At first the connection between these two concepts may seem tenuous (look it up!) but stick with me and both of these awesome entrepreneur ideas will rock your world! I recently moved into a condo a little nicer and pricier than currently would be “wise”… if I was to sit down with a financial adviser they’d say “Your income is too sporadic” and wonder why I always have a huge jump in income at the end of every month (secret: it’s because I realize “oh crap I have to pay bills” and actually get up and go).
So why’d I do it, isn’t that “dangerous” in this present economy (say the word like all the talking heads do with the same inflection as when they say “SARS”)? Well firstly because I believe in myself fully, I know that by the end of this month I’ll have made X and by the end of next month that will have doubled – how do I know it?
Because I work my butt off, am always pushing myself farther and I have faith in my own abilities. Secondly I have a little trick up my sleeve that has worked on skyrocketing my income and quadrupling my productivity time after time. What is this amazing secret? It’s simple just…
Burn the Boats
Long ago the Greeks were masters at psyching their troops into success. As the warriors would pile off a boat, onto foreign enemy land, the commanders would shout for the boats to be burned as the bewildered army stood on the shores watching their only ride home sink into the sea. I simply ADORE this tactic and have yet to see it fail in my own life and the lives of other entrepreneurs.
When you are contemplating starting a business or becoming an entrepreneur it’s ridiculously easy to fall into the “maybe someday” phase – this can last years – and all it will do for you is ensure you’ll be older & wrinklier when you actually begin to escape the 9 to 5.
Instead I am a firm supporter of burning your boats and psyching yourself into winning. Becoming an entrepreneur is hard when you have escape routes all around you (your job, your cozy life, your 401k) but when suddenly you see your ships sinking into the deep blue sails ablazin’ you’ll get the picture real quick that you’re in it to win it.
So disregard all the small business tips you’ve read over the past seven years while you sat around ‘thinking’ about how great it would be to work for yourself. Instead take this one SIMPLE but HIGHLY EFFECTIVE bit of advice: burn your boats, leave yourself no recourse and get in it to win it for real this time.
Doing Business like a Rock Band
How many successful rock bands in the last 50 years have produced one and only one song, ever. Hmm… if you can think of one send me the name, because the answer is none.
So if you were a consultant for rock bands how would you respond if a client came to you and said “So we’ve been working on this one song for two years, nobody really likes it and we keep tweaking it to make it better but nothing is happening”. You’d smack them on the head and tell them to get lost – the music industry just isn’t for them (unless they were paying you tons of money, then you’d probably just sympathize and give them hundos to blow their noses in).
Why do would-be entrepreneurs and small business start ups do this ALL the time then!? They roll out ONE invention or business idea and if it doesn’t work like gangbusters they get mad at the world & continue their exercise in futility only to find out years later that the model is a complete dud.
Instead do business like a rock band, work on several projects at the same time - have laser focus on all of them but be sure to keep an eye out for the runaway hits and capitalize the pants off of them!
Currently I am working on 7 projects! This may sound absurd – and it kind of is – but due to my laser focus on each (mostly because of all the systems I set up) I can get 7x as much as other would be entrepreneurs get done. There is a difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur on a side note, the couple that owns the local Irish pub down the street from you are business owners – they have one business and run it themselves, they probably will never grow it into something massive or start other projects while running their bar. To them it is just “too much” to keep organized.
An entrepreneur is the guy who is working on one project hoping it makes millions but if another amazing concept comes up that he believes in 100% he’ll spend time on that too… he may even drop the original business idea. Entrepreneurs are always growing, changing and adapting… they usually start many businesses in their lifetimes… some are runaway success stories others fail. But it doesn’t matter because the entrepreneur has burnt their boats, there is no going back for them and they know it – they must win at any cost or be destroyed. The entrepreneur also behaves like a musician, they work on an ‘album’ of projects and don’t get their ego caught up in just one that “has to work or else I’ll quit”.
So which are you? Are you the rock band entrepreneurial spirit or are you just a one hit wonder? Do you have the guts to burn the boats and force your mental troops into battle with no back up plan, or will you stew for years in mediocrity hoping something or someone will give you the push you never had the backbone to give yourself?
These are serious questions – and they deserve hours, maybe even days of thinking over. But once you discover that you have what it takes, that you are the Greeks going into battle, that you are the entrepreneur who risks it all but wins time after time for his persistence then there is only ONE thing left to do…
