Contrary to popular opinion, Entrepreneurs are easily the worst at building successful businesses.
Entrepreneur – Wikipedia: “willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity. …in possession of an enterprise or venture.”
There are three basic business owner profiles:
- The Market Focused owner (the Entrepreneur falls in this category)
- The Systems Focused owner
- The Product Focused owner
Market Focused owners are just that – focused on what the market wants. They poke around and find holes in the way customers are being served and create companies to fill that need. They’re usually not passionate about any particular product or service, and sometimes know little about the one they’ve just decided to stake their future on. They’re dreamers, visionaries, spontaneous, flexible, willing to take big risks, and understand that speed of execution is vital in starting and growing a business. Entrepreneurs are Market Focused owners.
They’re also more often than not terrible business people. Too often the entrepreneur is lifted up as the holy grail of how to be successful in business, and other business owners are taught to emulate them.
It’s not a good idea.
Market Focused owners need more outside help, are the worst at taking instruction, exhibit the most over-confidence, do the worst due diligence, and fail way more often than either of the other two owner profiles. When they succeed, they succeed big, usually by sheer luck and number of attempts. But just like the gambler, you only hear about that one big win. You never hear of the many losses that, in balance, make the entrepreneur the worst risk to bet your money on. Entrepreneurs are the business world’s big gamblers.
The Wikipedia definition is good – note that it doesn’t mention someone who is a great craftperson or artisan, or highly knowledgeable at making a product or delivering a service. Entrepreneurs are quite often not experts at all at what they’re hawking. They’re great at seeing the hole in the market, but their best bet is to hire someone else to patch the hole.
The carnage they leave behind can be appalling. At their worst, the entrepreneur is a dreamer who causes people to lose their entire life savings on future possibilities and well oiled get rich quick schemes that the entrepreneur is truly convinced is a “sure thing”.
At their best, a heavily Market Focused business owner understands how handicapped they are by their affinity for risk, their unwillingness to really master their craft, their desire to spread their companies too thin and do everything the market wants. The self-aware entrepreneur sees the clutter in their mind and on their desk, and their inability to finish an idea because they already have a newer and better one.
And this awareness leads them to put aside their inherent over-confidence and get help. When they finally get the Systems Focused and Product Focused owner profiles involved and get out of the way (entrepreneurs are classic control freaks), the possibility of success goes up big time.
Michael Gerber (E-Myth) and others correctly identified that most businesses are not started by entrepreneurs. But they then proceed to lift up the entrepreneur as the model for how the other profiles should do it. Good luck with that.
The Market Focused owner may have the most serious issues in building a business, but all three profiles are broken. There’s a fourth profile they all need to become that almost no one starts with – it’s call Business Owner, which is a healthy mix of the best from all three of the other profiles. But more on that at another time.
The purpose of this rant? To free up the overwhelming number of people who own businesses who think the holy grail is to emulate the entrepreneur. Trust me, it’s not something to be pursued. You’ll want to add some of their great strengths, but don’t drink the kool-aid and dive in wholesale in becoming one. It’s just not good for the economy (or for your pocket book, your spouse, your kids, your health…).
FYI – the next two weeks I won’t need to be nearly so hard on the other two profiles (Systems Focused and Product Focused) because they’re rarely so over-confident as the Market Focused owner. Fortunately very few business owners are actually Market Focused entrepreneurs. Be thankful if you’re not one of them, and if you are, get help focusing on Systems and Production so you can become a true Business Owner.
![[Post to Twitter]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Plurk]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-plurk.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Yahoo Buzz]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-buzz.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Delicious]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-delicious.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Digg]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-digg.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Facebook]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-fb.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Ping.fm]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-ping.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to Reddit]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-reddit.png){kind=icon}
![[Post to StumbleUpon]](http://businessblogs.co.nz/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-su.png){kind=icon}
Great post. I think though, that it’s important to realize that the “Market Focused” owner is more easily able to pick up the attributes of “product” and “system”.
They have an energy that can resist the tide of negativity that can seep into a new or early growth business.
Without that energy, it is often impossible to reach critical mass.
