If you listen to about 95% of guidance councilors and professors, that’s exactly the impression you’d get.

That’s the impression I got when I was in college.

But you know what’s cool?

The times are starting to change.

Society is starting to realize the awesome entrepreneurial things that college students are capable of doing, and the immense value that they can create for the marketplace.

Schools are starting to realize, “dayum!  Maybe we should start promoting entrepreneurship with our students!”

People with bucketloads of money are starting to realize “maybe investing in these kids is a good way to keep building our portfolio!”

And a few select college students who were smart enough to pull off entrepreneurship are saying “maybe I should give back to other college students who are trying to do the same thing”.

Here’s some specs on 5 awesome resources available to university entrepreneurs.  If you go to a sizable university (even if it’s just a public state university!), I guarantee you that your university will have some of these resources.

Feel lucky that you have these!  These are resources worth tens of thousands of dollars that you get for cheap / free just because you’re a student.  Imagine how jealous everyone out of school is!  But seriously if you don’t take advantage of these and then complain later (“there’s no resources to help me become an entrepreneur!  waaaah!”), I will come over there and annihilate you:

1. University incubators and accelerators

Universities all over the nation are offering extremely kickass resources to student entrepreneurs, including funding, incubators and accelerators.

For example, my alma mater Arizona State University has an entire office space (SkySong) devoted to student entrepreneurship, and offers funding and mentorship to student startups through its Innovation Challenge and Edson program (up to $25,000 in grants), and free office space for a year through the Edson program.

Not every university has invested tens of millions of dollars in student entrepreneurship like ASU has…but many universities at least have a business plan competition that includes a nice pile o’ cash as a prize.

Beware, though: universities have essentially 2 reasons for helping out:

1. a genuine sense of helping students pursue entrepreneurship as a career path, and

2. To gain ownership of intellectual property you develop using university resources (it’s called technology transfer, and it’s something you should be intimately familiar with and ask about before accepting funding or services from a university: see the Edson Program’s FAQ #13, and more information from the University of Arizona’s technology transfer office).

2. University business consulting.

Universities often offer programs specifically designed to help the surrounding business community.  As a student, you’re prime to take advantage of these for your own startup endeavors.

For example, ASU has the Innovation Advancement Program that does business and legal consulting (they charge around $400 for a semester of work; many schools do it for free).  The University of Connecticut has the Connecticut Center for Education and Innovation (CCEI)–which does business consulting–and the IP Law Clinic, which offers free patent filing and analysis.

 3. Meetup groups.

Meetup.com is a godsend for student entrepreneurs.  Meetup is essentially the platform for groups of people united around a common interest to get together and chill / do work.

You know how 98% of people just give you a weird look when you say you want to pursue entrepreneurship?  Well, Meetup is a great way to connect with the other 2% of people that get you, man!

There’s tons of startup Meetup groups, too (even in small cities!). Just go to Meetup.com, sign up, and search “entrepreneurship <your city>” or “startup <your city>”.

It’s amazing to me how few students actually take advantage of Meetup.  For example, I help run a Meetup group in Hartford, CT, that hosts monthly coworking.  After 10 or so sessions, a university student has only shown up once.  Why university students would turn down free pizza, free beer, and the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs at a coworking event is a topic that must be outside of my expertise, because to me, it makes no friggin sense.

4. Professors who actually care about entrepreneurship.

Not every professor at your school is some old stodgy academic who’s spent the last 30 years complaining about having to teach 6 credit hours this semester instead of 3 and writing academic journal articles that no one will ever read.

Some of them are a goldmine of information and expertise you can use to help you as you start your company; and, they make excellent mentors too.

At ASU, I met a professor who had made serious cha-ching starting companies, and basically just chilled out and taught classes for the semi-retirement lifestyle (“I have to go to New York this weekend for a board meeting” was one of the most frequent things I heard him say”).

How many kids do you think actually went to his office to ask about starting a company?  I don’t know, but I’m guessing it wasn’t more than a few.  And like most genuinely helpful people, I sense he would have been willing to help almost anyone that went to his office hours.

How to find professors who actually care about entrepreneurship:

• Go to your school’s management or marketing department (in the School of Business), and ask the dean / someone else who seems like they are in the loop with the department if any professors there have a background in entrepreneurship.  (Of course, if the business school has an entrepreneurship department or classes–which ASU did–talk with them).
• If you’re want to do a web startup, do the same thing with your school’s computer science department.
• Be wary of professors who “teach entrepreneurship” but don’t have an actual background in starting companies (some of them just researched entrepreneurship academically; I’ve found those professors often don’t have any practical knowledge about entrepreneurship they could pass on to you).

