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Three insights for the aspiring entrepreneur
High performers are highly driven, attacking each goal with enthusiasm and focus. They minimise energy wastage and channel their efforts into tasks that matter.
“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are an ocean in a drop,” advised Rumi 800 year ago.
Some surprising words make you think, shaking up how you look at things. “The greatest superpower is the ability to change yourself,” said Silicon Valley investor and philosophical Naval Ravikant.
Naval is a successful investor who knows what works, and what does not from hard experience. One of his ventures, AngelList, is famous for providing investors and innovators with the tools to grow.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant complied by Eric Jorgenson, published in 2020 should be required reading for both young start-up entrepreneurs and the aspiring manager (it’s available for free on Naval’s website and can be purchased at local bookstores). With insights born out of the ‘school of hard knocks’, his thinking is clear. Unadorned with fluffy confusing jargon, he just plain makes sense.
Insight 1 — Be ready to start over
There is a myth about entrepreneurship. The idea that one can just come up with a bright idea, pitch it, and investors will rush in to make it a glorious success - rarely happens. Getting a 100,000 or a million views as an influencer is equally unlikely to materialise.
Truth is that the disruptive technology or approach, likely does not work, not providing value for money, and no one wants it. Things rarely work as expected the first time, upsets and disappointments are part of the journey. It’s often that ability to pivot and start over that separates the eventual winners from the depressed losers.
Once we choose a venture, a path and invest significant time in it, it is very hard to look for a new path and start over. Starting something feels confusing, you are more likely to make mistakes and be seen as a fool. But under some circumstances, that is the best thing to do.
“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life…,” said Steve Jobs.
Insight 2 — Choose to be yourself
Don’t be a cut and paste copy. Anyone can — and everyone does — copy something from AI and ChatGPT but is that really the creative you?
“If you stop trying to figure out how to do things the way other people want you to do them then you get to listen to that little voice inside of your head that wants to do things a certain way and then you get to be you and no one in the world is gonna beat you at being you.
“You’re never gonna be as good at being me as I am. And I’m never gonna be as good at being you as you are. So certainly listen, absorb… but don’t try to emulate — it’s a fool’s errand,” says the tech wizard.
“Instead, each person is uniquely qualified of something. They have some specific knowledge, capability and desire that nobody else has! That's just purely from the combinatorial of human DNA and development.”
“So your goal in life is to find out the people who need you the most. To find out the business that needs you the most. To find out the project and the art that gives you the most — Because there's something out there just for you!”
“Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice,” is how Steve Jobs put it.
Insight 3 — Do what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others
‘Feels’ means you sense it in your bones. You have your heart in it. Play suggests it is fun to you.
“That’s how I know no one can compete with me on it. Because I’m just playing 16 hours/day” says Naval. To the observer, it looks like work because they just don’t have the ‘feel’. If it looks like work, it means that is useful (for a segment in society) so you can monetise it.
Idea of work being what you do 8 to 5, five days a week is an artificial construct, that we all buy into. But if work is play, it is who you are, what about the notion of a ‘career’?
“Don’t be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the ‘Career.’ A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life.
“There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can’t be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one’s life,” advises Naval.
That career is a drop in the ocean. Loving your work - being your work - changes the perspective to becoming – an ocean in a drop.
