. Leadership skills help -- and these (I think even though there are contradictory opinions) are innate. The woman, too, has to be organized and calm to succeed. Stress-management would have certainly helped her with her trademark problems as would conflict resolution skills with her relationship ones. A sense of humor, self-management and a generous dollop of creativity would have aided her branding problems. In turn, flexibility and resilience would have been invaluable. And these are skills neither taught in kindergarten nor acquired in business school.

The underlying basis of all of this is Emotional Intelligence. A dictionary definition of EI is the following:

noncognitive capabilities, competencies, and skills that influence one's ability to succeed in coping with environment demands and pressures. (What is EQ?).

None of this is, or can be, taught in graduate school.

We may be able define interpersonal skills in another way as people who are so savvy with their own emotions that they are able to defuse stress when it arises, able to understand and emphasize with others, and able to negotiate as well as to defuse conflictual situations. Some of these strategies may be taught in business school. To be practiced, however, they have to be innate. A person, it seems to me, either has or does not have the qualities to practice them -- or the will and inclination to do so. He can be taught techniques to better these skills. But he has to have the character to wish to do so. This includes humility, patience, a natural respect for others, and the general emotional intelligence.