Mark my words, you’ll be amazed how much progress you can make by just asking!

5. Computer science clubs and classes; and university software development programs.

Looking for a programmer?  Don’t pay some shady freelancers on ODesk to program your app…try to get kids from your school’s computer science department to do it instead!

Of course, there’s the obvious option of going to CS clubs and student orgs and pitching them.  You can also put fliers in the hallways of the CS dorms!  (That’s how my brother, a CS major who is a complete genius at anything web-based, almost got picked up by a student web startup).

But there’s other ways, too:

Often, computer science students are required to complete a capstone senior design project class…that means that the school accepts industry projects, and has the students work on it for credit.

If you can find a way to get in on this…I know Arizona State University and the University of Connecticut have it, for example…it’s essentially a goldmine of free (or inexpensive) programmers.  For example, UConn only charges around $7,000 for a year of programming to non-students (and I’ve seen this for as low as $1,500 at other universities)…and has even done work for free for student startups.

The great thing about the senior design project is that it’s monitored for quality and progress by the students’ professors, which makes using the SDP a lot less shadier than getting a random freelancer.

Did I get you excited?  Good.

Just go to your school’s computer science department and ask about the senior design project, or any other program where students get credit for doing programming.

Do they say “startups have to pay a fee”?

Bullocks.  Everything is negotiable, especially if you’re a university student.

NOTE: The senior design project usually only happens at the beginning of the semester or school year…in other words, you can’t approach them in October or March with a new project…you have to do it when classes start.

 ”RC, it almost seems like your advice is too simple…just go talk to people, and they’ll help you out??”

YES, you dolt!!!

Just showing up is 80% of the win!

Here’s an example:

Yesterday, A-list blogger Srinivas Rao, founder of the awesome interview podcast BlogcastFM and the personal development blog The Skool of Life, hosted an office hours session on Spreecast that was advertised to everyone.

Here, Srini engaged one-on-one with attendees, and you could ask him questions and talk with him about basically anything!

I learned 2 things from yesterday’s office hours:

1.) Srinivas is an awesome guy that genuinely cares about his readers, and,

2.) It’s amazing how few people took advantage of this opportunity.

To my utter amazement, there were only about 15 people who logged on to the Spreecast.

Now, that made for an awesome and intimate event…but think of how many people missed the chance to build a cool relationship with a top blogger and the other awesome people who attended the session.

All they had to do was log on to the site!  I bet you some of those people who missed the event last night are cold-emailing him pitches for exposure today…an e-mail I’m sure will go straight into the Recycle Bin.

The point is: there’s so much that can be gained from just showing up.  And as you beginto develop your startup career and bud as an entrepreneur, never forget the value that comes from persistence and simply being present.

Just show up.

Have you had any experience with these college resources?  Any that I left out?

Let me know in the comments below!

I worried about all of those things…but decided “to hell with it, YOLO!”, and gave up the idea of pursuing a “normal” career; opting to jump head-first into entrepreneurship after I graduated from college.

(I promise I don’t say YOLO in real life).

And I sit here 10 months later…reflecting back to all of the things I’ve done…

…some of them have been ingenious…

…most of them have been downright stupid, and can only be chalked up to a “learning experience”

So I decided to take my experiences…the good, the bad, and the shitty…and distill them into this super-long, heart-spilling missive.

TLDR??..if you’re serious about starting on your own, and don’t want to spend months making mistakes, take this opportunity to learn from my mistakes, and do better yourself:

1. Start with a business where you are in control.

A couple months back, I wrote about the striking value of a foundational business for first-time entrepreneurs; that is, a business that’s entirely within your control to execute (and therefore, a business that you’re not waiting around for others to chip in and do their parts for in order to be successful).

The point of this article was to specifically counter the popular notion of “bootstrapping a risky tech startup with a group of pals / some random guy you found on Craigslist”.  That is, “if I can just come up with a great idea and put together a ragtag group of guys to help me”, success will be right around the corner.

Look, you can be successful that way (it has happened).  But there’s a problem:

It’s well-known that top entrepreneurial incubators (like Y Combinator) make decisions based on the people in the team more-so than the idea, and that one of the top sinkers of early-stage companies is personnel / partner issues.

My experience and observations show that an egalitarian group of people who come together for the purpose of doing a startup who have no skin in the game and no clear indicator of leadership are especially doomed to failure.

Ye, good sir, hath trideth my patience!

What if your programmer gets tired of you, and just wants to leave?  What if your partner’s cash runway runs out before yours does, and they have to go back and get a fulltime job?  What if your partners get hooked on to some other venture, and leave you in the dust?

