A friend of mine called me the other day to discuss his plans to leave his job and start a business in a year. I could feel his excitement, and supported his decision. But the truth is I didn’t really believe in his plan, and I don’t really think he did either. We’ve had this discussion before, many times, and nothing has really come of it. I realized I’ve also had the same conversation with myself, many times, over the last few years but always stopped short of doing it. The problem with the plans we made was they relied on one event that never happens: the eureka moment that tells you it’s time.
There are a lot of scary things in life..getting married, starting a business, having kid, buying a house, heck even getting a dog. These are all times where we can feel the fear inside of us, attempting to hold us back and keep us safe. Sometimes that fear says it’s not time yet (and sometimes it’s not), but the truth is it’s never the time. It will always be scary, it will always require a leap of faith to do any of these things. I look to my sister as living proof of this.
Andrea is really a great mother. She’s loving, she’s supportive, she takes amazing care of her 9 month old while continuing to take amazing care of herself (one of the more difficult and important parts of being a good parent…from what she tells me). She certainly doesn’t look and act like a person who wasn’t ready to be a mother, but she’ll tell you otherwise. Up to the point when she and her husband decided to have a baby they did not feel it was time. They still wanted to enjoy their pre-adulthood (Andrea classifies anyone who graduated from college but has not yet had a baby as a pre-adult), wanted to travel, to go out at night, to sleep in on weekends, to still just be with themselves. But they felt equally strong about entering a new phase of their life, the responsibility and excitement of parenthood. It didn’t feel like “the time,” but they did it anyway…and it ended up it was after all.
The more exciting and rewarding things in life, often look scary from the outside. My sister had to wonder “how could I, an accomplished pre-adult, possibly be a good mother?” Just as I wonder sometimes “how could I, also an accomplished pre-adult, possibly be ready to start my own business, a real business?” Well, the bad news is that if you’re waiting for the right time to take a big step, as I have, it will never come. The good news is whenever you do take that big step, the time will be right.
I don’t know how I stumbled on to this post, but it was really thought provoking for me. At first I wanted to get defensive, think about why she was wrong and point out that she had contradicted this post many times in the past both in one of her books and in other blog posts (as pointed out by several readers in the comments). Apparently she even ended one of her books with the statement: “People will choose to work because they love what they do. ” - Penelope Trunk, in ‘The end of work as we know it.’
But in the end I really enjoyed this post because it end challenged my beliefs, and expanded my perspective. Anyway instead of rewriting a blog post, I’m just going to copy from an email conversation I had with my friend on this post (note: these are from several emails, and I realize a lot of rambling):
It seems like there are a lot of people in the comments that felt really good after reading this post. It, at least momentarily, squashed all their doubts about their lives. They weren’t missing out on something great after all. Maybe they feel relieved because they can point to this and say: “Whew, see…it’s not my fault.” I feel like the strong reaction shows an underlying doubt. There is a part of them that still believes in this fairytale.
Why do such a high % of people in their 20’s believe in this notion, while a very low % in their 40s+ say that it is garbage and that “reality has set in.”
Maybe the reason why most people think this advice is BS is because they stopped thinking about what they loved the second “reality set in..” ie, bills. Dreams can’t pay bills, and paying bills requires you make money, and generally the most accepted way to make money is to get a job. Job takes up time and dreams are pushed aside, before long you don’t really know what you love but you know how to make money, and that can feel good too. Perhaps the key to finding what you love is to KEEP looking. Not waiting, but looking.
I think there are other issues at play here… Most don’t know what they really would love to do. Think about all the people who think they want to be entrepreneurs, movie stars, singers, actors…do you think that the would all LOVE to do these things? Or are most just looking at what others have and thinking that is something they would like to have. I would imagine that a lot of the commenters on that site fit in this category. Look at early stages of American idol…most of those people really believe they would like to be singers, but I’m willing to bet that only a very small percentage of them actually would love to sing. 99% of them are there because they want to get famous and rich.
maybe another issue is that people are too specific when looking to do what they love. They define things too tightly. For example, what my friend Jerry has discovered he loves to do connect with people at a very deep level (as he calls it: “connections of the heart.”) He’s had 3-4 careers in his life that he has loved, but they all have this underlying theme. But what if he had confused an activity that involves connections of the heart with “his calling?” What if he thought that what he loved to do was be an actor (without realizing that what he loved about acting was it allowed him to have connections of the heart with the characters and audience)…so he went out and tried to be an actor, and it didn’t work. Does this mean he can’t do what he loves? No, it means he was too narrow in his focus. Keep trying things that interest and excite you, or in Jerry’s case that appealed to his interest in connecting with people… you will probably end up in another position where you can be excited, and in fact end up doing what you love….
