• Home
• About
• Contact LÛCRUM
• Polls
• Archives
• Calendar

• Business & Leadership
• Culture
• Featured
• Information Technology
• Jobs
• LUCRUM News
• Podcast

InOneWeekend - Some Perspective On Enterpreneurship

Geez, at one time I thought I might be an entrepreneur.  I’m not.  Well, at least not yet.  And any thought of, “well, maybe I am,” had the door slammed on it as Saturday progressed.  Three times before Saturday was over I said to myself, “I’m done.  I’ll just sleep in tomorrow and enjoy my weekend.”  Really.  Three times.  And I talked myself through it.  “Self.  The idea doesn’t matter.  Engage in the process.  Learn.  Grow.”  I stayed actively engaged.  I’m glad I did.

Jeff Stamp guided our expectations on Friday evening with the admonishment, “Be comfortable being uncomfortable!” I thought that would be easy.  My personal philosophy keeps me at the edge of uncomfortable.  But I had never been in the same room, required to actively participate in such a focused task, with 99 other strong personalities with strong ideas.  I found out how tempting it is to shut down when *I* wasn’t the central theme.  THAT is humbling.  In a good way.  I found tons of room for personal growth.

Then there was dinner with the 20-something who’s goal it was to build a $1M real estate fortune, free and clear, before he turned 30.  Sure, a lofty goal, if not for the fact that he was well on his way.  The kid talked circles around the financials involved.  And he NEVER exhibited any thought or consideration to the idea that he might not reach his goal.

I met another woman who ran a cookware business around an idea that she developed.  Being fought by Intel over trademark infringement, she circled the right people around her and kept moving forward.  She still has 8,000 sets of a 60,000 piece run of cookware stored in her home. No sign of stopping.

A natural healing business.  A PR business.  A dotcom.  A VC.  The list went on and on.

Then JB spoke on Saturday at lunch.  6 startups, I believe.  The latest recently secured $15M in funding.  No obstacle too much.  In fact, the mindset seemed to be, “what obstacle?”  When the rest of us could clearly see the obstacles.

It’s not that serial entrepreneurs don’t understand risk.  They do.  JB alluded to sleepless nights and working 12+ hour days.  Why?  “Because your competition is.”  You could tell the weathering of time and pressure on the experienced business owners as they’ve pushed themselves to their limits over and over again.  It’s almost as if that little “moderation” switch in their brains has been turned off.  They still see the signs of risk, the signs just don’t affect them and don’t keep them from moving forward.  With autistic-like tendency, they simply don’t know how to process risk, so instead they move in for the win.  Where many of us might say to ourselves, “why not?”, the successful entrepreneur doesn’t even consider the question.  A question of weather or not really never crosses their mind.

The idea, too.  That doesn’t really matter, or so it seems.  I struggled through Friday not wanting to pursue the idea InOneWeekend came up with.  By Sunday I realized we would have been successful with ANY of the 3 ideas we narrowed down to.  I don’t doubt that one bit.  Heck, we could have sold ice to Eskimos.  So it dawned on me that it’s the process that hooks the serial entrepreneur.  The process repeats.  The idea might be different, but the process is predictable.

Now all of this may be way off-base.  I dunno.  From the outside looking in, those are some of the observations I’ve made.  And although I’m not an entrepreneur now, it doesn’t mean I won’t be at some point.  I listened to countless stories of people hitting their strides and making these huge life changes in their 40s.  Pheeewww.  I still got time.

Now educate me. Take my liberal arts education and put me in my place.  Tell me what’s going on inside your head and help me understand what this is going to take.  And make all of us a little stronger.

- Andy

Comments

Copyright © 2008 LUCRUM, Inc. 312 Plum Street, Suite 1110, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 TheFutureValueofBusiness.com