A LIFETIME OF GROWTH, LEARNING, AND MOTIVATION
You’re the culmination of the books you read and the people you hang around with. This chapter introduces you to some great resources for your journey. An important caution is that, given all you’ll read, hear, watch, and learn in educating yourself as an entrepreneur, please understand that if you try to do everything you learn about, it will twist you in a knot and potentially put you out of business.
Not all advice is for everyone. You can find a lot of information out there, and one size does not fit all. As Dr. James Dobson states, “The same boiling water that hardens the egg will soften the carrot.” You have to be selective and trust your gut. Glean what’s best for your vision, your plan, and your company.
With that in mind, here are ten ideas to keep you ahead of the game and charging forward:
1.Read one nonfiction book a month. Here’s a list to get started:
•Traction, Gino Wickman
•Rocket Fuel, Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters
•Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
•The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
•Good to Great, Jim Collins
•The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven R. Covey
•Unique Ability, Catherine Nomura, Dan Sullivan, Julia Waller and Shannon Waller
•The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting and Running a Business, Steve Mariotti
•The Lean Startup, Eric Ries
•How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
•Great by Choice, Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
•Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Poras
•The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
•The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber
•Small Giants, Bo Burlingham
•The Startup Owners Manual, Steve Blank
•Crushing It, Gary Vaynerchuk
•Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
•Essentialism, Greg McKeown
•Zero to One, Peter Thiel
•Principles, Ray Dalio
•Start with Why, Simon Sinek
•The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz
•Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki
2.Read biographies of successful entrepreneurs:
•Screw It, Let’s Do It, Richard Branson
•Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson
•Shoe Dog, Phil Knight
•Pour Your Heart Into It, Howard Schultz, Starbucks
•Thomas Edison (multiple books)
•Walt Disney (multiple books)
•I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford, Richard Snow
•Made in America, Sam Walton
•George Washington (multiple books)
3.Listen to your favorite podcasts:
•How I Built This with Guy Raz
•The Tim Ferriss Show
•The Multiplier Mindset with Dan Sullivan
•I Love Marketing with Joe Polish and Dean Jackson
•The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes
•Growth Now Movement
•The Gary Vee Audio Experience with Gary Vaynerchuk
•Entrepreneurs on Fire
•Cool Things Entrepreneurs Do
•The Nice Guys on Business
•MFCEO Project
•No Quit Living
•Youpreneur
•Akimbo with Seth Godin
•The Liberator
•Avanti Entrepreneur with David Mammano
4.Watch online videos on leadership, motivation, entrepreneurship, TED Talks, and running a business. Just search those words and you’ll find thousands of videos to watch.
5.Read business blogs:
•EOS Worldwide, eosworldwide.com/blog
•Score, score.org/blog
•Derek Sivers, sivers.org/blog
•Entrepreneur on Fire, eofire.com/blog
•Foundr, foundr.com/blog
•Tim Ferriss, tim.blog
•Close, blog.close.com
•HubSpot Sales, blog.hubspot.com/sales
•Sales Hacker, saleshacker.com/library
•Abundance 360, diamandis.com/blog
•Seth Godin, seths.blog
•Lean Startup Co., leanstartup.co
6.Surround yourself with entrepreneurs. Coffee meetings, networking, find a mentor, join a peer group, get into The Strategic Coach® Program.
7.Know thyself. Learn your MO (who you are, how you operate, etc.). There are great tools to help you do this:
•Kolbe A™ Index
•DiSC
•Myers-Briggs
•Culture Index
•Strengths Finder
•Learn about Emotional Intelligence
•Go to a therapist
8.Take some “coffee shop” time. I recommend every entrepreneur take one to two hours a week in a coffee shop for thinking time to work “on” your business and to review your business vision, plan, and goals.
