The Entrepreneurial Savant

All successful people appear to have been naturally endowed with more energy than the average mortal being. Where does it come from? How do you get it? Try the following:
• Exercise-A regular regimen at a gym or club. No matter how tired or stressed you are, an interesting combination of exercise will revive you. You won’t really believe it until you try it. Go to a club for a space in your life dedicated to exercise alone. Many people find it easier than working out at home.
• Food- Some foods like meat and fried foods require more energy to digest. Eat them when you are doing strenuous physical labor, otherwise avoid them. Eat less; you’ll live longer. Eat more green stuff.
• Coffee- If you drink it, try only having one cup early in the morning. There is evidence that different people metabolize caffeine at different rates. One person might be able to sleep 20 minutes after a pot of hot black java, other may toss and turn 24 hours later. I am an admitted coffee maven but I’ve noticed a distinct decrease in energy after I pass the first or second cup (at least I’m admitting it).
• Booze- It’s fattening and hangovers are definitely not high energy experiences. Moderate yourself or join a group for some help.
• People- Stay away from negative people who are not interesting. I know this sounds callous, but if all your friends always do the same thing when socializing and relaxing, whether it’s watching football or talking about work, it’s time to meet some new people. Take a class, go to a seminar or meeting, go for a nature hike in the middle of winter, take up a new sport, etc. Not only will you suddenly look highly energized to all your couch potato friends, you will feel it. New people can be very stimulating.
Energy is at least partly determined by your degree of interest in what you are doing. I never cease to be amazed at how much energy people put into endeavors that fascinate them.

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Give yourself three years to achieve the success you want. The first year is for gathering information, developing expertise and skills and determining your niche. The second year is for making contacts among influential people, developing resources and starting to make money or get the results you want. The third year is when your efforts start to bear fruit, your understanding of your niche or expertise becomes extensive and profitable, and your network is willing to pay the price for your abilities.
The three year rule isn’t hard and fast. Some will experience rapid success but you cannot really count on that success until it has sustained for a period of time. Others will toil for long periods of time before their work is recognized. The love of what they are doing is what makes long term projects important in a person’s life.
The younger you are, the harder it is to accept a three year time frame. Don’t worry. Those years will pass quickly as you become more immersed in your interest and the rewards will become less important as you achieve them. They merely represent a validation of your dreams, the value is in sticking to your vision.

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“If I wanted to become a tramp, I would seek information and advice from the most successful tramp I could find. If I wanted to become a failure, I would seek advice from men who had never succeeded. If I wanted to succeed in all things, I would look around me for those who are succeeding and do as they have done.”
-Joseph Marshall Wade*

Mentors come to us in unexpected guises and from unexpected places. Sometimes you will not recognize the great teachers in your life until years later when their message becomes illuminated by your own greater depth of experience. For many of us it is difficult to find teachers but fortunately we have access to the minds and experiences of thousands of interesting persons through biographies, autobiographies and interviews. If you are interested in a subject or wonder how someone gets from here to there in pursuing their vision, read how others did it. The lives of successful and influential people offer a great deal of encouragement and inspiration for your own bumbling quest for success. It is amazing how many others made colossal blunders and went down dead ends before reaching their goals. It turns out these dynamic beings are human after all and we can share their experiences by learning their life stories.
*As quoted in A Treasury of Wall Street Wisdom edited by Harry D. Schultz and Samson Coslow.

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How much is your time worth? If you normally make $15 an hour for your time then try using that figure in non-work periods of your life. For instance, if you need to get home from the airport and you have a choice of a ten minute cab ride at $10 or a 45 minute bus ride @ $1, it may not be cheaper to ride the bus. Your time is worth around .25 per minute. The bus ride costs you $12.25 when you figure in your time (.25 x 45 + $1.00). The cab ride costs you $10 + $2.50 (ten minutes) but saves you 35 minutes or $8.75. The cab option is $8.50 cheaper when you consider the value of your time.
This exercise is simplistic and leaves out the possibility that you can accomplish other things while riding the bus but it does serve another purpose. Very often we fail to consider the value of our time when we make decisions. It’s penny-wise and pound foolish. Use your valuable time to accomplish those tasks that you are skilled at and use others for their skills. A seventy-five dollar an hour plumber may seem expensive until you spend twelve hours trying to fix something they can take care of in a few minutes.

Knowing the actual value of your time can really change your perspective about outsourcing things you are not skilled at.

If you make $100,000/year, your time is worth .80/minute. Imagine you waste ten minutes arguing over something trivial. Was it worth $8?

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Are you stuck or blocked? Unable to go beyond a certain point with a project or relationship? (Sounds like an ad for an over-the-counter remedy doesn’t it?) Sometimes when things aren’t getting off the ground it’s because they’re not ready to. Letting your ideas simmer means putting them on the backburner and forgetting about them for a while. Let your unconscious do the work, assembling resources and facts and making decisions for you. The solution, if there is one, will present itself at an unexpected moment, often an opportune one.

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Visualization is a very powerful tool for business and personal planning.  Basically, visualization asks you to create a mental picture of yourself in a certain situation and then enter into that picture and experience what is going on. Sometimes you might just observe and get another reference point, gaining a kind of objectivity about a problem or conflict you are trying to resolve.
There is a saying that goes: Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. This is particularly true when we are pursuing success, whatever our definition of it is. Once you know your objective or goal, try visualizing yourself living life after you’ve achieved that success. Fill in all the blanks with your research, making sure you consider the negative aspects as well as the positive ones. Is this the life I really want? What kind of new challenges and stress am I facing? What have I lost and what have I gained as a person?
Putting yourself into your dreams on an everyday, real world level may show you a side of those dreams you haven’t considered. No matter how glamorous another life may seem, it always has its own set of problems and challenges. Are you ready to exchange yours for them?