If you can’t make anyone stick around and you’re powerless to guide your company and your vision, how do you expect to achieve success?

It’s pretty easy to see why startups that start like this often fail.  Think of all of the things that have to “just happen” to line up between you and your cofounder (call it the “mojo” or “chemistry”):

• Cofounder is as passionate about your idea as you are
• Cofounder has the same “runway” as you, and can afford to devote the immense amount of time needed to launch a startup.
• Cofounder is someone you just happen to get along with perfectly.
• Cofounder is loyal to you in the long term.
• Cofounder has exactly the skills needed to add value to the business.
• Cofounder has to be willing to make this startup a central focus of their lives, just like you have.
• Cofounder has to ….etc.

So, you are not only wasting your time by waiting around for a perfect person like this to “just come along” (like Rapunzel up in her tower)…you’re also just gambling that the person you do eventually wind up working with is going to be “perfect” enough to stick with it long enough to make this work with you.

Imagine a different situation:

What if everyone invested $10,000 into the venture and would lose their investment if they decide to quit?  What if you were paying the programmers, and they would lose a stream of income if they decided to leave your startup?  What if you were somehow ensconced–in a tangible, specific way–as the leader of your company, and had your partners’ unwavering loyalty?

“But I don’t have money to afford this, or enough experience to feel comfortable doing it.”

I know!

That’s exactly why you should start with a foundational business.

Before I started doing startups, I totally drank the “tech startup” Kool-Aid.

I thought, “if I can just go find programmers to help me, I’ll be able to launch a tech startup; no problem.”

And you know what the cool thing was?

I found programmers!  5 of them, to be specific, through a local university as part of a for-credit class.

As grateful as I was to have the chance of bringing my venture to life, the problems with this model quickly became clear:

1. The programmers were responsive to their syllabus and professor, not really to me.  That meant that they were gonna work at 1 speed, and there wasn’t much I could do to help.  That means that pivots are difficult, the design cycle has been long, 
2. Programmers not as technically-inclined as would have been optimal.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re a talented group; but they are learning as they go (as opposed to someone who had 3 to 5 years of experience).
3. A lack of “passion”.  After all, they are programming this as part of a required class and aren’t really being paid…why would they be super-passionate about it?

Now compare this to if I had been able to afford to pay / hire a programmer to help me out.  I could have hired someone with that 3 to 5 years’ of experience, and have them be more responsive to my needs and the feedback I got from users.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining, and I’m super grateful for my programming team and their work.  I’m simply pointing out that I gave up an immense degree of control by going down that route, and in many respects put my propensity for success into the hands of another.

If I had juts spent that time developing a foundational business at first, I could have raised the money to hire talent, and have raised my stature as a business leader within the community.

2. Hustling is probably the most valuable thing you can spend your time on.

Do the hustle!

One of the most striking correlations I have seen in my entrepreurial ventures is the disproportionate results provided by hustling; that is, actively going out and seeking valuable business connections.

For example, this blog.  Hustling has gotten me over 250 subscribers in the first 6 months, and relationships with other big bloggers (compare that with my old blog that got 50 subscribers after 6 months).  I spent immense amounts of time writing guest posts and making connections with other bloggers.

I’ve started a web development company (more info on that coming later), and the results I have gotten there from hustling have been immense: simply going to networking events, trying to befriend people and building relationships has worked wonders.  It’s been rather easy to excel above and beyond the usual “sleazy web developer” stereotype because we went out and hustled for business.

I’ve hustled mainly in 2 ways, both of which have had immense payoffs in the last few months:

3. Great mentors are worth their weight in gold.

An article by Penelope Trunk pointed out that one of the biggest factors in determining an individual’s career success is the quality of their mentors that they had by the time they turned 25.  (I regret that I can’t find this article, but it’s in there, and Penelope writes extensively about mentorship; you should definitiely check it out).

And I rather impolitely pointed out in a previous article that you are dumb if you don’t have mentors (but I also pointed out some tips on how to get kickass mentors).

Before I started doing startups, I was petrified to go up and talk to people.  See, I had this “thing”…where I thought others would look down on me because of my lack of knowledge.  That made it tough for me to go ask others for advice.

Eventually, I just started making so many stupid mistakes with my startup stuff (and getting frustrated & angry) that I knew my only option was to seek out the help of others.

And after I got over my sense of fear of being wrong (and my hubris of thinking I had it all figured out), I got on the track pretty quickly (I found mentors at a local university to help me make startup connections that could help with Focosos).