9.Read inspirational quotes. Here are some favorites:
•“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us . . . Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do . . . It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”—Marianne Williamson
•“The best revenge is massive success.”—Frank Sinatra
•“An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”—Reid Hoffman
•“You must be very patient, very persistent. The world isn’t going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea. You are going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of the people. They are not going to buy it unless they know about it.”—Herb Kelleher
•“The very first company I started failed with a great bang. The second one failed a little bit less, but still failed. The third one, you know, proper failed, but it was kind of ok. I recovered quickly. Number four almost didn’t fail. I still didn’t really feel great, but it did ok. Number five was PayPal.”—Max Levchin
•“When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.”—Howard E. Schultz
•“I had all of the disadvantages required for success.”—Larry Ellison
•“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”—Walt Disney
•“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.”—Jim Rohn
•“Fall seven times and stand up eight.”—Japanese proverb
•“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”—Source unknown
•“A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.”—Henry Kravis
10.Look at the balance in your bank account. That should motivate you to get to work.
For an updated list of books, podcasts, blogs, and other resources, go to e-leap.com.
So there it is, my thirty years of experience in 200 pages. I had a blast writing it, and I hope it helps you become an incredibly successful entrepreneur. I’ll now put the point of this book in a nutshell.
Becoming an entrepreneur is not something you do—it’s something you are. It’s not about writing a business plan, raising money, getting business cards, following a methodical plan, and making a living. It’s about possessing the six essential traits. And if you do, your journey is typically four major steps:
Step 1—Having an idea, solution, product, service, light bulb moment that ignites you
Step 2—Taking the entrepreneurial leap to sell your idea to the world
Step 3—Fighting like hell for ten years
Step 4—Emerging a successful, battle-tested entrepreneur (hopefully . . . remember the odds)
Again, there’s no perfect, detailed, step-by-step process for becoming a successful entrepreneur. What this book provides is the ability to confirm that you have the essential traits. And if so, offers you clarity about your future and all of your available options; and then insight into college, finding your passion and mentorship—along with disciplines to help you take a better leap and increase your odds of success through those four major steps.
To help you write and think about the concepts in this book along your journey, I created the Leap Journal, which is a summary of the teachings in each chapter, along with journal pages to capture your most important thinking. You can find it at e-leap.com.
In summary, I have three wishes for you, or better said, impassioned pleas.
The first is that you save at least 15 percent of everything you personally earn. Far too many entrepreneurs spend everything they make, counting on a big payday when they sell their businesses, which unfortunately never happens for them, and they end up with nothing. If you save at least 15 percent of everything you earn from this day forward, odds are you’ll have a large nest egg for retirement.
And then maybe the icing on the cake will be a big payday when you sell your business. But don’t bet everything on that. Sadly, most entrepreneurs die broke because they fall into the trap of thinking their business will be the goose that lays the golden egg forever. They spend everything they make buying houses, boats, and cars.
Unfortunately, I suffered from this in my early thirties. I hope you learn from my mistake. My goal was always to be to a millionaire by the time I was thirty. At thirty-one, I achieved my goal and was worth $1.2M (missed it by a year), and by thirty-three, I was flat broke and $200,000 in debt. This was when I was creating EOS. It was during the dot-com crash of 2000. I had very risky investments that went south, bills to pay, and no income. I was trying to build a new business. I had no safety net, a five- and eight-year-old, and thank God, a very supportive wife. That loss could have all been avoided if I had been more fiscally responsible. Fortunately, that was a turning point for me, and I’ve been financially disciplined ever since. I repeat: please save at least 15 percent of everything you earn, and invest it wisely!
On the positive side, if you’re fiscally responsible, the data speaks for itself. In a 2014 analysis of data on over 60 million households by CEG Worldwide and Wealth Engine, published in “The State of the Affluent 2014,” 75 percent of households with investable assets of $5–$25 million are business owners, and 90 percent of households with over $25 million of investable assets are business owners.
My second wish, and passionate plea, is that you live your ideal life. This is the goal for every one of our clients at EOS Worldwide. It’s defined by the following:
1.Doing what you love
2.Working with people you love
3.Making an impact
4.Being compensated appropriately
5.Having time for your other passions
If you apply what I’ve laid out in this book, you can make those five aspects of an ideal life come true. I see entrepreneurs achieving them every day.
And third, please make a commitment to yourself and fill in the following blank right now with your ten-year goal.
In ten years, I will
I wish you tremendous success on your path, and I look forward to writing about your story someday.
Stay focused.