Link to the original study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/sej.1377
"I was an entrepreneur for over 10 years and had many friends that were very successful entrepreneurs, yet were not the brightest individuals. Instead, they had great social skills and the ability to manage their emotions and mindset during the inevitable difficulties that arise while building a venture. That is, they had high emotional intelligence”
Based on a study of more than 65,000 entrepreneurs' traits and success
"The researchers found that both general mental ability and emotional intelligence were positively tied to entrepreneurial success. However -- as they had predicted -- emotional intelligence was a far stronger predictor of success than mental ability.
<aside> 💡 …While emotional intelligence explained 89.1 percent of the variance in entrepreneurial success, mental ability explained only 10.9 percent”
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