4. Over-planning is stupid and is used as a crutch by those who are too afraid to take action.  Take action first, and then plan second.

No point in overplanning…get out there and do something.

When I decided to start my web business, I decided to do something different than what I had done with Focosos.

With Focosos, I sat aruond and planned all day long.  I wrote a business plan.  I tried to predict all of the questions people would ask me, and what I would answer.  I tried to think about the “best strategy” for getting programmers to help me program it.

Days turned into weeks.  Weeks turned into months.  Progress was made, but it was slow and frustrating.

With my web development business, I spent, at most, 10 hours “planning”.  Then I hopped into action.

I cold-walked into stores on Main Street and asked if they needed websites (I’ve actually gotten 2 clients doing this).  I asked them “what’s been your experience with websites?”, and I learned about how many of them had been burned by shady graphic designers and web developers in the past.  I learned how many of them were actually super-excited by the prospect of getting a website, but simply had no idea where to start and what to do.

Through talking with prospects and slowly picking up new clients, I figured out how to market my services optimally (focusing more on “web branding and marketing” instead of “web development”, because branding and marketing is a more comprehensive service offering that more directly offers a specific ROI, as opposed to just making cute websites).  I figured out how to stand out from the crowd of sleazy, shady web development companies that had burned the trust of so many of my clients in the past.

I made great friends with some spectacular business owners (insurance agents, sellers of surplus military equipment, photographers, art gallery owners, and more), and learned more about their businesses and how I could provide value to them.

But would any of this had happened if I had just sat at my desk, trying to “strategize” how to make business connections?

Of course not.

I knew that by going out and trying to make something happen, I would be able to very quickly see what did (and didn’t) work for pitching my services to other business owners.

Now, when I do go to write my business plan, I can approach it more from a sense of “this is what I know people want”, “this is the value I can offer”, “this is how much money I can make”, “this is how long it will take”, and most importantly, “this is what the long-term payoff is.”

So get out there, learn the hard way, and make it happen.

Next week, I will write about some big shifts coming up in my business (one of them has already been immensely profitable, and I’m excited to share it soon).

You already know that one of my projects is FusionCase, an iPhone case that will go on Kickstarter.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, I haven’t talked about FusionCase in a while.You may be wondering “we haven’t heard RC talk about his Kickstarter project for a while.  What happened?  Did it fizzle out?  Is he just a jerk and doesn’t want us to know what he’s up to?”

Oh, the headaches that come along the way…

The truth is, designing, pitching and selling a manufactured product takes about 10 times more work than you would think, especially for this business-school boy here.

I don’t mean that in a way that I would never do it again…actually, it’s a crapload of fun, and I’m finally learning about the design process behind building physical creative products worked(Lord knows I had no exposure to that earlier in life…I had like 3 Legos and 1 Tinker Toy pole to my name as a kid, and I seriously almost failed kindergarten art class).

Naturally, my work has bee more on the business side of things.  I spent an ungodly amount of time researching Kickstarter: how it worked;  the “tried and true” methods for promoting a product and getting people interested; and most importantly, the things that many people screw up that sinks their ship.

Before I tell you what I found out, reflect on the following statement:

“Dude, Kickstarter’s like this great way to, like, launch a product and, like, go viral and get lots of people to invest in you, man.”

OK, maybe not everyone out there sounds like a village idiot when they talk, but admit it: Kickstarter does seem like an easy way to raise money and get recognition for yourself online.

Right?

Right?…

The truth will set you free (and maybe make you cry).

And the more I learned about Kickstarter, the more I noticed the sheer number of misconceptions surrounding launching a obtaining success on the platform.

The truth about Kickstarter can be summed up in 1 sentence: Kickstarter is a gritty, sticky and gruff platform that teeters you and your product on the edge of abysmal, public failure at every second that your project is up.

Kickstarter is a kingmaker, but possesses power so strong that it can completely fuck your reputation, your finances, and your life (and it has done so for quite a few ill-fated folks who jumped into KS without knowing what they are doing).

Here’s the myths, and the truths:

Myth #1: Anyone with an idea can launch on Kickstarter.

Truth: “Ideas” can’t be funded on Kickstarter; you have to already have the product you are trying to sell (this applies only towards product-based Kickstarters, videos and games, for example, are different).

See, there was a problem:

A lot of doofus-type people were trying to push through these cool-looking products that didn’t even technically exist.  They used 3D modeling to show what the product “would” look like, without ever having actually made the product itself. (get an example).

Now imagine what happens if you do that, go to the manufacturer, and they say “well, we can’t make that” or “that’s going to cost you $20,000 more than you thought it would”.

