Taking the entrepreneurial leap is like jumping out of a plane. It’s scary, exciting, half-crazy, exhilarating, risky, and rewarding.
Entrepreneurs create the most jobs, are a driving force in the economy, possess a large portion of the wealth, and spearhead much of the innovation that changes the world.
The fact that you’re reading this book means that you, or someone you know, thinks you might be an entrepreneur-in-the-making. If you are, this book will show you the incredible possibilities that are available, so you can live the life you were born to live.
Three decades ago, I was right where you are. As an entrepreneur-in-the-making, I was different from others. I felt lost, confused, insecure, and out of place. After I graduated high school, my friends went off to college to get their degrees; I wanted to get to work and go make money. Looking back, I would have appreciated having a book like this one—first to help me identify that I was an entrepreneur-in-the-making and, second, to show me the path to becoming one.
In the words of National Speakers Association Hall of Fame speaker Danielle Kennedy, “We teach what we needed the most.” That is why this book was written, to teach you what I needed the most back before I took my leap.
I come from the future—your future. I work with entrepreneurs who are years ahead of where you are now. You can learn a lot from their experiences as you set off on your journey.
This book is devoted to helping you understand your true skill set, your genetic code. It will give you a clear path to fully realize your entrepreneurial potential, regardless of your age. You’ll read stories of people taking their leap at fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five, and fifty-five. You’re never too old to realize your full potential.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Entrepreneurial Leap is divided into three parts.
Part I: Confirm will help you decide whether you’re an entrepreneur-in-the-making or not. It will paint a vivid picture of the entrepreneur’s unique DNA and describe the six traits essential to being an entrepreneur. You’ll then take a self-assessment to confirm whether you have these traits and what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur.
Part II: Glimpse will show you what a real entrepreneur’s life looks like, as well as the unlimited potential to build whatever you want. It’s meant to inspire you by showing how your life can look if you take the entrepreneurial leap. You’ll see all your options—the types and sizes of businesses and industries available to you—so you can determine which ones you’re drawn to. You’ll read real-life stories about people like you who went from where you are now to becoming successful entrepreneurs.
Part III: Path will map the stages of the entrepreneurial journey, helping you to avoid mistakes that so many entrepreneurs make along the way. It will help you to expedite finding your passion, niche, product, service, industry, and type of business, while giving you the clarity of vision and confidence to take your leap. That will increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur and help you do it in less time.
How do you know if you’re an entrepreneur? You may have been creating opportunities and offering solutions for a long time without even knowing it. From age seven to eighteen, I sold candy and fireworks, shoveled snow, cut lawns, washed cars, had a paper route, and sold stained glass made by my brother. Not until I was thirty years old did I fully realize I’d been an entrepreneur all along. I wish I’d known twelve years earlier. My confidence level would have been much higher, and I’d have made faster progress. The purpose of this book is to help you figure out if you’re one as soon as possible.
I’ve spent the past thirty years learning about entrepreneurship and then applying those lessons in growing my own businesses. I was lucky enough to have two very successful entrepreneurs as mentors: my incredible father, Floyd Wickman, who founded and built the number one real estate sales training organization in the industry; and a wonderful man named Sam Cupp, who built his companies to over $300 million in revenue. These two mentors taught me most of what I know about running a business.
I’ve now taught and helped thousands of others. I’ve written six books on helping entrepreneurs and their leaders run their businesses that have sold over one million copies. I created the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), which has enabled more than a hundred thousand business owners and their leaders run better businesses and organize their people and processes.
I’ve successfully run and sold two businesses. One was the family business my dad founded and built. I took it over at age twenty-five, turned it around, and ran it for seven years. Then we successfully sold it. The other business, EOS Worldwide, I cofounded with my partner, Don Tinney, and after eighteen years of building it, we decided to sell.
I share this information so you’ll understand that I’ve walked every step of the entrepreneur’s path. I’m going to show you that path. All of my experience and the experiences of all of my clients and mentors have been compressed into these 200 pages to help you realize your potential.
This isn’t a book on theory. It’s a book from the real world. It’s a thinking tool—a mental, physical, emotional, and psychological journey of exploration custom-designed for you. All the opinions, expertise, and learning come from my experiences, my clients, and my mentors. All from the actual world. The entrepreneurial world.
This book will give you a huge jump start on becoming a full-fledged entrepreneur. But first you have to decide if you’re even an entrepreneur-in-the-making. Not everybody is. In fact, only a small percentage of the population has all the innate traits necessary to become a true entrepreneur.
If you confirm that you truly are, this book will give you a glimpse of what your life will look like on the path to getting there. Every career has its own path. Plumbers in the making go through apprenticeship on the path to becoming master plumbers. For doctors, the path begins with pre-med, and for attorneys, the path begins with pre-law. So let’s call this path pre-entrepreneurship.
My intent is to help you realize total freedom and unleash your creativity so you can be 100 percent who you are and act upon your genetic code, your true skill set, and your reason for being. I want to assist you in making a huge impact on the world. As you make that impact, my hope is that you’ll remain humble, grounded, real, and authentic.
WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR?
The word entrepreneur was first used in its modern meaning by French economist Jean-Baptiste Say around 1880. He wrote, “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”
In his Entrepreneur magazine article “The True Meaning of ‘Entrepreneur,’” Steve Tobak, author of Real Leaders Don’t Follow, says, “My go-to on-line dictionary describes an entrepreneur as ‘a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money’ or ‘one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.’ Note the common keywords business and risk. If there’s no real business or risk, you’re not an entrepreneur.”
