What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Indiana Jones

"Indiana Jones is this unique character who's this bookworm, yet he's this swashbuckling, whip-waving adventurer as well," says Jim Meuhlhausen, author of The 51 Fatal Business Errors and How to Avoid Them, who also coaches business owners using movie clips. "For the entrepreneur, that would be the technical expertise that they possess. Someone in IT may have started off as a computer programmer. I have rarely seen a successful entrepreneur who did not have a deep understanding of their business and of their customer."

Adds Maddalena: "Indiana Jones is a dichotomy. On one hand, he is the scholar, and on the other hand, he is the adventurer. They co-exist in the same body. I think successful entrepreneurs have to have the dreaming mentality because that's what makes them tick. They're dreamers. They want to hit the rainbow."

But, Maddalena explains, just as Jones needs his academic side to survive in the field, entrepreneurs eventually need to add business sense to their dreams if they want to have long-term success.

"That's what the Indiana Jones character is -- as adventurous as he is, he then has his educational and sensible and reasonable yin and yang pulling in his brain that are going to reel him in," he says. "An entrepreneur has to be cognizant that it's great to dream and want to push the envelope, but in the same hand, you've got to really think about it and think about the outcome."

'Snakes ... Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?'

Despite his larger-than-life persona, one of the things that makes Indiana Jones so endearing is that, through it all, he's so human. He personifies the very entrepreneurial view that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the ability to overcome it.

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