You’re screwed, that’s what.

And since it kept happening, again and again, Kickstarter implemented rules that required you to have a prototype for what you were making. (“Kickstarter Isn’t a Store“).

“Okay so we’ll just got 3D-print a prototype and we’re ready for launch!”

Sorry.  It turns out, ideas that look stupid and unfinished (even if they do technically have a prototype) usually don’t fare well either…for example, the Buckley.

I think a fair standard for your Kickstarter prototype is “production-quality”.  That’s not to say things can’t or won’t change; but it’s more than just a model or a quick 3D print.

And even if you could launch “just an idea” on Kickstarter, it would be a terrible idea anyway (fast forward to Myth #3…).

Myth #2: By putting something on Kickstarter, I have a great chance of someone finding my project and having it go viral.

Truth: Due to the way the Kickstarter platform displays projects, there’s almost nothing egalitarian about Kickstarter.  Kickstarter is only a platform; figuring out how to get the attention on your project is up to you.

What do I mean “due to the way the Kickstarter platform displayed projects”?

Go to the Kickstarter website right now, and go to the “Discover Projects” section.  Notice anything missing?

Notice that there’s no way whatsoever to just look at a list of projects?

Sure, you can look at “staff picks”….you can look at “most popular” or “ending soon”…Go ahead and click on one of the categories.

Notice how the only thing that pops up is “staff picks” and “most popular?”

Uh oh.

So it turns out: there’s absoultely no way for anybody to luck out and find your project.

Why?

That’s just not the way that Kickstarter works.

Why?

Because it’s your job to promote your project, not theirs.  One of the most important things you can realize about Kickstarter early on is this:

Your network is the most important element of Kickstarter success.  Period.

For example, a cofounder of Soma Water wrote a massive article for Tim Ferriss about how he mobilized his network and got media attention before his launch (notice how much effort he put into this, and how basically his entire article is about mobilizing one’s network).

Notice they didn’t say “well, we knew our product was awesome, so we just put it on Kickstarter and hoped people would find it.”

Even consider the legendary Pebble Watch, which raised $10 million.  They had already spent years developing their network and expertise (and raising money!) while they built their first smartphone watch for Blackberry a few years prior to the Pebble.

I’ve searched high and low, and I’ve not seen a single example of a Kickstarter project that “just took off” and “went viral”.

The promotion’s up to you, not Kickstarter.  Neglecting this step will render your efforts a failure, even if your product was good enough to actually get people to invest had they known about it.

Myth #3: Kickstarter isn’t taken as seriously as a real business; so if I mess up, I don’t have much to worry about.

Go tell that to the guy who had to declare bankruptcy because he couldn’t deliver on his project.

Say whaaa…?

Ok, so enter Doofus A, who comes up Hanfree, an iPad stand.  Now, the product itself looks pretty cool and rather useful…

So unsurprisingly, when  he put is on Kickstarter, he kills it by raising $35,000…more than 2x his goal!

And shortly after, everything started going to shit.

Get this: the guy who made Hanfree had never manufactured a product before.  Not only that, he didn’t have a finished, working prototype (what’s shown in the video is just a dummy).

So when they went to manufacture the product, they started to figure out that there were design constraints that would drive the product’s manufacturing costs through the roof (for example, a certain type of ball joint that would have to be especially manufactured for the Hanfree, as opposed to just using a standardized one).

Unfortunately for these guys, one of their backers was a lawyer who had an ax to grind.

I won’t give away the rest of the story, but take a look at this account to see the 2 years of back-and-forth between pissed-off backers and Hanfree before the Hanfree founder finally declared bankruptcy.

“Kickstarter!  What is it good for?…”

Kickstarter is still a great, recognized, standardized platform for launching a product.  It has a vibrant community that understands and enjoys investing on it.  But it’s important to recognize Kickstarter for what it is in its entirety, and not assume it’s some easy way to get a few bucks on the side, or to “test the waters”.

People that win on Kickstarter do so because they are professionals, and play the game with respect and with full understanding of what it actually takes to be successful on Kickstarter…they’re not “testing the waters” or wasting anyone’s time.

 So should I use Kickstarter?

Absolutely.  Kickstarter is still an excellent way to organize and promote your efforts…the standardized platform makes it easy to distribute your idea to others, and easy for others to understand exactly what they are getting when they contribute money to your cause.  My favorite story as-of-recent is the story of a guy who worked with Chinese manufacturers to produce a wooden watch to put on Kickstarter (they raised a ton of money, and did so at record speeds).

