They are so important in the modern world, but what are entrepreneurs and why are they so important to the regrowth of our economy? Bill Schley and collaborating author Graham Weston give us a simple answer: Entrepreneurs make the jobs, invent the industries, create the new markets, and populate the new companies that will rebuild our economic future.
Here, find out what sets entrepreneurs apart and what you need to have in order to tap into your entrepreneurial power.
I’m an Entrepreneur. No, I’m an Entrepreneur.
Many claim to know what entrepreneurs are and who can be one, but few actually recognize the simple truth. Entrepreneurs are a hard bunch to put in categories. They differ widely in skill, tolerance for risk, perseverance, education or just about anything else.
When all’s said and done the authors say: “The difference between entrepreneurs and everybody else comes down to this: the entrepreneurs are simply the ones that step up to the plate. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones that just keep swinging.”
No entrepreneur risks their own money or others’ without calculating the chance of success. Entrepreneurs face up to the fact that every step forward to achieve anything new and uncertain, comes with a degree of risk, and that risk brings a degree of fear and anxiety along with it. Experienced entrepreneurs never try to eliminate this fear. They know that fear is normal. They know that by working through it, fear is turned around into energy, power and competitive advantage.
Entrepreneurship is the idea that people can have powerful ideas, own those ideas and do meaningful things with them. Not just to create a job, but to create a life. So what do we need to join this illustrious band? What are the skills for success? The authors tell us we can do this by developing ‘Accelerated Proficiency’.
Accelerated Proficiency
The most important thing is to get started and learn the most important things. It’s 100 times better to spend two weeks to get Minimally Functionally Qualified so you can start doing it for real, learning as you go, than it is to spend two years studying without any action. This is the principle called ‘Accelerated Proficiency’: the art and science of getting people to be up and functioning in an accelerated time frame so they can get in motion, start doing, and effectively teach themselves, rather than talking and observing.
To succeed with Accelerated Efficiency, The UnStoppables suggests that we follow a four-step sequence:
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Get Exposed: Uncover the fallacies that create Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)—and then remove them.
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Get a Snapshot: Visualize the essence and how it progresses from beginning to end—quickly and basically.
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Get Wet: Try it out, now.
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Get in Motion: Getting into motion is where we identify the markets, the needs, the prototypes and where the doors will open, which we will never see from the confines of our comfort zone.
Emotional Mechanics
To an entrepreneur, doing is everything. It means starting, not quitting, and ultimately achieving some value that wasn’t there before. Why don't we all do this? Because of fear. Yet if we tame our fear we can turn it to our advantage.
Emotional mechanics enables us to start, do, and succeed regardless of odds or resources when the stakes really matter. Learning to handle our own emotional mechanics is the difference between winning and losing.
Embrace the idea that a certain amount of failure is essential. Failure means learning. Failure means adjusting and fixing. Failure means measuring our limits. Failing helps eliminate the obstacles that block our progress. Failure means getting better and stronger.