I agree with the notion that believing in and seeking “the perfect job,” is quite a heavy burden. It’s not going to get you anywhere. So sitting around and hoping to see the perfect job hit the classifieds for you will not ever amount to anything. I also do believe that no matter how much you love what you do, it will always have moments that feel like work. It’s never all happiness…life is always great for anyone, nor should it be. As my mom said: “You need contrast.” So I think people are mislead there as well.
I actually believe people are completely confused as to what doing what you love means. It doesn’t mean there is a job out there just waiting for you to snatch it. It doesn’t mean that everything you enjoy doing should and can be a job or career path for you. I It means you continually move towards, experiment with, try things that interest or excite you, and you follow those feelings to new things. You do things that make you nervous (in a safe, structured way…no drugs, etc). You do things without worrying about what they may or may lead to in the future, you just do them because they excite you.
I think this pursuit of purpose is very similar to choosing a spouse. You certainly can’t ever know beforehand who is “the one.” You have to get in there and spend time with them. You have to experiment. Some people are “lucky” and know what they want, and get it. Others try and try and try, always bailing because it’s never just right. And others still never really believe they can find “the one,” so the settle for the one who will settle for them. But the truth is there is no perfect spouse, no perfect relationship. It takes a good fit and hard work to make a great relationship. But if you love someone, deep down, you want to work on it, you want to make it the best it can be.
perhaps again the issue isn’t about the end result, about finding and doing that thing you love…it’s about the seeking. If you are willing to seek and continue to seek throughout your life, then I’m willing to bet you’ll have a lot more exciting days than boring ones. Doing a lot of experimenting, a lot of “seeking,” inevitably means you’ll try a lot of things that don’t work.
just like an athlete…they are never in good shape, it’s not a place you ever get…it’s always just in front of you. So they try new training techniques, new machines, new supplements, new routines, new diets..constantly tweaking…and finding those that don’t work, those that fail, that is what ultimately makes them better.
Perhaps the “secret” to life then is: fail big and often. Failing is aliveness. Failure is a teacher. Failure paves the way for growth, and growth is living. So maybe the goal isn’t to try and find what you love, maybe it’s to try lots of things you might.
Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn’t think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.
I think I still struggle with this, even though I believe it in. I’ve only had flashes in my short work life where the work I was doing was actually fun, where I couldn’t believe that anyone, anywhere, could categorize it as “work.” I guess this is something that takes time to absorb and live… old habits and beliefs die hard.
By the time they reach an age to think about what they’d like to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of loving one’s work. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than schoolwork. And yet all the adults claim to like what they do. You can’t blame kids for thinking “I am not like these people; I am not suited to this world.”
Actually they’ve been told three lies: the stuff they’ve been taught to regard as work in school is not real work; grownup work is not (necessarily) worse than schoolwork; and many of the adults around them are lying when they say they like what they do.
I wonder if this is true? Do most people genuinely not like what they do? I realize that no matter what you do, there are always going to be parts you don’t like or get stressed over, or people you can’t stand, but I’m hopeful that we all have the possibility of spending most of our time doing something we generally enjoy. So what separates the few who do love what they do? How did they get there? I really like this:
It was not till I was in college that the idea of work finally broke free from the idea of making a living. Then the important question became not how to make money, but what to work on. Ideally these coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases (like Einstein in the patent office) proved they weren’t identical.
The definition of work was now to make some original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve. But after the habit of so many years my idea of work still included a large component of pain. Work still seemed to require discipline, because only hard problems yielded grand results, and hard problems couldn’t literally be fun. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them.
If you think something’s supposed to hurt, you’re less likely to notice if you’re doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school.
……..
Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money. How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.
I still struggle with this. I feel like anything great worth doing will come with quite a bit of pain. I feel like on some level that doing what you love is like getting your body in shape after a long break from exercise. It’s going to take discipline, it’s going to hurt, and you’re going to hate it some, if not a lot of the time, at least to start. But after you break through the habits and your muscles begin to build, things get easier. I can see this approach will not get me anywhere, or at least the places I’m trying to go. Perhaps part of my problem has been I’ve been pushing so hard on doors that are meant to be easily pulled open…pushing harder does not get me any closer to opening it. That reminds me of this:
It’s really hard to let go of what I’ve been taught, and what I’ve told myself. Part of finding what you love to do, is not pushing through the pain but instead noticing it and reacting to it. More good quotes:
How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don’t know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you’ll tend to stop searching too early. You’ll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia.