As you say, “Business Owner” is the fourth category, and “Market Focused” is definitely the best starting point in my opinion.
It’s a learning curve, the shorter you can make it, the more likely you are to have a successful business.
Karl,
Great comments. I agree a Market Focused owner who knows their limits are very quick to either pick up on the attributes of the Product and System Focused profiles or more often hire somebody else to cover them. The problem is that most Market Focused owners have such a high level of personal confidence in their abilities that it takes a number of falls for them to get it. But once they do, they can hit home runs quite easily.
That was a great article – im looking forward to reading about the other 2 profiles. Very interesting perspective.
You may say that Entrepreneurs may not be good business builders because they are alone and do not have much support or consultants to consult with to develop a successful business.
Regards
Bayut
Thanks, Bayut – it’s true that a lot of people struggle because they are alone and don’t have the support they need. If they recognize this, it’s easily solved. The problem is too many entrepreneurs think they can go it alone.
Jo,
We developed a profile to help busines owners clearly know their primary decision-making processes – Market, System, or Product. See http://www.apexprofile.com
Best,
Chuck
Tend to agree with the article. I’ve always regarded myself as a bit of an entrepenuer and can also appreciate the comments made here. I think the best run businesses end up with a mix of personality types. The trick is to have them all working towards a common goal.
Kevin,
Thanks for the affirmation. I’m more the Market Focused Entrepreneur myself and had to evolve into believing I needed others to help me get it done. Great that you see the need for that mix!
From what I understand from your descriptions of the profiles Chuck, in my experience all profiles are just as important. No point spotting a gap if the product to fill it is no good, and difficult to build a stable business without a focus on the systems to execute delivery. Do you think people should try and become a mix of all profiles (ie Business Builer profile) or should they just focus on finding team members with strengths in the other profiles?
Richard,
Great question! The only reason to try to be all the things you don’t want to do is if you simply can’t find a way to hire someone to do them for you.
If someone is bootstrapping their business and doesn’t take outside money to get it rolling, they are likely going to have to figure out how to cover all these bases. It can be done, but it’s not optimal.
The best solution is to figure out what you’re good at and then go get others who can take over the things that are a drain on you. In general it’s never as good to work on our weaknesses as it is to focus on our strengths.
Hire it out if you can! The Apex Profile we developed (www.apexprofile.com) helps business owners figure out what their team should look like.
Best,
Chuck
Hi Chuck Blakeman,
Ya its true that mostly thinks that they can handle and face all difficulties alone and one out of 1000 people are such who are capable of defending and can face challenges.
Nice talking to you.
Sincerely,
Bayut
Dubai Property Portal
Bayut,
True – there are very few people who can go it alone and even they should not. All great leaders make sure they have people around them who can speak to their leadership. We all need outside eyes on our business!
Best,
Chuck
Dear Chuck,
…. Now days without any expertise advices, consultancy are major part of a business. Problems do occur but more than one mind thinking over that problem can get a better solution for that problem..
I think we both have the similar sort of thinking
Sincerely,
Bayut
Dubai Property Portal
Dear Mr. Blakeman,
I found your article thought provoking, thank you for the time taking to put your points across. However I found the statements you are making rather unhelpful.
“Entrepreneurs are the Worst at Building Businesses”? By definition, anyone who builds a new business is an Entrepreneur. So it is like saying that “People who build businesses are bad at building businesses”…. Well, you can arrive to that conclusion by simply looking at statistics: majority of new businesses fail, so we are all as people are bad at building business. Entrepreneur or not, makes no difference.
Another point that is made is that those who succeed, succeed through sheer luck. I think that is a rather unhelpful statement. I know of many successful enterprises that are successful by design, and many that you look at them and think “how in the world does this business survive” and yet they are still successful. I agree that many succeed because they are lucky, and many succeed because they know what they are doing and design their businesses to succeed. However it is hard to tell who is who. I agree that we don’t want to learn from those that are successful through mere luck.
