There's a lot I've been thinking about when it comes to my experience of being an entrepreneur. It's been a hellish few months and I'm just getting started. Despite my imagined ability to artfully articulate what it's like to be a "real entrepreneur", I keep finding (and collecting) snippets of articles that strike the chord deep within.
See, I thought I knew a lot. But the more I know, the more I realize that there's a lot I don't know that I don't know. However, if I had to say something about what I've learned, it's these two things:
1. There's a lot I don't know. Even if I think that I know it, someone else seeing the same thing as me and I don't know how they are viewing it.
2. It's not about knowing more but developing a way to learn smarter. A method of learning the all the unknown in life as you travel along and acquire the information that progesses you further along than every other piece of information bombarding you - a method for identifying the different between what's urgent vs what's important and choosing accordingly.
My experience is only shared by my Foundry cohort. Other young entrepreneur CEO's who are so openly embracing the path that they've taken. They are the only people that I can truly connect with. They understand the constant gnawing of which step to take next. The static that we receive about not wanting to go get "real jobs". The frustrations of being told what we should do with our company by people who don't really understand what we're doing. The limbo between being revenue-ready and seeking financing so you can quit your job. The look that we get when we tell people we are CEOs and they don't believe us. The balancing act between the near-broke startup we have now and the billion dollar company that we have in our heads. Our fixation on things like excel, Management Reports, this tiny thing called margins and the art of being scrappy. I know this sounds elitist (that's not my intention) but unless you're in it, daily living it, it's just hard to connect over these things.
I stumbled across another article from Harvard Business Review about Misfit Entrepreneurs. Dan Pallotta writes an article that is so far from the traditional perspective of the entrepreneur that it's probably why I connected with it so much. The article, like what most entrepreneurs like to do, takes the stereotypical perception of what an entrepreneur is and flips it upside down. Dan provides an obscure and almost enlightened perspective on where most great entrepreneurs operate from.
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of people that talk the game (like I did for a long time) but only a few actually strike out to do it. I am in no way implying that you must be an entrepreneur in order to be someone of worth or that people who are tackling the corporate world are the antithesis of what's described below. Being human is not mutually exclusive to the path that we take in life. We all share the common thread of the human experience, we all express it in different outlets and some nurture and foster it more than others. All I am providing is a humble and unorthodox insight (one of many) about the core of what happens behind the scenes in my mind and heart on a daily basis. Here's what Dan says about it:
Someone interviewed me a few months back for an entrepreneurship project, and he mentioned that in his conversations the thing that stood out the most was the willingness of great entrepreneurs to be vulnerable.
It's not the first association you'd make with an entrepreneur. Words like "driven", "ambitious", and "persistent" usually come to mind. But the moment he said it I knew that he'd hit the nail on the head.
Vulnerability. It is the most poignant quality in every entrepreneur I know.
To embrace the misfit in oneself is to be vulnerable. It is to forsake the easy acceptance that comes with fitting in and to instead be fortified by a kind of love, really. A love of life, a love of wonder, and, ultimately a sustaining love for oneself. Far from egoism, that love for oneself is a measure of one's love for others, for humanity. And it only from that love that great ideas can be born.
This kind of love cannot be taught in business school. It has to be felt. It has to be given sanctuary away from the noise and relentless assault of information. And then it has to be nutured. It must be embraced, in the light of day, for all to see, for people to ridicule, to criticize, to laugh at. And the entrepreneur has to be willing to feel the pain of ridicule and suffer the risk of the dream being stolen, or crushed by the meanness of this world. But the misfit doesn't worry about that. The misfit has a higher calling: to bring the unmanifest into being, no matter who is saying what.
Vulnerability is the absence of cynicism. And the absence of cynicism is love.
As that interviewer uttered the word, I thought of my entrepreneur friends. And I realized that what separates them from others is their abject lack of cynicism. Their willingness to be vulnerable.
Their love.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Confident, but not really sure.
I recently read this thought-prodding article from Harvard Business Review.
It is part of a blog series that I am following call 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. This particular entry rings pretty true to my experience with Dash & Cooper over the last few months and my life experience since starting my senior year in high school: we all live in uncertainty, which becomes somewhat more certain as time goes on. In my personal experience, mainly in football and entrepreneurship, you don't have very long to try to analyze all the details and different contingencies before you make a decision. You have to make decisions with what you know and what senses you have about where you are going. And then be ready to change your mind.
In the article, the author details a small excerpt from an interview with Andy Grove, longtime CEO of Intel. Something so simple about dealing with complexity that it shifts the way you think a little:
None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don't. I have senses about it. But decisions don't wait, investment decisions or personal decisions and prioritization don't wait, for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later. I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.
Think about it. Read the article. Give me some feedback as to how this applies to your life.
It is part of a blog series that I am following call 12 Things Good Bosses Believe. This particular entry rings pretty true to my experience with Dash & Cooper over the last few months and my life experience since starting my senior year in high school: we all live in uncertainty, which becomes somewhat more certain as time goes on. In my personal experience, mainly in football and entrepreneurship, you don't have very long to try to analyze all the details and different contingencies before you make a decision. You have to make decisions with what you know and what senses you have about where you are going. And then be ready to change your mind.