I struggle with this as well. As I’ve said, I don’t think I’ve ever done anything that just felt so great, that felt like it was my “calling.” I’m not really looking for that because I don’t think I ever will. But I will give myself a pat on the back for continuing my search, seeking out new opportunities when the current one doesn’t at least feel right. Or as Paul later describes… I’ve never found something that I enjoyed enough that the concept of “spare time” seems mistaken. It seems that I continually put myself in work situations where I can’t wait to do something other than what I’m doing. Not exactly practicing what I preach. What you should do:
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that’s pretty cool. This doesn’t mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that’s pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
What you should not do:
What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don’t even know?
It’s really amazing how greatly this impacts people’s lives, including my own. How crazy is it that we could put ourselves in a position to do something we don’t like or hate, potentially for the rest of our lives, in hopes we look good to others? At the end of your life are you going to look back and say “Whew, I’m glad that I lived the way all those people thought I should?” I doubt it.
The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren’t tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are “just trying to make a living.” (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn’t thought much about what they really like.
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they’d do it even if they weren’t paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?
This is something I think we’ve all heard at some point in our lives: “What would you do if you had 10 million dollars?” I think most people would say they would quit their jobs, retire to some beach house, and live happily ever after. We know this isn’t true. Spend some time and read about past lottery winners. They learn the hard way (yes, it’s hard) that money is not the answer. They often find themselves lost and completely unhappy. I think most people believe deep down there is some dollar amount that would make them happy for the rest of their lives. If they could just hit that, either through lottery winnings or their 401k or being an entrepreneur who sells their company, they think they will live happily ever after. These expectations are so high, that when some of the few actually hit this number they are usually overwhelmed and saddened. It’s hard not to think: “I made it, but is that all there is?”
This is why it makes so much sense to fill up your days doing something you enjoy, something you care about. Because if you can end the day generally feeling good about what you do, about your life, your loved ones, your path…then you can end the week feeling the same way, and then the month, and then the year, and then year after year..all feeling pretty good. You don’t need to hit the lottery or sell your company, because at the end of the day you feel good.
Finally, words of encouragement:
It’s hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don’t underestimate this task. And don’t feel bad if you haven’t succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you’re discontented, you’re a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you’re surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they’re lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.
I guess I’m a step ahead, but that doesn’t mean I feel any closer getting somewhere. Whew, patience. Go read the article, it’s worth your time.
Ok I’ll admit the Warren Buffett posts are probably getting a little old, unfortunately fascination of the moment. There are many reasons to admire and respect a man like Warren Buffett (the man is the self made richest person on the planet and he did give away more than 85% of his net worth to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation), but the thing I admire most about him is that he’s one of those few who found and followed their passion. Or to put it into Warren’s words, he “tap dances to work everyday.”It may be a pipe dream but somewhere in the last 3 years of my life, I’ve convinced myself that there is some sort of path in life I can take that will “click” for me. I don’t want to come across sounding mystical, like there’s some powerful force guiding me towards “my thing,” because I don’t believe that. I just believe that we can find work that touches who we are at the deepest level, work that energizes us, and pulls out the most amazing parts of our being. This is the work that you would probably do for free, but ironically the one where you have the most financial opportunity. This seems to be the case for Warren Buffett. It has never been about money or fame for him. He just was fortunate to discover early on that everything about investing clicked with who he is. A quote from a class discussion Buffett with some students at Emory:
I enjoy what I do, I tap dance to work every day. I work with people I love, doing what I love. The only thing I would pay to get rid of is firing people. I spend my time thinking about the future, not the past. The future is exciting. As Bertrand Russell says, “Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.” I won the ovarian lottery the day I was born and so did all of you. We’re all successful, intelligent, educated. To focus on what you don’t have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it’s your own fault.
I’m amazed by his gratitude for his life. You don’t have to be a billionaire by the way to be so lucky (won the ovarian lottery…great). Another great quote showing his humility and gratitude:
I had nothing to do with my own success. My father was a securities broker and after the Great Crash, he had no one to call. Consequently, I was born in 1930 in the United States during the time of one of the greatest capital markets. I was born with the wiring for capital asset allocation. I had the right wiring at the right time. Temperament is a large part of my wiring. I was naturally good at it, and I used some feedback to develop it better. There is nothing to be arrogant about. Gates says if I had been born earlier, I would’ve been some animal’s lunch. I can’t run, I can’t climb. I’d be talking about allocating capital and the animal would think, “Those are the kind that taste the best.”