Note: The more detailed your vision is, the more likely you are to achieve it. Imagine the physical environment you live and work in down the road and be specific. Populate it with the type of people a successful business you own would employ. Imagine the style and attitude of the company.

Now write it down somewhere where you’ll be able to retrieve it from a few years from now. You’re going to be surprised at how much of what you imagined can come true if when you look back.

This brings up one other critical aspect of visualization: Don’t sell yourself short. A low set of expectations can mean an underwhelming result. Challenge yourself in this exercise by setting high goals and creating a future that is beyond your best plans. Why not? This is all in your imagination so you have little to lose.

And remember- every successful person and business went for goals that seemed unrealistic to others when they started.

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Throughout our lives there are certain persons who serve as pivot points, making it easier to achieve goals, make changes and find the resources we need to accomplish things. These Key People may be teachers, family members, friends, business connections or anyone else who takes an interest in who and what you are and who want to help you along. Very often Key People move in the background, affecting the lives of many others, seeing and making the connections that move us ahead in life. Finding and recognizing the Key People in your life is a necessary skill for achieving personal and professional success.
The first place to look for these mentors is in your past. Who has helped at times when you were stuck, frustrated or in trouble? Have you ever gone back and thanked them from the perspective of time and experience? Reestablishing and maintaining contact is important to finding and working with your Key People.

Look for Key People in the lives of others:

• Does a friend have a boss who takes an active interest in his or her advancement?
• Does a classmate always talk about a certain teacher who is so much more effective than the run of the mill?
• Are someone else’s parents always hosting their kids friends all the way into adulthood?
• Is there a person who seems to always know where to find a resource or how to go about solving a problem?
• Is there a person or persons you know who always are willing to make introductions and set up contacts between people with diverse skills and backgrounds?

These Key People are to be found in everyone’s lives- although many of us may have ignored their presence or resisted their attempts to help. By cultivating and maintaining mutually beneficial relationships with those people you will help to build a very effective team to aid in your route to success.
Put together a business contact list and keep the people on it up to date with what you are doing. Use the list to send out copies of things you’ve read or benefited from to others on the list. Make introductions when you meet people who can act as resources to each other. Eventually you’ll find yourself being regarded as a Key Person in their lives, a real measure of personal success.

Then take it to the next level and start actively making connections for the benefit of others.

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Mention the word ‘research’ and everyone’s eyes roll back into their heads. It conjures up visions of endless Google searches or copying text out of a wikipedia entry. Researching something that can change your life can turn this drudgery into a fascinating task. I’m always amazed how many people start off on complex ventures without doing any research. Perhaps they think that they can learn as they go along. That’s fine, but why go through the painfully boring process of making endless mistakes when there is a wealth of human experience available to help you take giant steps past the competition?

“I don’t know where to start.”
Fortunately there are easy answers to this common complaint about researching things. Research is a process of unfolding. Each fact leads to another group of facts. As you gain in knowledge, you choose which path or paths to take and when to stop. There are several ways to start. The children’s section of the library is a great place to get basic information on a subject. Good children’s non-fiction distills the essential answers down to their most important aspects. A children’s book on a particular subject gives you a basic knowledge of that subject.
Another place to start is the search engines. Look for data sources around your subject matter such as lists of industrial categories, associations, newsletters and periodicals on a subject, databases available, etc. They can point you to experts and provide you with a view of how big the universe surrounding your interest is. (great for networking and business planning). Books and periodicals usually have notes and resources listed in the back matter.
All of these sources are what is known as secondary research sources. Primary sources are the experiments and people whose experiences generated the published info. Most of us will do most of our research from secondary resources, leaving the really esoteric knowledge to the experts. However, doing the secondary research now means that when you can talk to a primary source you’ll know what questions to ask to get the highest value out of your opportunity. And, eventually, your expertise will turn you into one of these primary sources.
Even a little research can help you avoid major pitfalls on your path. You’ll still fall into a few pits but you’ll have the tools required to pull yourself out.

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There is a good business reason why employers give people vacation time and often require them to use it by a certain date. It’s not just because the employees expect it as a perk of their jobs. Vacation is a time to recharge your engines and regain your long term perspective. It is a time to step off the day to day treadmill, no matter how exciting, and re-orient your life in a different mode. Those of you who are workaholics who never can find time to take vacations are probably getting less real work done than the worker who understands the place of getting away from it all. Workaholism was glorified in the go-go eighties as the way to get ahead. We also coined the phrase, ‘working vacation’, in which you transport your work environment to a more scenic locale. This defeats the purpose of vacationing.
When things are out of control or you cannot seem to make any forward movement, get out of town. The key is to change environments completely for an extended (more than a weekend) period of time. If you work in a rural environment, this might mean heading off to NY or LA for a dose of the big city. For those of us poking at keyboards all day it might mean going out and learning how to climb rocks or developing a physical skill. Even if you just head out to a campsite on a hill and stare at a fire all night, you’re going to receive big benefits. To repeat: Energy, Perspective, Inward Contemplation, Physical Exercise, etc. Successful people make the time to get away.

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Speaking in public is allegedly the number one fear in America, ahead of death and taxes. Yet it is a skill that all successful people should cultivate. Public speaking ability helps you reach large numbers of potential supporters all at once, magnifying your ideas and projects. It demonstrates your poise and confidence and provides introductions in a way no amount of networking can do.
Organizations like Toastmasters International teach all of their members to speak effectively through a rigorous and fun approach to this fearsome task. Like all bogeymen, public speaking loses its scary aspects the more you get to know the ropes. Good speakers are always in demand and there is no better way to build a business or introduce an idea than by the public, yet personal, skill of speaking to a group.

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