I think what would be helpful is a clear definition of the difference between the gamblers and the true builders, and some statistical data to show the percentage of successful businesses that succeeded through luck vs. those designed to be successful. If you can define this than you can prove or disprove the statement that “When they succeed, they succeed big, usually by sheer luck and number of attempts.”. I challenge you to clearly define the difference and provide some statistical data.
Here you offer no clear definition or an attempt to prove the statement. Without the definition you leave that statement impossible to prove or disprove,
… so believing in the theory here … is gambling!
Igor,
By most accepted definitions very few people who start businesses are entrepreneurs. That is one big point of this article – I believe 80+% of all businesses are started by “Product-Focused” Craftspeople, another 5-10% by “Systems-Focused” Managers, and only 10-15% by people who fit any kind of dictionary definition of “entrepreneur”. Read all three articles on Product, System, and Market Focused business owners for the full descriptions of each.
The concept of entrepreneur has been badly misused for so long that most people just assume as you do that anyone who starts a business fits the dictionary definition. Yet very few do, and that’s a good thing as the article points out.
Another misconception is that a majority of businesses fail – the fact is that most businesses are still in business a number of years after they start. If you look just at Product-Focused Craftspeople, they have a much lower failure rate than Market-Focused Entrepreneurs, which is also part of the point of this article. Not all businesses fail at the same rate – Market Focused Entrepreneurs fail at a much higher rate than others who start businesses.
You also miss my point about businesses started by Market-Focused Entrepreneurs succeeding more by luck. I am not saying here that all businesses succeed by luck, but of the small percentage (10-15%) started by Market-Focused Entrepreneurs, a good percentage of them survive by simply having tried many times. Businesses started by Product-Focused Craftspeople are much more likely to survive because of hard work than luck.
You challenged me to give you data and clear definitions of which ones succeed more by luck and which succeed more by hard work. See above. Also see the work of a lot of others who agree that entrepreneur is not the definition of most people who start a business – See Michael Gerber’s work in “The E-Myth” as one example of many.
If you see all business startes are “entrepreneurs”, then we have a drastically different usage of the word that will keep us from having a constructive conversation.
Best,
Chuck
Chuck,
I am happy to adopt your definition of “entrepreneur” for the purposes of a constructive conversation. I will also read your other articles to understand the descriptions and definitions you are giving (I am sorry, but haven’t had a chance yet)
However the definition is only a small part of a good theory. The other parts are the ability to prove the theory or deny it, and the proof itself (or otherwise).
Your statement “I believe 80+% of all businesses are started by “Product-Focused” Craftspeople, another 5-10% by “Systems-Focused” Managers, and only 10-15% by people who fit any kind of dictionary definition of “entrepreneur”.” is a belief – I don’t see a proof. If you have any research based data that shows correctness of your statement, I would most certainly be very interested in it.
The fact that the majority of businesses fail is not a misconception, it is a statistically proven statement, proven many times. Here is one example of such study published in the USA that shows that over 50% of businesses fail within four years:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/05/ressum.pdf
There are many examples of similar studies performed in other markets.
I did read Michael Gerber’s work “E-Mith” and drawn much of inspiration from it. However inspiration was the only value I’ve got from it (not to be underestimated, of course). Most of the teachings are not scientific by any stretch of imagination, so there was not much of an educational value in that work.
So the work that gives you inspiration and teaches you beliefs is a bit like religion. Those people that started “failed” businesses also “believed” in what they were doing.
Until a theory can be proven, you call them “gamblers” and offer them an alternative “belief” system.
What we really need is a solid eduction program to give people tools to build businesses that succeed “for sure” not based on a “belief” but based on concrete scientific foundation. Is such a thing possible or is it a dream?
Agree with Chuck that mostly people are not entrepreneurs as they follow the most running trend in the business economy and tries to make their name in that.
Nice conversation here.
Bayut.com
(Dubai Property Portal)
Igor,
Great conversation we’re having – thanks for that!
Benjamin Disraeli and later Mark Twain said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Here’s some “lies” from the US Small Business Administration on business survival rates:
http://web.sba.gov/faqs/faqIndexAll.cfm?areaid=24
About 10% of all small businesses are birthed every year and about 10% fail every year. 70% of all startups are still in business two years later and 51% last five or more years.