But again, these guys knew what they were doing.  The team was a combination of designers and a guy who lived in Hong Kong and was intimately familiar with the Chinese manufacturers in the area.

I understand why people ask this.  It’s a seemingly innocuous and completely valid question.

But there’s a simple problem:

The question is completely misleading.  And frankly, I fear for those who ask this question, because most of the answers I’ve seen are complete crap and could easily guide people into making terrible decisions for themselves.  Allow me to explain:

Let’s take a poll, shall we?

As I mentioned above, I Googled “how to figure out if entrepreneurship is for you”, and I picked one of the articles at random.  This one-pager boils down the question of entrepreneurship to a few key points.  For example:

• are you “unfazed” by risk?
• Are you a “decision maker”?
• Is it your “dream business” and your “passion”?

There’s one small problem:

Who the hell cares?

Who could care, when you have a llama!!!!!!!

So if you just answer “yes” to all of those questions, it’s your golden pass to startup success?

“Yes, I’m a decision maker!”  Great work Skip, that means you’re entrepreneurship material!

Oh, and you’re passionate about starting your dream business?  I’m pretty sure literally everybody is “passionate” about starting their “dream business”…but why is it that only some small fraction of people are actually able to do so successfully?

Talk about taking a complex issue and boiling it down to the useless.

In my more excitable, pre-entrepreneurship days, I would have answered an emphatic “YES!” to all of the questions mentioned above.  Little did I know that my answer there had 0 impact in my ability to succeed–or fail–in entrepreneurship.

Just because I was a decision maker didn’t mean I always made good decisions.  Just because I had a passion didn’t mean other people cared enough to pay me money for it.  Just because I was “unfazed” by risk doesn’t mean things didn’t go terribly wrong at times.

You don’t need me to tell you that the world exists in shades of grey.  But why would you try to figure out if you “should be an entrepreneur” by answering questions like that?

As a sidenote:

Oddly, I’ve seen plenty of people who are successful at startups who don’t seem to fit this puffed- up “Type-A entrepreneur” archetype implied in the article I mentioned above.  For example, a friend of mine who I studied abroad in China with has a successful online store selling crafts…but if you get to know her, you realize that she’s just a normal, sweet person.  I imagine she would have “failed” the test posited in the article above, but somehow she’s more successful at making money online than 98% of people will ever be…

Why I am picking on this article and its ilk

Simple: bad advice is worse than no advice.  I would rather you take no action than to try to start a business based off ineffective criteria, and then find yourself in a serious pickle.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m an angry, bitter human being.

The real answer to this question lies in intimately understanding what entrepreneurs actually do, and seeing if you want to do those things too.

Here’s what worked for me-

1. Try entrepreneurship on a small scale instead of just speculating about it.

In my article 5 things you can do to be an entrepreneur right now, I pointed out that there’s tons of things you can do now to start embracing entrepreneurship namely: 1.) set goals, 2.) read and learn from the startup greats, 3.) asking 10 people what their problem is, 4.) building ideas around those problems, and 5.) asking people if they would pay for your idea.

Dive head-first into this exercise.  Just start on a small scale: get some alone time in between classes or during lunch and brainstorm some business ideas and set a plan to get business idea feedback.  Give yourself a few weeks to solicit feedback and refine your idea.

After you’re done…

…did you like doing that?  Going up and talking to people?  Validating business ideas?  Constructing business models?

I imagine you’ll not only learn more about yourself in your 3 weeks of doing this than you learned in the last year, you’ll also be able to say “entrepreneurs do A, I did A, and I know I should / shouldn’t be an entrepreneur because I tried to do it myself”.

Knowledge is power…so I’m told.

2. Go figure out what entrepreneurs in your field of interest actually do, and see if you like doing those things (and if you can do those things).

Let’s say your business of choice is web development.  Go out and talk to some freelance web developers.  Ask, “what do you do?”…”how do you make money (get clients)?”

The goal here is to see not only what the specific craft needed is (in this case, web development), but also how the business is built (where do the customers come from?).

Talk with 3 to 5 of these people, and voraciously take notes.

I imagine you’ll come to this conclusion: “there’s some things about this I love, there’s some things I’m iffy on or don’t like at all, and there’s some things that I don’t currently possess enough talent to do on my own.”

Make a chart of those things by category.

3. Make a decision based on your research.

So, for example, you interview a few web developers, and you conclude that they do a lot of programming (duh) (this is the part you like)…but they also have to attend a lot of courses on web development (you like this), they have to do a lot of sales (you don’t like this) and presentations (you loathe presentations), and they have to be good at customer support (you aren’t very good at this).

