Opportunities are everywhere but they never last long. You need to be brave enough to take them when you see them. I am. I do.
The other thing about me, that you need to know, is that I am always willing to do what others are not. Yes, I see angles and opportunities and in many ways and times I have been really lucky and fortunate. But I have also been willing to put the work in, to take a risk, to push the boundaries in order to see something through. So much of my professional success is due to this—100%. I tell people all of the time exactly what to do to make money and more often than not, these people will find an excuse not to do what they could. I don’t make excuses. I do it. Nothing's Changed But My Change by Jeremy Schoemaker, Kate Sprouse Process is King
Documenting repeatable processes for anything you will do more than once is essential to your sanity. It’s true; you can fly by the seat of your pants and get by, but it makes you a hostage to your work. If you’ve ever been a manager you probably like process and understand its benefits. If you’re a developer you probably dislike process or see it as a necessary evil. Startups, being lean and mean, seem like the perfect place to eliminate documents, have no systems, and no processes…but that’s far from the truth. Without process it’s impossible to delegate, difficult to bring on a business partner, and easy to make mistakes. With processes in place it’s much easier to sell your product if/when you want to make an exit. The fact is, creating processes will bring you freedom through the ability to easily automate and outsource tasks. Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling Newt Gingrich, the famous Republican politician and all-about-Washington gadfly, is known to tell a story about a lion and a field mouse.
A lion, he says, can use his prodigious hunting skills to capture a field mouse with relative ease anytime he wants, but at the end of the day, no matter how many mice he’s ensnared, he’ll still be starving. The moral of the story: Sometimes, despite the risk and work involved, it’s worth our time to go for the antelope. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz The human visual system is not built for scanning,...but for depth of focus.
Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted—even for a few seconds—they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, over the course of time, managed to craft the brain into its present shape by creating a culture that could learn, change, and adapt to circumstances, that wasn’t a prisoner to the incredibly slow march of natural evolution. As modern individuals, our brains have the same power, the same plasticity. At any moment we can choose to shift our relationship to time and work with the grain, knowing of its existence and power. With the element of time working for us, we can reverse the bad habits and passivity, and move up the ladder of intelligence. This intense connection and desire allows them to withstand the pain of the process—the self-doubts, the tedious hours of practice and study, the inevitable setbacks, the endless barbs from the envious. They develop a resiliency and confidence that others lack. Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive. Mastery by Robert Greene Usually, companies ...fall into the trap described in Clayton Christensten’s The Innovator’s Dilemma:
they are very good at creating incremental improvements to existing products and serving existing customers, which Christensen called sustaining innovation, but struggle to create breakthrough new products—disruptive innovation—that can create new sustainable sources of growth. Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed. The amount of time a company can count on holding on to market leadership to exploit its earlier innovations is shrinking, and this creates an imperative for even the most entrenched companies to invest in innovation. A company’s only sustainable path to long-term economic growth is to build an “innovation factory” that uses Lean Startup techniques to create disruptive innovations on a continuous basis. I explained the theory of the Lean Startup, repeating my definition: an organization designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Yet if the fundamental goal of entrepreneurship is to engage in organization building under conditions of extreme uncertainty, its most vital function is learning. We must learn the truth about which elements of our strategy are working to realize our vision and which are just crazy. We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want. We must discover whether we are on a path that will lead to growing a sustainable business. In the Lean Startup model, we are rehabilitating learning with a concept I call validated learning. Validated learning is not after-the-fact rationalization or a good story designed to hide failure. It is a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty in which startups grow. Validated learning is the process of demonstrating empirically that a team has discovered valuable truths about a startup’s present and future business prospects. It is more concrete, more accurate, and faster than market forecasting or classical business planning. It is the principal antidote to the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.
Benjamin Disraeli Why self-publish, then? The answer is that self-publishing enables you to determine your own fate. There’s no need to endure the frustration of finding and working with a publisher. You can maintain control over your book and its marketing, receive a greater percentage of revenues, and retain all rights and ownership. A successful self-publisher must fill three roles: Author, Publisher, and Entrepreneur—or APE The first good reason to write a book is to add value to people’s lives. Will your book add value to people’s lives? This is a severe test, but if your answer is affirmative, there’s no doubt that you should write a book. The second good reason to write a book is the same reason I play hockey: to master a new skill, not to make money. In my book (pun intended), a book should be an end, not a means to an end. Even if no one reads your book, you can write it for the sake of writing it. Memoirs, for example, fit in this category. And the number of people who want to read a book of such a pure origin may surprise you. Good Reason. The third good reason to write a book is to evangelize a cause. A cause seeks to either end something bad (pollution, abuse, bigotry) or perpetuate something good (beauty, peace, affection). Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is an example. Her cause was the environment, and her book resulted in the ban of DDT and catalyzed the start of the environmental movement. (The fourth readon is that ) Writing is therapeutic. It helps you cope with issues that seem gargantuan at the time. The process of expressing yourself about a problem, editing your thoughts, and writing some more can help you control issues that you face. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki, Shawn Welch When things are great, get as much as you can out of it.