Your study says 50% fail in four years, this one says 51% succeed five or more years. Not sure which lie is correct, but either way in my response above I said “most businesses are still in business a number of years after they start.” Both yours and mine support “a number of years”.
The question that I think is more important that you are asking is if we can trace success and failure to certain TYPES of business owners (Market, Systems, or Product-Focused). I “believe” I can both statistically and anecdotally.
We developed a Business Owner Profile three years ago (see http://www.apexprofile.com) to specifically help business owners see how the make decisions that effect the success of their businesses.
As business owners have taken this profile, it shows that the majority (about 75% so far – still gathering data on this) are Product Focused crafstmen who start a business with the following sentence “Wouldn’t it be great if I could make money doing (fill in the blank with something you love doing)?”
This is NOT the profile of a classic Market-Focused entrepreneur (again we misuse this term). First, Entrepreneurs (as described above) are almost always more excited about filling some unfilled niche in the market than they are in making money at something they love doing – they love the game itself, not any particular craft.
A Product Focused owner loves the craft – plumber, lawyer, doctor, engineer, painter, musician, artist, etc., and they start a business specifically to make money at that thing they love.
We’re still developing the stats, but the early evidence is overwhelmingly in this direction.
To back it up, here’s some pretty heavy anecdotal evidence for you from your own life. Think of how many people you know that have started a business because they’re doing something they love and want to make money at it. The list will be endless. These are Product-Focused craftsmen. They would never have started a business except for that thing they love doing – they are so proud of that thing they love the idea of having a business that shows the world how great they are at it.
Now think of how many people you know who started a business simply because they saw a way to make money at something – they had no preconceived love for that product or service, but a love for the game of figuring out how they can “win” at being the first ones to fill a niche. They didn’t go into business to make money at something they love, they did it because they saw a way to make money or simply play the game of business and see if they could win. Their love is not for a product or service, but for the game of business itself. If your life is like mine, your list of people who fit that description (Market-Focused Entprereneur) is very short.
So while we don’t have real deep statistics on it yet, the ones we have are leaning heavily in that direction. And virtually all of the anecdotal evidence in the world around us shows us that Market-Focused gamblers are a small percentage of those who start businesses.
Chuck,
I can understand and agree with your statements about statistics. Statistical studies can hold a certain bias and thus don’t always prove theories they are trying to prove. This is why many scientists spend just as much time disproving other’s theories as there are scientists that try and create new theories and prove them.
However this does not mean that you should not build a theory on a solid proof. A theory that can be proved, a method to prove it and a solid proof is the only solid foundation that you can base your actions on if you want to be certain of your success. And as with any foundation building, the construction can be good or faulty. With faulty foundation the whole building may collapse.
However, saying that since it is possible to build faulty foundations, therefore lets build all buildings without a foundation is counterproductive.
What I was trying to show is one example of a prove of a theory. Maybe not the best example, but there are others.
Unfortunately the anecdotal evidence from my own life does not necessarily support the point you are making. However, before I can explain, let me focus a bit on definitions first.
First, I don’t consider craftsmen, who simply sell their time or other units of their own work for money as businessmen or the act of them selling their time or craft a business. This applies to many plumbers, lawyers, doctors, engineers, painters, musician, artists, etc. I would call them self employed people, or individual contractors. Most such people are just the same as employes of an enterprise with a slightly different remuneration structure.
Now if the point of your discussion is to show self employed people or individual contractors as an example of an enterprise than to me this presents very little value from the point of view of education on building a business.
Self employed people aside, if I think of examples of businesses I know (and I do know hundreds of businesses) there is a real mix of both successes and failures in all categories you describe. I know skillful entrepreneurs that simply started businesses when they’ve seen an opportunity succeed where others fail. I know many former craftsmen that decided to turn their craft from self-employment into an enterprise who fail at that. I simply don’t have credible stats to agree or disagree with you.
So I guess we will have to wait and see what your study shows.
Igor,
Your final comment I thought deserved a separate and unrelated response. You said:
“What we really need is a solid education program to give people tools to build businesses that succeed “for sure” not based on a “belief” but based on concrete scientific foundation. Is such a thing possible or is it a dream?”
