Money-makers think differently than the rest of us. The thought process of the money maker is often counterintuitive. They will be told that they are crazy; the idea will never work, no one will buy the product, it doesn’t make sense. The nature of counter intuitive thinking is that it is contrary to common sense thinking. A money-maker will open a business where many businesses fail. They will start companies in depressed economies. They will hire employees and expand their business when other companies are trimming their work force. We should understand that the money-maker doesn’t only think differently than most people, but the mind of the money-maker functions differently than the rest of us.
Some of the common cognitions of money-makers are that they have less of a tendency for counter factual thinking (Roese, 1997; Baron et al., 2004). In other words, the money maker spends less time thinking of the possibility of failure than most people. A study comparing entrepreneurs with non entrepreneurs showed that non entrepreneurism frequently thought about the possibility of failure and as a result had a much higher occurrence of failures in their life. When entrepreneurs were asked to list the three events in their life they regretted, many of them could not think of three negative life experiences. Money makers tend to be forward thinking and rarely consider that failure is a possibility (Baron, 2000).
Money-makers show a preference for heuristic thinking verses systematic processing of information. Cognitive scientists have drawn a clear distinction between two modes or styles of thought: systematic processing, which involves careful, analytic thinking, and heuristic processing, a contrasting style in which information is processed quickly and effortlessly, in accordance with various simple heuristics (e.g., ‘‘If it comes from a good source, then I will believe it; if not, I will reject it’’; Petty and Caciopo, 1990). It should be noted; however, that a money-maker can easily switch between analysis and the heuristic. Unsuccessful entrepreneurs, on the other hand, may cling to their heuristic when it would be more prudent to slow down and analyze the facts (Baron, 2004). What this means in the real world is that the money-maker is less guided by market trends, statistics, or what the experts are saying about capital investments. This kind of thinking allows them to stay ahead to the trends and often make decision in contrast to current statistics.