This always seems like it'll last forever while it's happening, but it never does. Double down, triple down. If business is ridiculously good lately, pour the time in to max out the current opportunities before they (likely) fade away. Bank cash, etc. The same goes for creativity. When you're having a highly creative day, run it out as much as you can. Resist the temptation to say, "Well, that's enough" and just go chill out or whatever. Max inspired time is rare. Milk that cow when you're max inspired. During bad times, re-double on fundamentals and try to avoid doing anything stupid. Fundamentals keeps you from hitting the vicious downward spiral. Super basic stuff. Decent sleep schedule, eat well, drink enough water, time in nature, time socializing with people you like. If things start getting hairy, really knuckle down on the most very basic stuff. That helps fight off the downward spiral. And then try not to do anything stupid. Don't spend a lot of money or make irreversible decisions if your judgment is faulty. Just keep gearing down on fundamentals. When you're low creatively, this is a great time to do tedious consolidation. Clean the kitchen, clean all your gear up, clean up the files on your computer, get taxes and licenses or whatever filed and renewed, deal with bureaucracy and nonsense—this will free up your time to milk the cow more when you're max creative. Okay, this is my new plan. Normal life during normal times. Milk the cow as much as possible when things are unusually great. Fundamentals and trying to avoid being stupid when things are bad. If you do those seven things—eat well, drink water, sleep on schedule, plan tomorrow before sleeping, start on what's most important, exercise, fully relax regularly, and get some time in nature—that almost guarantees busting out of a slump. If you're in a slump, you're almost certainly not doing one of those. Ikigai by Sebastian Marshall You need to focus on working on your business as opposed to in it.
When you’re operating the business, you spend time putting out fires and keeping everything running as it should. Working on the business requires a higher-level approach. Every morning, set aside forty-five minutes without Internet access. Devote this time exclusively to activities that improve your business—nothing that merely maintains the business. Think forward motion … What can you do to keep things moving ahead? Consider these areas: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT. This is work that grows the business. What new products or services are in the works? Are there any partnerships or joint ventures you’re pursuing? OFFER DEVELOPMENT. This kind of work involves using existing resources in a new way. Can you create a sale, launch event, or new offer to generate attention and income? FIXING LONG-STANDING PROBLEMS. In every business, there are problems that creep up that you learn to work around instead of addressing directly. Instead of perpetually ignoring these issues, use your non-firefighting time to deal with the root of the problem. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau There are literally thousands of different ways to get recognition for your expertise.
Try moonlighting. See if you have the time to take on freelance projects that will bring you in touch with a whole new group of people. Or, within your own company, take on an extra project that might showcase your new skills. Teach a class or give a workshop at your own company. Sign up to be on panel discussions at a conference. Most important, remember that your circle of friends, colleagues, clients, and customers is the most powerful vehicle you’ve got to get the word out about what you do. What they say about you will ultimately determine the value of your brand. Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz Everyone holds his fortune in his own hands, like a sculptor the raw material he will fashion into a figure. But it’s the same with that type of artistic activity as with all others: We are merely born with the capability to do it. The skill to mold the material into what we want must be learned and attentively cultivated. —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Let us call this sensation mastery—the feeling that we have a greater command of reality, other people, and ourselves. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear, and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt. The first is the Apprenticeship; the second is the Creative-Active; the third, Mastery. We can call this power intuition, but intuition is nothing more than a sudden and immediate seizing of what is real, without the need for words or formulas. Over the centuries, people have placed a wall around such mastery. They have called it genius and have thought of it as inaccessible. They have seen it as the product of privilege, inborn talent, or just the right alignment of the stars. They have made it seem as if it were as elusive as magic. But that wall is imaginary. This is the real secret: the brain that we possess is the work of six million years of development, and more than anything else, this evolution of the brain was designed to lead us to mastery, the latent power within us all. Mastery by Robert Greene |
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