I also love this quote:
“I have so much fun that it’s not work. I get to do what I want, where I want – on a boat, wherever.”
It sounds to me that Buffett would agree with the notion that the best investment you could ultimately make is in yourself. Take the time and spend the money to really find the path that works for you. It may take a few stops and starts, but the pursuit is worth it.
Have you ever been water skiing? I had my first opportunity about 3 years ago on Julie’s parent’s boat at the beautiful Lake Cumberland, and had a blast (with some pain of course). I didn’t do too bad as I was able to get up pretty quickly and had no problems staying up. I did experience quite a few thuds as I tried to show off by going through the wake. Disaster. Anyway, water skiing is a good analogy to something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately (inspired by Dr. John Eliot): how your thoughts impact your life.
When you are skiing off the back of a boat you really have no control of where you ultimately end up. Yes you can weave in and out, but your control is really limited. The driver of the boat is the one who can steer you through calm waters, up to the shore, or through chop. You just are along for the ride. I think that in the same way our lives are a direct reflection of our outlook on life. Your outlook is made up of many things including your values, personal rules, and self-confidence. On a day to day basis you don’t think about these things, in fact most people don’t really ever confront these things, instead they spend their time and effort figuring out how to weave in and out of the wake, while their personal outlook continues to drive.
I personally have invested a lot of my self-confidence in performance, and I have for as long as I remember. I would feel great about myself when I did great things, and horrible about myself when I did bad things. This meant that I could literally be on top of the world after a good performance one minute, and down in the dumps after a bad one in the next. The interesting thing about my personal makeup (and I suspect it is true for most) is that the negative stuff sticks in the memory a little more firmly than the positive. This was especially true for me in sports growing up. I was/am a good athlete (although not as active now), loved to compete, and generally was a top performer (not trying to toot my own horn), but even after some of my best performances I would’ve downplayed my good plays and emphasized the bad. The impact of this perspective, the investment of a lot of my personal confidence in my performance, impacted my life in many ways. It still continues to today. It’s extremely difficult to have a strong sense of self-worth if it depends on how many times you “win,” especially if your criteria for a “win,” is so high. I can see that I used to spend all my time trying to improve my weaving in and out of the wake not realizing that ultimately the direction I was heading in was impacted by the driver, my outlook. I thought if I performed better, just got those 1 or 2 big wins, then I’d feel better and be more confident to go after bigger victories. The problem here is that it’s difficult to put yourself on the line for a win, if you’re not confident you can do it. It’s even more difficult to steer a boat on skis while holding a rope attached to the back of it.
The first step is realizing what it is that is driving you. I can see that no matter how well I perform with my current outlook it will never be good enough. I’ll always be one victory short of feeling great. So the focus has changed drastically for me in the last 8 months. It’s no longer about what I do outside, it’s about how I feel on the inside. Redefining my core outlook is giving me more power on my perspective, and more power on my perspective is a building a foundation for the outlook I want. It’s a better feeling trying to steer the boat than to steer the skis.
As I was sitting eating lunch and thinking about my last post I had somewhat of a revelation. I really don’t like work.
Looking back on my first business, Enviar, I didn’t start that as a business. I really started that with the approach of “this puzzle looks fun.” It was more like I see this piece and I see this piece, and I see that no one else is putting them together but if I do I win (and get paid). So I tried it, and it worked, so I tried it again and worked…and off it went. I gained momentum, I gained contacts in the industry, and I made some money, all while solving these puzzles. But something happened along the way…Some sort of pressure started coming in. I guess it was the “shoulds.”
Somewhere along the way I started saying “well you should do this,” and you “should be doing that.” And suddenly it didn’t feel like a puzzle anymore, it started to feel like work. I guess I define work as stuff you HAVE to do that isn’t fun, and that is how this started to feel. But coupled with the shoulds (I should keep working on this), I stuck with it. I told myself I have to work to make this work, and I should not stop. This is when I started hitting coffee shops for “work.” After all, you can’t do work at home and you’re supposed to be doing work at least from 8am to 5pm. Somewhere along the way this rule became ingrained in me. I’m supposed to be working from 8am to 5pm, no exceptions. So ever since then I’ve made it a habit to do work at that time, and usually most of it at a coffee shop (because again, work needs a “formal” place).