Now that you essentially know what’s involved in this entrepreneurial venture, what are you going to do?

Thinking about things in specific terms is 500x better than just asking stupid, broad questions.

In the comments below, tell me how you’ve been wrestling with the decision of whether or not to pursue entrepreneurship.

Photo credits:

Dave Stokes

Luis Argerich

blmurch

We already talked about why your business idea doesn’t matter (and what actually does).  There,  I said that the value of a startup or a business is in your ability to execute.

Great ideas are completely irrelevant without being able to execute.

I think most new entrepreneurs would read this and understand it to a certain point.  ”OK, just because I have a good idea for the next Facebook isn’t enough.  No one’s going to fund my idea just because I came up with it”

But that’s about as far as their understanding goes.

“Well that’s fine; I will just hustle and go find myself a technical co-founder and by-oh-golly I’ll be starting my tech startup by this time next month”

Believe me, it is possible to get programmers on board (I’ve done it).  It’s possible to get people interested and initially excited with your startup idea.  The sales pitch is the easy part:

Getting people to say they’ll help you with your project is barely the beginning.

Think about it: even if you could convince programmers, do you know enough about how to manage them?  Did you provide them with enough of an incentive to make them stick around?  Do you know that the product they are making is what you actually want / need?

“Well sure I can!”, you say; but really think about it.  How do you expect to be able to control a company of volunteer, already-tapped out programmers that you have no idea how to manage, and that, if the walked away, would leave your company at a complete stagnation?

Well, you could say “RC, I have experience with startups, I have a great network of proven programmers who respect me and are ready to work with me…”

But what about for us first-timers and young entrepreneurs?  In other words, the rest of us?

I advocated starting a foundational business for this exact reason; that is, a business that’s easily within our ability to execute and make money off of.  Foundational businesses are great for first-time entrepreneurs to learn the ropes and become acquainted with the ins-and-outs of business, without taking on a lot of risk or biting off more than you can chew.

But how do we know if our business idea is something we can actually do, or if it’s something outside of our area of expertise?

How you know if you probably can’t execute your business idea:

Do you have the resources and expertise to execute your idea?  Or is your success mostly at the whim of others?  Here’s how to know-

1. You have the “vision”, but no ability to actually create the product.

“Vision” isn’t enough for 2 reasons-

Vision is overrated (or at least misunderstood)

A vision is simply an idea of where you want to go.  While a vision is important for tying in the direction of your efforts, it’s not the actual effort itself.

“I see us being a $2 million company in 2 years!” is almost a completely pointless goal if you can’t even do anything to make your first dollar.

This one is a nod to all the “ideas guys” out there who think their ability to conjure an idea makes them valuable.  From experience, trust me: it means almost nothing.

An over-reliance on others can derail all of your dreams

What if your coder gets sick?

What if they get tired of your face?

What if they decide “screw you, I’m just going to go work on my own startup”, and leave you in the dust.

If that happened, would your whole startup be put on hold?  Would there be absolutely nothing you could do if they decided to call it quits?

“But that would never happen!  I’m doing this with my best friend / uncle / Siamese twin”

I talk with people all of the time who are forced to abandon startups halfway through because their partners decide to bail.  It’s been essentially shown that the #1 cause of premature startup failure is problem between the founders; for example, Paul Graham writes in “How Not to Die“:

When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing.

(The book The Founder’s Dilemmas has an amazing amount of information on why startups fail, and what can be done to avoid failure; you should definitely check it out).

2. You have a technical skill that would actually be helpful to building the company, but not one for making the product.

“Well RC, I may not be a good coder, but I do have X years of experience in sales and marketing!”

If you do, that’s great!

But that doesn’t change your problem.

If you don’t have a product, there’s not much to sell, is there?

I’m not saying that partners are bad or that it’s impossible to get programmers.

I got coders.  I know other people who have.  But again, that’s not the hard part.  The hard part is keeping the ball rolling.

To reiterate: if your balls are in a vice; if one of your key people decides to quit / not do work, there’s a good chance that it’ll be curtains for your idea.

What makes your idea executable:

1. You control and understand the main sauce.  (Not just the “vision”)

If you want to start a tech startup, do you know how to code?

That means that even if your business guy takes off, you can keep developing the company.  Now what if you ditch the business guy: do you think he’ll have any luck going it on his own?

“But RC, business guys are valuable too!”

I know!!!!!

But the reality is that they’re at the mercy of the tech guys.  And in the short term, there’s really nothing that can be done about it.