This book defines entrepreneur as someone who sees a need or an opportunity and takes the risk to start a business to fulfill or remedy that need or opportunity by creating something or improving upon an existing product or service.
As an entrepreneur, you create things that didn’t exist, or you make a sizable change to something that already exists. This definition of entrepreneur also includes a second- or third-generation son or daughter who takes over a family business and takes it to the next level, perhaps doubling it in size or making a transformation in its operation.
Let’s also clarify what an entrepreneur is by explaining what an entrepreneur is not.
Someone who buys one franchise location, has a lifestyle business meant primarily to maintain a base-level income, works as a freelancer or an independent contractor, is a sole proprietor, or has a side hustle is not an entrepreneur. Not by this definition. In addition, a second- or third-generation business owner who simply maintains what their forebears built also isn’t an entrepreneur. Such people are self-employed and bear tremendous responsibilities, but they’re not true entrepreneurs.
To qualify, they have to rapidly grow their companies from scratch or take over a family business and make truly significant changes. They’re like the hundreds of entrepreneurs I’ve worked closely with and the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs that our organization, EOS Worldwide, has helped.
WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR-IN-THE-MAKING?
Now let’s define a person who has the potential to become an entrepreneur.
This is an individual with a unique set of traits possessed by all true entrepreneurs but who has not yet taken an entrepreneurial leap. If you’re one of them, this book will show you a path to take that first step and fulfill what you’re meant to become—an entrepreneur.
Many entrepreneurs-in-the-making are young—but not all. You might be a stay-at-home mom or dad, someone who has grown restless in the corporate world, in the military, perhaps unemployed, or even homeless. You might be middle-aged and just never acted on the potential you feel inside. I’m happy to tell you that entrepreneurship is an equal-opportunity way of life. You can become an entrepreneur at any age and from any circumstance: rich or poor, employed or not.
If you’re a parent or guardian and are wondering if your son, daughter, niece, or nephew is an entrepreneur-in-the-making, this book will help you find out. If you’re an educator of future entrepreneurs, this book can serve as an insightful resource for you and your students.
THE NATURE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The beauty of entrepreneurship is that there’s no entitlement, tenure, or seniority—no pension or guarantees. It’s the great equalizer, perfect and pure. Doing well doesn’t depend on your past, present, or future. It only depends on the value you’re bringing to the world right now. If you bring no value, you get nothing. If you bring incredible value, you reap the rewards.
Entrepreneurship doesn’t care about your feelings. There are no handouts or freebies. That’s why only a small percentage of the population is cut out for it.
If you have the six essential entrepreneurial traits, this book was written for you. To give you a sneak peek, here they are:
1.Visionary
2.Passionate
3.Problem solver
4.Driven
5.Risk taker
6.Responsible (blame no one)
We’ll do a deep dive into each of these six essential traits to lay out what you need to know about yourself at your core.
Unfortunately, these six traits can’t be taught. You’re either born with them, or you’re not. This book isn’t going to teach you how to develop these traits, because they can’t be developed. If you do possess these essential traits, this book will, first, help you confirm that you’re an entrepreneur-in-the-making, and then show you how to harness and maximize your inborn abilities.
I should point out that while these traits can’t be taught, they can be discovered. Someone may have given you this book because they see something in you that you don’t quite see in yourself—at least not yet.
If you have these six traits, but you’re not ready to take the leap, that’s okay. At least you’ll know that you’re an entrepreneur-in-the-making and can move forward when you’re ready. I didn’t fully take my leap until age twenty-five. Some don’t take their leap until they’re in their fifties. And that’s perfectly fine. Sometimes just knowing you have what it takes starts the process of turning dreams into reality.
LOOKING AHEAD
Dreams don’t go very far, though. Being an entrepreneur is hard. Really hard. If you don’t have the ability to roll with the inevitable punches, you’ll get knocked out. Don’t become an entrepreneur because it’s cool. That won’t work. The failure rate is high. Only about half of start-ups make it through the first five years. That’s the same odds as a coin toss. Become an entrepreneur because it’s your calling.
While entrepreneurship is hard, the process of becoming one is simple—but please understand that simple doesn’t mean easy. Entrepreneurship means much more than new apps, technology, famous names, and billionaires. People with the essential set of entrepreneurial traits have existed on this planet for thousands of years and, by all measures, will continue to exist for thousands more. Entrepreneurs capitalize on trends, creating industries that are always changing. In the 1800s, they seized upon opportunities in railroad, telegraph, and manufacturing industries during the Industrial Revolution. In the early 1900s, they revolutionized the use of automobiles, gas, and oil. In the 1920s, they engaged in bootlegging. In the 1980s, they leveraged the computer revolution. Today, they develop apps and high tech.
Who knows what entrepreneurs will be creating in the next thirty years? The only surefire constant is that if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll be capitalizing on whatever opportunity the world puts in front of you. You might be helping people live to 150, populating other planets, devising artificial intelligence, creating robots that run the world, connecting our brains to the internet, or engaging in time travel or human teleportation. Whatever you decide, the constant is that you’ll be solving problems and filling needs. And getting people to pay for the solutions.
Your solutions don’t have to be revolutionary or the “next big thing.” You might make an impact by applying new technologies to mature industries like construction, restaurants, or distribution.
I want your abilities to serve you for a lifetime, not just for the current or next fad. Taking control of your fate does not depend on the product, service, or industry. Those all change. It relies on you knowing what you are and how to capitalize on that.
So let’s find out if you’re an entrepreneur-in-the-making. If you are, you’ll then see what your life can look like, and then I’ll show you a path for taking your leap and building your business.
Let’s begin your journey . . .