But the interesting thing for me looking back is I can now see where things went awry. I started treating everything like work (which I hate) instead of like a game/puzzle (which I love), and you can get a lot further in life when each day is another exciting puzzle instead of just another day at work.
What’s your “bedtime?” No you didn’t grow out of it, I bet you still have a time you think you “should” get to bed by. We all have these sets of rules we follow day in and day out. Rules are good because they add structure in guidance to your life. They let you run on autopilot a lot of times based on the routines you created within them. But rules also can be dangerous. They can wall you off from a place you are trying to go, or even worse pin you between a rock and a hard place. Sometimes it’s important to really sit down and think, “what are my rules?”
I was recently asked to do this by a friend who has been coaching and encouraging me, and the results were fascinating. I realized that I have strange rules about work, rules that can be helpful to a point but are more often a burden. For example, I’m fortunate to have a very flexible work schedule. I do need to be available during “normal” business hours for phone calls and a few timely emails, but for the most part I can do the majority of my work at anytime since it’s of the digital variety. Yet for some reason I have set in my mind that I “need” to be working from at least 8am to 5pm M-F. This doesn’t make any sense at all. Part of my entrepreneurial drive comes from a belief that there’s so much opportunity in overcoming the “norm” (ie 9-5 workday). In my head I believe that people have different productive schedules, with some preferring to work late nights while others prefer to be early birds, some prefer to take big midday breaks, and some like to leave work at noon. It doesn’t really matter what your schedule is as long as you are able to successfully complete your tasks. Yet here I am following the industrial workday schedule because sometime in the past I equated working to be in “work” mode on certain hours and days. Part of this rule, which I believe I added to in college sometime, is work is defined as sitting at a computer making phone calls and writing emails, with an occasional meeting mixed in. It’s amazing that my body knows and follows these rules, and it’s even more amazing when I “break” them (going to gym midday, taking a day off, etc) I feel “bad.” A rule would be useless, without an enforcer. This is an example of a rule that is good to a certain extent. Afterall, I do have a lot of flexibilty in my schedule and the rule helps keep things in order. No matter what my rules, I could never define “work” as watching TV all day. This keeps me away from that. But the rule does more harm than good. It prevents me from loving and living in the very best of my current situation: freedom.
What sort of rules have you set for yourself? Take some time to write them out, and then really think about them. Are there some holding you back? Why? It might be time to let them go, break your own rules by making new ones and use them to take you where you want to go.
Recently, a new study found that today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than ever before. The psychologists who conducted the research blamed the trend, in part, to the fact that the current generation of American parents are constantly telling their children how wonderful they are the whole time they’re growing up.
I definitely feel like there’s a growing trend of “self optimism,” or the belief within that we are capable of really anything, especially among my younger friends / colleagues. I can see the danger of this belief, especially in college aged kids, because having people believe that they can do anything could distract them from activities in which they are better suited to work on. Trump adds:
People who say, “You can do anything you want,” are simply unrealistic. Some things are just not possible. For example, if I thought today I could become an Olympic gold medal swimmer, I’d need a shrink more than I’d need a swimming coach. No matter how many lessons I take, how hard I train, or how many steroids I consume, it’ll never happen.
With that all being said, I think it really is imperative that we consistently instill belief in our kids and ourselves that nothing is outside the realm of possibility. When you believe you might be capable of doing well in something, it becomes a possiblity, and when it becomes a possibility you are more likely to try it. I always believe that trying something (of course assuming it’s fairly healthy and not deadly, unless you’re ok with that) is better than not trying something.
Would Trump have ever tried to Apprentice if he didn’t have a strong belief that he could make it succeed? Isn’t that strong belief it would succeed rooted in his personal self-esteem? Doesn’t he come across as one of the more confident and cocky people on TV today? Absolutely.
The key to living a full and successful life is a wealth of experiences, and the only time we open ourselves to new experiences is when we feel confident and optimistic about ourselves and the opportunity. I believe that having a strong self-esteem is absolutely necessary in order to have a willingness to try new things. After all, no one has ever learned a lesson or been successful in something they were afraid to try.
After reading this post (great blog by the way) from successful entrepreneur WilSchroter, I had to wonder…Are entrepreneurs born or made? Wil lays seems to think successful entrepreneurs are born with the ability to take on great risks, and because of this they are able to really get out there and learn all they need to know to make their venture or quest successful. Business success lessons can be taught, and learned by anyone, but the key to being a successful entrepreneur in his mind, risk-taking, can’t be taught.
