While it may be "trendy" to follow the herd in terms how to finance or run your startup, Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems Founder and CEO Judy Faulkner says sometimes bucking the trend to follow your own intuition ends up working out better than you imagined.
In an interview with The Cap Times, Ms. Faulkner commented on how she didn't adopt the managerial styles of her fellow entrepreneurs or obtain business degrees like others had to hopefully make their companies more successful. Instead, she went about creating Epic by following her own intuition on how she believed a company should operate — and her intuition paid off. She said when her peers opted for stockings, high heels and business suits, she opted to stay true to herself and be comfortable in her clothing, even if that meant looking nerdy or different from her competition.
"High heels hurt. Stockings — stockings are probably like ties. They constrain your thinking. So a lot of [following the paths of other entrepreneurs] was just like, 'I can't work this way' rather than much thinking about defying tradition … I wonder sometimes why more people don't [trust themselves and their own intuition] ... I was really glad Bill Gates came on the scene because he made being in our type of environment, he made being nerdy a good thing, not a bad thing. It was painful to be nerdy when I was growing up and I clearly was nerdy. But I think it became a perfectly fine thing to be nerdy after Bill Gates ... It isn't as much defying anything [as it is being] who you [authentically] are."
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