Based on this comment – you’re either going to love or hate my next book (not out until late this year) titled “Bad Plans Carried Out Violently – How Successful Leaders lead, succeed, and make more money.” You definitely won’t be neutral.
Albert Einstein said “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
I would suggest that they best way to fail at business is to believe there is some “solid education… based on concrete scientific foundation” that could make it happen. Western culture has bought into the idea that everything is scientific and “cognative”. Rational thought is lifted up as the highest form (Einstein disagreed).
I would suggest we have lost touch with “conation” (intuition) and have begun to worship the servant of conation, which is cognition.
What is the biggest fundamental of success in business? It has never been and never will be a rational, thoroughly researched plan, process or system for making it successful. (If you want statistical evidence for this ask 1,000 successful business owners if they had ANY plan at all when they started, and for the small minority that did, ask them if their business looked anything like their plan two years into it – so far I’m at 0% on that statistic).
The biggest fundamental for success in business is Speed of Execution- getting an intuitive hunch and moving on it. Get 80% or less of the facts and get moving. The only way you’ll figure out the other 20% is through experience.
How do you steer a ship? (Hint – it’s not the rudder).
Get it moving.
The least successful business people are academics. Why? Because they’ve bought into cognition as the gift and have relegated conation to the mental trash heap. They want a scientific foundation for everything they do and as a result, they’re frozen in their tracks while they wait for all the data to come in before doing anything.
The most successful business people are those who get the same idea as the academic, get some decent (80% at most) ideas that the crazy/intuitive idea just might work, then move on it.
We need to bring intuition back as the sacred gift and relegate rational thought to the servant’s role where it belongs. That’s the first fundamental of building a successful business.
Chuck,
Keen to read your book. I am not a big fan of paper, but if you have it in a Stanza format for iPhone I will definitely read it.
The rest of your statements here seem rather contradictory to each other, but I am running out of time to express my thoughts properly. I will definitely write the rest of the comment later.
One comment I’d like to make though – I am not sure that I agree with the statement that “The least successful business people are academics” – it is a bit like saying “The least successful business people are employees of an enterprise that never go into business themselves.”. Most academics never go into business, thy just work and research for the sake of research. Many of them also teach.
Those academics that do go into business can be very successful, examples are:
Google, founded on PHD work
Cisco, founded by a bunch of academics
I am sure there are many examples in pharmaceutical industry also, I just don’t know the background of the companies all that well.
I disagree with the fundamental assumption that businesses are market, system, or product plays. Most I find are a combination of all if they plan to become successful. You need the market demand, systems to deliver, and products or services to sell. You need all three, if you only have one, you will fail. So to say all entrepreneurs fall into just the one, market, is not only preposterous, it makes the article banal.
The worst at building businesses tend to be bureaucrats, entrepreneurs are the best at starting and building a business in the early stages, few are able to successfully transition to management and bureaucracy, in the more mature stages of the company (or at the very least should have found someone better, since the company needs a different leadership with different skill sets than an entrepreneur). So the more formalized the processes and systems, the more established the products are in the market, the more both internal and external politics need to be managed and negotiated, the more managers and eventually bureaucrats succeed in keep the company successfully growing.
A good entrepreneur for building a business, not only sees an opportunity (which does not an entrepreneur make, but which many people think makes them an entrepreneur). They also are able to hire talent, provide leadership, and be able to “wing it” and come up with ad hoc systems to handle issues as they arise. Which can work very well when the team is in the same room (or at least in the same building).
They also have the ability to enter the market at the right time in the right place. This is part talent and part luck, but luck has a significant perception component. There have been several scientific studies that have shown a comparison between lucky and unlucky people, a strong correlation exists in the person’s perception of whether they are lucky or not. In other words, those that were determined to be lucky saw opportunity where others would see challenges, would learn from mistakes, rather than dwell on the failure. We in essence can make or at least increase our luck by simply changing our perception. Successful entrepreneurs definitely have that perception and therefore tend to have more luck.