In the article, the author details a small excerpt from an interview with Andy Grove, longtime CEO of Intel. Something so simple about dealing with complexity that it shifts the way you think a little:
None of us have a real understanding of where we are heading. I don't. I have senses about it. But decisions don't wait, investment decisions or personal decisions and prioritization don't wait, for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them. So you take your shots and clean up the bad ones later. I think it is very important for you to do two things: act on your temporary conviction as if it was a real conviction; and when you realize that you are wrong, correct course very quickly.
Think about it. Read the article. Give me some feedback as to how this applies to your life.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Everything Matters
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. - Ernest Hemingway
I was once honored with a most inspiring lecture early last semester in one of my entrepreneurship classes. We were discussing the practice of skill development over time and were told how paying attention to the details of developing skills, framing certain thinking-patterns and hardwiring your personal decision-making model can, over time, allow you to do powerful things when the opportunity presents itself.
Since we were also discussing idea generation, a few of us mentioned how we had thoughts for products that very common today many many years before their time. The reason why we weren't able to act on those ideas was due to the fact that we just didn't have the skills and knowledge to make it a reality. What my professor said next, will stay with me forever:
"Laird Hamilton, as you may know, is a professional big wave surfer. He got to be that way because his biological father left him at the age of four, which caused his mother to move them both to Hawaii. Wandering the beach at a young age, he had a chance meeting with the man who would eventually become his adoptive father, pro-surfer Bill Hamilton. In wanting to please his would-be adoptive father, he took up surfing and continued surfing nearly every waking moment of his life. To the point that he was surfing in amateur competitions before the age of ten and pro competitions in his teens - later setting his sights on big wave surfing. After a lifetime commitment to skill development within surfing he went on to conquer a wave that was never considered possible to ride.
According to Moore's Law, technology will double every seven years. Subsequently, every seven years, a sinlge product will enter the market that significant shifts the paradigm in which society operates within. Shifts it to the point that the very discourse of society through history is altered permanently because the rules about what is possible have been rewritten.
I tell you all this because some time in your life you will come across one, if you are truly gifted maybe two, paradigm-shifting ideas that have the potential to rewrite the rules and shift the historical discourse of society. Often, that wave has formed before you even know that you are on it. To ride that wave, to make that impossible idea a reality, will require you to do something that could never be taught, something that could never have known to prepare for. Whether or not you succeed a combination of a few things: which skills you decide to develop, a lifetime commitment to developing those skills and your ability to come up with the perfect answer to a problem that no one ever thought possible."
Needless to say, my mind was blown. Shortly before walking out of that class room, wondering how I was going to possibly focus on my job at work, my professor showed us this video of Laird Hamilton surfing the impossible Teahupoo to further drill the lesson into us.
Go watch the video, think about what Laird says at the end of the clip about risking his life, and then think about what skills you are developing (whether you intend to or not). Are you knowingly committing yourself to skills that will prepare you for project that may very well define you? Or are you unknowingly developing a skill set that negatively alters your life (shifting blame to circumstances/others, avoiding anything unpleasant, not doing work and then complaining about why you shouldn't be held accountable)?
Think about it. Post your thoughts below.
I was once honored with a most inspiring lecture early last semester in one of my entrepreneurship classes. We were discussing the practice of skill development over time and were told how paying attention to the details of developing skills, framing certain thinking-patterns and hardwiring your personal decision-making model can, over time, allow you to do powerful things when the opportunity presents itself.
Since we were also discussing idea generation, a few of us mentioned how we had thoughts for products that very common today many many years before their time. The reason why we weren't able to act on those ideas was due to the fact that we just didn't have the skills and knowledge to make it a reality. What my professor said next, will stay with me forever:
"Laird Hamilton, as you may know, is a professional big wave surfer. He got to be that way because his biological father left him at the age of four, which caused his mother to move them both to Hawaii. Wandering the beach at a young age, he had a chance meeting with the man who would eventually become his adoptive father, pro-surfer Bill Hamilton. In wanting to please his would-be adoptive father, he took up surfing and continued surfing nearly every waking moment of his life. To the point that he was surfing in amateur competitions before the age of ten and pro competitions in his teens - later setting his sights on big wave surfing. After a lifetime commitment to skill development within surfing he went on to conquer a wave that was never considered possible to ride.
According to Moore's Law, technology will double every seven years. Subsequently, every seven years, a sinlge product will enter the market that significant shifts the paradigm in which society operates within. Shifts it to the point that the very discourse of society through history is altered permanently because the rules about what is possible have been rewritten.
I tell you all this because some time in your life you will come across one, if you are truly gifted maybe two, paradigm-shifting ideas that have the potential to rewrite the rules and shift the historical discourse of society. Often, that wave has formed before you even know that you are on it. To ride that wave, to make that impossible idea a reality, will require you to do something that could never be taught, something that could never have known to prepare for. Whether or not you succeed a combination of a few things: which skills you decide to develop, a lifetime commitment to developing those skills and your ability to come up with the perfect answer to a problem that no one ever thought possible."