If we’re asking whether or not you can take someone who does not support risk and teach them to embrace risk, I think that’s a long shot. I’ve seen lots of people try to fake their tolerance for risk while trying to be entrepreneurial and it just doesn’t work. You can’t teach someone to be OK with not sleeping at night.
Therefore, if you’re born to take risks, you can learn how to apply that risk-taking desire into the business world of entrepreneurship. Born entrepreneurs can be taught how to become better businesspeople. But businesspeople cannot be taught how to become entrepreneurs.
His posting was inspired by this Fortune Small Business article, which goes back and forth on all the entrepreneurs who say that formal education had no help in their success and the academics (and a few entrepreneurs) who say the right education can create entrepreneurs.
What do I think? I believe that Wil is right on.
The inherent natural risk taking ability is really the trait I’ve seen in all the successful entrepreneurs I’ve known (including Wil). I believe that the key to building a successful business and thus being a successful entrepreneur is the natural ability to really just go out there and do whatever it takes to make things happen. It’s never the right time, never the right situation, and never the perfect place to start a business, so one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is just starting. A lot of people can’t take this leap because it will probably mean leveraging themselves financially, looking like a fool a lot of times to a lot of people, screwing up a lot, getting an ear full a lot, and being completely overwhelmed…a lot. Most really can’t stomach even the thought of going through all this. But with this complete immersion you are capable of learning and absorbing massive amounts of information that is relevant to the business. This rapid “expertification,” is what ultimately makes up your skill set in building your company and enables you to become a successful entrepreneur. If you can’t handle risk, you’ll never get that far.
So the short answer is (as Wil said)… A good education can take you a long way, but only risk tolerance can take you to the top. Whether that risk tolerance comes from a passion in your mission, hard work on your personal perspective, or is something your born with, it’s what you’ll need to be successful.
I had the chance to finally listen to a fantastic interview with Perry Marshall (google adwords expert) and John Carlton (a very successful copywriter) on successful copywriting techniques. For those of you that know me, you know I love internet advertising for many reasons. I love the instant feedback, the power of tweaks (sometimes changing two words can improve conversions dramatically), and the nearly instant sales generating ability. I believe that my few years in doing it, mainly as an affiliate, has taught me more about marketing and advertising than my 4 years at the excellent Fisher School of Business at THE Ohio State University ever did. Anyway, a few takeaways from the teleseminar:
Fast Returns:
1.)To take any venture from zero to success fast you need to focus “100 times more time,” on smart marketing than on product development. That is, a smart marketing campaign on a mediocre product will sell better than a poor marketing campaign on a fantastic product. (my thoughts below)
2.) Don’t sell something. Most marketers make the mistake of thinking they must sell. Wrong, no one wants to be sold. Find what people are looking for, then show it to them.
3.)Direct response/internet advertising is your best bang for your buck (internet, mail, magazine)
4.)Ask for ACTION. Tell the customers want you want them to do, and how they can do it now!
5.)Record a successful sales pitch. If you can, find a successful salesman already selling the product/your product. Record a few of his sales meetings (with permission of course) and note both what he says and ESPECIALLY questions being asked by customers. These questions are the key to a good copywritten ad. Take the questions asked, and answer them in bold in your campaign. Use the powerful human storytelling in your pitch for great returns.
6.)Appeal to the passionates. Write an ad that turly appeals to the passionate potential customers in that space for great returns.
7.)Personalization – A personalized campaign (Dear John Smith) will outperform a generic campaign by upwards of 30%
8.)Eliminate doubt - Take away all the reasons someone wouldn’t want it, so all they are left with is “I want this.” Then show them how to go out and get it.
He also talked about doing an advertising campaign to gauge interest before spending big bucks on a major campaign or EVEN before building the product. I think this truly could be a model for internet business creation going forward. With $1000 or even $500 someone could create a simple, yet effective landing page with a brief product description and an email sign up and drive traffic through google adwords or adbrite. If you get a certain number of sign ups, you’ll not only know there is interest in your product but you’ll also have a list of your first customers. If it doesn’t work you’re only out $500-$1000 and some time, instead of all your time and potentially lots of money.
Ad copy is a fascinating study of people. It’s really amazing to see what pulls our strings of interest, and what doesn’t. And even more amazing that most of the same sales principles of the last 100 years, still remain in tact today. Ultimately it remains one of the more powerful techniques if mastered.
Sign up for perry marshall’s email list if interested, he has lots of stuff like this.
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