Entrepreneurial Mindset

Answering these three questions and acting on what you clarity can help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset:

1. What are you good at?
2. What can you do with that?
3. Whom can you serve?

The entrepreneurial mindset can be used over a wide variety of time frames, from your life's work, to how you plan your day, even what to do from moment to moment. The more you use it the easier it gets. Your brain will recognize opportunities to serve more quickly and your awareness sharpen.

​Being a musician can help develop an entrepreneurial mindset. You gain experience in contributing your skills and making the result as good as possible when you play in an ensemble. If you improvise, or are a director or producer, it comes into play every moment as you figure out what you can do to make the situation better. When you're out playing for a party or a show you may be able to get the fantasy of becoming rich and famous in check and realize that it's not about you, it's about helping the people in attendance have a better time.

A rule of thumb in comedy improv is "Yes, and..." thinking. Be open to the contributions of the people around you and be receptive to their ideas. Instead of ruling out what they propose, look for ways to expand and improve on them.

An entrepreneur is a leader who is willing to take a risk and exercise initiative. An entrepreneur plans, organizes, and employs resources to exploit an opportunity, and often innovates or improves a product. You don't have to be an entrepreneur to have an entrepreneurial mindset. Today everyone can benefit from thinking in an entrepreneurial way, to assess and put together skills in order to build a life. You can't be passive in today's market and wait to be told what to do. You must go find out how to do and make things. Learn by failing. Experience, reflect, think, and act.

Become really good at one or more things. In his book So Good They Can't Ignore You, Cal Newport says you'll find greater happiness and success by putting in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, and why it's a mistake to just "follow your passion", as so many people may have told you to do. 

In 5 years you'll be the same person you are, plus the effects on you from the 5 people you hang out with most and the books that you read.

Jeff Goins, author of The Art of Work made some interesting points on Episode 463 of The Art of Charm podcast.

YOUR CALLING
"Your calling is the thing that you can’t not do. Everybody has a calling. You don’t plan it. You can prepare for it and do the most to respond when the opportunities present themselves. Your calling is not just one thing, it’s many things. It’s your body of work and the accumulation of all the things you do, it’s a portfolio. You’ve got skills, you’ve got gifts, you’ve got things you can do, and you’ve got burdens. You need to do something with it. Your portfolio is your curating those things you’re good at, your passions, your skills, the things you can use to help other people. It doesn’t have to be one thing, some big epiphany. You can take intentional actions that move you closer to your purpose, that thing that you do that adds value to the world and makes you come alive."

HOW TO FIND YOUR CALLING
"Listen to the insightful people around that can help guide you, who say “Here is what I see you doing…” Have the discipline to listen. Look at your life and the themes that emerge. What have you always been good at? What do you have experience doing? As Derek Sivers said, 'What is obvious to you is amazing to others.' When you’re trying to figure out what your calling is and what the next big step is in your life, when you feel like you have something more to offer, the first step is to listen to your life. Ask the question 'Who am I? What have I always been, and what does that mean about who I am becoming?' It’s not that the past dictates your future, but it should inform it."

"It’s not who you know, it’s who you help that defines your trajectory to greatness."

PIVOTING
"I think of failure as pivot points. Most people think of failure as the end, like a period, not a comma, the thing that prevents you from success. I think failure actually leads you to success, it is an opportunity to pivot. You learn from failure and use it as an opportunity to course correct and point what you’re doing at a different end. After most failures you usually don’t turn around and go back to the beginning and start completely over from scratch. Typically they are pivot points where you adjust your course to the left or right and find a way to get around the obstacle.  The obstacle changes the path and you end up somewhere that you never would have imagined that ultimately ends up being better, to get to a place that we didn’t have the vision to see when we started."

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRYING AND BECOMING GREAT
"No one lives an easy life and becomes great. To become great at any skill and be in the arena is a painful process. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. The amount of time is just one part of it. Another part is that you have to do the activity to the point of exhaustion, to the point where you can’t go on. That’s how you become great. You do it as hard as you can for 10,000 hours. 'Trying' is something else, it’s not painful. When I was in sixth grade I tried to play the saxophone and I quit because it’s hard. I thought it was boring and I didn’t want to do it. I wasn’t interested in pushing past the pain. Your calling is not always going to be easy, but it’s important to push that that discomfort."