Needless to say, my mind was blown. Shortly before walking out of that class room, wondering how I was going to possibly focus on my job at work, my professor showed us this video of Laird Hamilton surfing the impossible Teahupoo to further drill the lesson into us.
Go watch the video, think about what Laird says at the end of the clip about risking his life, and then think about what skills you are developing (whether you intend to or not). Are you knowingly committing yourself to skills that will prepare you for project that may very well define you? Or are you unknowingly developing a skill set that negatively alters your life (shifting blame to circumstances/others, avoiding anything unpleasant, not doing work and then complaining about why you shouldn't be held accountable)?
Think about it. Post your thoughts below.
Monday, July 12, 2010
20/20
Hindsight is 20/20 because the past is always easiest to see. - Bleeding Through
If I've learned anything since my last post. It's that execution of your commitments is the only thing that separates the exceptional from the mediocre.
I've made a lot of claims. I have not followed through on all of those claims. The differentiating variable between what I say I'm going to do and what I actually do is simply the clash between reality and my perception of reality.
Every week I know exactly what my completion rate is. As of writing this, I am at 16% for the week. I have only hit 100% a few times. The reason behind the discrepancies is that when I write out my management reports on Friday, my perception of what reality on that particular day hasn't factored in the things that I have yet to find out. By Monday, only half the list is relevant, by Wednesday, half of that is relevant. The Travis Corrigan that wrote the management report on Friday is different than the Travis Corrigan the following Wednesday. The reality of the space that you are operating in changes quickly in highly chaotic, complex situations. Priorities change as the environment changes, if you can't adapt your organization dies.
So why make a plan if it's going to change? Because over time you get better at calling your own shots, knowing that there are a lot of cognitive blindspots built into your plan. You learn to execute better, you become disciplined and start recognizing work avoidance tactics (like writing blog posts). The practice of executing on a plan makes you become better at planning. It's cyclical: after a while you learn that it's hard to execute a soft, head-in-the-clouds plan. And you learn that you won't accomplish anything of merit with low-standard plans.
It's hard, it requires integritous accountability and dedicate time of reflection to review what you have done and what you have not.
Try it: Write down (yes, write it down) 10 things that you plan to do in a week. Then add 2 stretch goals (mark them with an "s" at the end). Put the document someplace that you can get to easily, preferably someplace that you pass regularly. At the end of the week calculate the following:
Commitments Completed/Commitments Made = % Completion Rate
The exercise isn't about getting 100%, it's about looking at WHY you didn't do what you said you were going to do. Were they not as important as you originally thought that they were? Did some unforeseeable hing that wasn't on your list pop up that took precedent? Are they worth carrying over to next week or should you drop them?
Do this exercise weekly for the next 4 weeks. Tell me your completion rates and any insights that you have about.
If I've learned anything since my last post. It's that execution of your commitments is the only thing that separates the exceptional from the mediocre.
I've made a lot of claims. I have not followed through on all of those claims. The differentiating variable between what I say I'm going to do and what I actually do is simply the clash between reality and my perception of reality.
Every week I know exactly what my completion rate is. As of writing this, I am at 16% for the week. I have only hit 100% a few times. The reason behind the discrepancies is that when I write out my management reports on Friday, my perception of what reality on that particular day hasn't factored in the things that I have yet to find out. By Monday, only half the list is relevant, by Wednesday, half of that is relevant. The Travis Corrigan that wrote the management report on Friday is different than the Travis Corrigan the following Wednesday. The reality of the space that you are operating in changes quickly in highly chaotic, complex situations. Priorities change as the environment changes, if you can't adapt your organization dies.
So why make a plan if it's going to change? Because over time you get better at calling your own shots, knowing that there are a lot of cognitive blindspots built into your plan. You learn to execute better, you become disciplined and start recognizing work avoidance tactics (like writing blog posts). The practice of executing on a plan makes you become better at planning. It's cyclical: after a while you learn that it's hard to execute a soft, head-in-the-clouds plan. And you learn that you won't accomplish anything of merit with low-standard plans.
It's hard, it requires integritous accountability and dedicate time of reflection to review what you have done and what you have not.
Try it: Write down (yes, write it down) 10 things that you plan to do in a week. Then add 2 stretch goals (mark them with an "s" at the end). Put the document someplace that you can get to easily, preferably someplace that you pass regularly. At the end of the week calculate the following:
Commitments Completed/Commitments Made = % Completion Rate
The exercise isn't about getting 100%, it's about looking at WHY you didn't do what you said you were going to do. Were they not as important as you originally thought that they were? Did some unforeseeable hing that wasn't on your list pop up that took precedent? Are they worth carrying over to next week or should you drop them?
Do this exercise weekly for the next 4 weeks. Tell me your completion rates and any insights that you have about.
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