I have seen hundreds of business plans, and almost all fail to understand their market. It is this lack of understanding of the market, their competitors, and most importantly, the substitute markets (see Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model from his Competitive Strategy book). The mismanagement of market growth, especially in the company’s ability to handle and plan for the growth, is another major flaw I see in business plans. Now there are a large number of would be entrepreneurs who don’t even write a business plan before trying to build the business!
There are examples of businesses that have been successful without a business plan, but there are more examples of business, that had they written a business plan in the beginning, would have realized they are trying to run something that isn’t viable or has some fundamental issues that need to be addressed before the company can be successful.
A business plan that clear shows the entrepreneur and his key team understand the market, known how to establish system processes, and have a product or service that differentiates from competitors and adds significant value, is more likely to be successful. Add the passion, drive, leadership, positive perceptions, and obsession of the entrepreneur with a team that compliments the shortcomings of the entrepreneur (i.e. always good to have a resident skeptic, to balance out the optimistic entrepreneur) and you stand a better chance of building a successful business.
James,
I agree that we are all a combination of the three profiles and should have said that clearly – you can only say so much in s short blog, but that should be in there. So we don’t disagree on that.
Your statement that Market Focused entrepreneurs are the best at starting and building a business is simply not supportable by the facts. (We’re talking about someone who is heavily Market Focused and has significantly less of the Systems and Product).
The Product Focused person is far more successful at starting a business than a Market-Focused entrepreneur. Our profiling system (www.apexprofile.com) clearly demonstrates this but we don’t actually need it.
Poll 100 business owners yourself and ask them to finish this statement “I got into business because I wanted to….”
75-80% of them will likely finish the sentence this way “…because I wanted to make money doing what I love.” (doctor, plumber, lawyer, violin maker, gift ship owner, architect, interior designer, etc.). Any one who goes into business for this reason is not an entrepreneur (by both dictionary and widely agreed upon definitions). They are instead a Product Focused craftsperson.
If they end the sentence “…because I saw niche that wasn’t being filled” or “…because I love the game of business and seeing if I can win” – these people would be the classic high-risk taking Market Focused entrepreneur. They have no inherent love for the product or service they are offering, they just see that the market wants it and they’re going to figure out how to fill that niche. And in a poll to 100 business owners, you will have trouble finding more than 5-10 who will answer this way.
And if you ask the Product Focused craftsperson how many businesses they’ve started, the majority will say the business they are in is the only one they’ve ever started, and they were successful at starting it (they are also really bad at growing it to maturity and limp along for decades). If you ask a Market-Focused entrepreneur how many business they’ve started, they will count on two hands or more (if they’ve been at it for a few decades), and then will tell you about all the failures and false starts on the way to the 1 fabulous success they’ve had.
Re: a Business Plan – logic is on your side, but the statistics simply aren’t – people who start a business with a business plan are no more successful than those who don’t, and I would argue are likely less so. The average business goes through 5-14 iterations before it finds the thing that it really makes money at, and the only way historically that great companies have found that thing is get a very simple strategic plan (not a business plan) and get moving, then use the feedback from the world around them to learn what works.
People who start with a very thoroughly structured business plan are less likely to try to fix it by turning left when it isn’t working. (Just met with one of those people today.) They are so fixated on their written plan that the creativity and out-of-the-box thinking required to turn left and do something related but quite different just isn’t there.
Thank goodness for that. I was starting to think there was something wrong with me. After 8 years and a number of false starts on multiple fronts, I now know what I am and have hired the skills I don't have. In saying that, my businesses are successful, but I am confident that I will soon be enlightened as to how they could be more effective. Personally, I exhibit all the classic traits; pushy, impatient, creative, lots of ideas, extreme tolerance of risk, 'go hard or go home' mentality. It has made it hard to find and keep staff, as i tend to be quite demanding of people that juts want to turn up, ho-hum it, and go home. Drives me nuts.
In saying that, I would not have it any other way, I have carved out a significant living and legacy, and I will not be a burden on the taxpayer, ever. I will leave the processes and analysis to my newly appointed GM… lucky guy.
Great headline, got my attention, as i know it to be true.