The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster

“Hey, freak!”

Yes, I’m talking to you.

If you want to be an entrepreneur (or a Creator with a capital C), it’s time to embrace your inner freak. It’s time to get SUPER FREAKY.

(btw: I had to look up “freak” to confirm Darren’s definition. Yep, Apple dictionary tells us that a freak is “a person who is obsessed with or unusually enthusiastic about a specified interest.”)

Love it.

What are you obsessed with or unusually enthusiastic about?

Seriously. What FIRES you up?!

This gets me giddy: ______________________________________.

Fantastic. Are you willing to be obsessed about it?

In The 10X Rule (see Notes), Grant Cardone tells us we need to move away from thinking that obsession is a curse to thinking of it as a gift. He tells us: “The dictionary defines the term ‘obsessed’ as ‘the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire.’ Although the rest of the world tends to treat this mind-set like a disease, I believe that it’s the perfect adjective for how you must approach success. To dominate your sector, your goal, dream, or ambition, you must first dominate your every interest, thought, and consideration. Obsession is not a bad thing here; it is a requirement to get where you want to go. In fact, you want to be so fanatical about success that the world knows you will not compromise or go away. And until you become completely obsessed with your mission, no one will take you seriously. Until the world understands that you’re not going away—that you are 100 percent committed and have complete and utter conviction and will persist in pursuing your project—you will not get the attention you need and the support you want. In this context, obsession is like a fire; you want to build it so big that people feel compelled to sit around it in admiration. And as with a fire, you have to keep adding wood to sustain the heat and the glow. You obsess over how to keep your fire burning—or it will turn to ashes.”

Now, Grant Cardone is unquestionably super (!) freaky and might be a little too intense for you.

But, the conservative, legendary research scientist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi echoes this wisdom in his classic book on the science of Creativity (see Notes). He tells us that being Creative (w/that capital C) requires a HUGE amount of focused attention—something that most people find weird.

In his words: “Another consequence of limited attention is that creative individuals are often considered odd— or even arrogant, selfish, and ruthless. It is important to keep in mind that these are not traits of creative people, but traits that the rest of us attribute to them on the basis of our perceptions. When we meet a person who focuses all of his attention on physics or music and ignores us and forgets our names, we call that person ‘arrogant’ even though he may be extremely humble and friendly if he could only spare attention from his pursuit. If that person is so taken with his domain that he fails to take our wishes into account we call him ‘insensitive’ or ‘selfish’ even though such attitudes are far from his mind. Similarly, if he pursues his work regardless of other people’s plans we call him ‘ruthless.’ Yet, it is practically impossible to learn a domain deeply enough to make a change in it without dedicating all of one’s attention to it and thereby appearing to be arrogant, selfish, and ruthless to those who believe they have a right to the creative person’s attention.”

You willing to get #superfreaky?

If not, there’s always nor•mal: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected

Always our call. I vote for SUPER FREAK! :)

This is fantastic. Successful entrepreneurs KNOW that failure is part of the deal.

In Originals, Adam Grant quotes Randy Komisar—one of the best entrepreneurs/investors alive: “Whether you’re generating or evaluating new ideas the best you can do is measure success on the kind of yardstick that batters use in baseball. As Randy Komisar puts it, ‘If I’m hitting .300, I’m a genius. That’s because the future cannot be predicted. The sooner you learn it, the sooner you can be good at it.’”

As Darren advises, it’s NOT about neverfailing. It’s about seeing how fast you can get back up.

We need to trim our recovery time. Go from being knocked down and out for 2 months to 2 weeks to 2 days to 2 hours to 2 minutes.

I describe this practice as the equanimity game in honor of Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius’s wisdom (see Notes on Meditations): “When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self- control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”

We need to PRACTICE recovering our equanimity.

Every.single.time we get a little knocked down, how fast can we recover? You practice with the little annoying things so you can build up the muscle for the inevitable bigger things.

P.S. I’ve shared this story before but it’s worth repeating. Nearly a decade ago when I was raising money for my second business (Zaadz) I was in Aspen with one of our investors who happened to be a billionaire. He was introducing me to his friends as part of an informal presentation about our biz to see if they’d like to invest. His ENTIRE introduction consisted of this: “Brian’s been knocked down and bloodied and he knows how to get back up. Brian, tell us about your business.” (<— I get a little misty typing that.)

The greatest know it’s ALL about DARING GREATLY.

See Notes on Brené Brown’s great book and remember:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again,

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly…”

Want to lead?

Then you need to be the embodiment of all that you’d like your team to be. Period.

As Darren says, “… the most important, but also the most underused and violated, principle of leadership is lead by example.”

How’re you doing with that?

Take a quick inventory: What are you doing well? What needs work?

Pull the string.

Lead from the front.

P.S. If you want an astonishingly engaged team then MAKE SURE you create an inspiring vision for a better future that YOU believe in. Inspire hope.

Get this: According to research at Gallup shared by Shane Lopez in his treatise on the science of hope called Making Hope Happen (see Notes), 69% (!!!) of people whose leaders inspire hope are engaged. People whose leaders don’t inspire hope? They’re only engaged 1% (!!!) of the time.

69% vs. 1%. That’s cray cray.

We’ll get right to it on this one.

What are your 3 B.I.G. Goals for this year?

The goals that, when you hit them, will make this year UNQUESTIONABLY ridiculously great.

1. ________________________________________

2. ________________________________________

3. ________________________________________

Fantastic.

Now, Darren tells us that you may think you have to do 1,000 things to make those goals come to fruition. But, he advises, the reality is that you just need to identify the one or two habits that, if you engaged in them consistently, would inevitably lead to achieving those goals.

So… What are the one or two things you need to do to rock each of those goals?

1. ________________________________________

2. ________________________________________

Remember: “Once you have those one, two, or three key habits critical to the achievement of each of your BIG 3, you have everything you need to be successful. Now you just need to do them, over and over again, without fail.”

P.S. In GREATEST YEAR EVER 101, I go even further and encourage you to identify your ONE Thing—your #1 goal—that would make this year nuts awesome.

What’s your ONE Thing target?

And what’s your ONE Habit that will most help you achieve your ONE Thing?

I love that. Imagine those novice skysdivers going further up and up in their plane while their heart rates match their ascent!

Then? They jump! … And their heart rates actually go DOWN. (Hah.)

As Darren tells us: It’s the fear of fear we fear.

More research confirms this. In our Notes on A Mind for Numbers we called it “procrastipain.” People showed visible signs of pain in their brains (!) when thinking about doing something they dreaded. BUT… The pain went away once they actually engaged in the activity.

As Grant Cardone tells us, we need to “starve the fear of its favorite food by removing time from its menu.” Plus: “Rather than seeing fear as a sign to run—as most other people do—it must become an indicator to go.”

So… The next time you’re feeling the fear, you might just want to starve it of its favorite food, say, “I’m excited!” + “Bring it on!” as you get to work doing what needs to be done.