2. You have a tangible and specific ability to control and manage the other resources your company needs.

“That which you can’t do yourself; seek to control”

Do you have money to pay programmers?  Do you understand enough about programming and software development to manage them?

For example, a friend of mine is making a board game that he’ll launch on Kickstarter later this year.

He’s an expert at making the game itself…the gameplay, the rules, the strategy.  But he doesn’t know how to draw or do graphic design at a commercial level.  But he can easily go hire someone to do that.  Because he holds the ability to actually design and create the product, he can hire / partner up with other people easily to do auxiliary functions.

Now turn the tables: if you were a graphic designer with no game-making skills that wanted to make a game.  He would be waiting around for months for someone to make the game…and if the game maker got tired of doing it, got busy, got sick…whatever…the designer could do nothing.  

So how is it that a non-tech person could ever start a tech startup?

It does happen, and it’s happened many times.

Where I’ve seen it work well, one of these things has been true:

1. Founders have been friends for a long time, and just so happen to have similar worldviews on entrepreneurship (that means everyone is dedicated).

2. Founders have the ability to hire programmers.

3. Founders have been older, and as such more established / more wealthy, and as such been able to better command resources to their use.

Are there exceptions to all of this?

Of course.

But what I’m writing I would say is the “norm”…9 out of 10 times, any business arrangement you might try to get into can have these problems.

In short: the further things are out of your control, the more likely something will go wrong, or go nowhere at all.

Have you ever gotten in head-over-heels by jumping into a business that was beyond your ability to execute?

Let me know below; what did you do about it?

Well, not if you’re Robert Berger.

Robert Berger is a full-time attorney who specializes in corporate litigation…who also happens to be the owner of Dough Roller, a super-popular personal finance blog that has 10,000 e-mail subscribers and 2 million yearly visitors.  He started Dough Roller from the ground-up back in 2007.

Now if I know one thing about lawyers, it’s that they work…all of the time!  They are some of the most dedicated–and most busy!–people out there.

So when I heard that Robert started Dough Roller while working full time at his law practice, I was floored!

Robert took his blog from a passive hobby, and turned it into something that makes him more money than practicing law.

His success is a great inspiration to entrepreneurs of all types, especially those currently working a day job who are looking to start a business on the side.

Listen to the interview here.

Some of the interview’s big takeaways:

• How Robert woke up at 5am every day to write for his blog—and worked on it at lunch and after dinner!
  
• How he got a big break from MSN Money only about 6 months into blogging.
• How he went from making low 5-figures to 6 figures in 1 year from his blog.
• What he recommends to newcomer bloggers (hint: it’s not just writing your content and hoping you get discovered!).
• The importance of relationships in building your business.

It’s already impressive enough to catapult a blog into the 6 figure income stratosphere…

…but who does that while practicing law 50-70 hours per week??

Now that’s just crazy!

Listen in, and let me know what you think.

Gather ’round the campfire my dear friends, for today, we begin our hero’s journey down the road of entrepreneurship with the Entrepreneur’s Manifesto.

We start by asking a super-basic question of which the proper understanding is 100% essential to startup success.

Have you ever noticed that tons of people love the “idea” of being an entrepreneur…

…but did you ever stop to think about what it actually means to be an entreprenuer?  Like, if someone were to ask you “how would you define an entrepreneur” (dictionary style, baby!), what would you say?

I think most people would say something like this:

“Yeah man, they make cool companies and come up with kickass products!”

“They make tons of money working for themselves!”

“They didn’t want to work 9-5, so they gave the middle finger salute to their boss and went to work for themselves!”

“RC, why are you asking so many stuuuuupid questions?”

Because all of those definitions are wrong, and only one definition actually matters:

Entrepreneurs solve other people’s problems, and are compensated for doing so.

The heavens created the entrepreneur for one reason and one reason only: to solve other people’s problems in a meaningful, useful and profitable way.

Did you notice that the definitions mentioned at first focus on what you want?:

You don’t want a boss.  You want to make cool products.  You want lots of money.

You want, you want, and the world says, “I don’t care!”

The world says: “I care about what I want!  And I’ll pay you if you can give it to me.”

As an entrepreneur, you #1 goal is to make your customers and potential customers so friggin happy that they will gladly and gleefully take money out of their wallet and put it into your hands; all the happier for having bought what you have to sell.

If what you’re doing isn’t going to provide value to the world and allow you to be compensated for the work you do, then what’s the point?

Maybe you think this sounds super-obvious…  ”of course RC; I have to make a product people will buy to make money.  Tell me something I didn’t know, kbye!”

But I mentioned it…and put it as the #1 technique on the Entrepreneur’s Manifesto for one simple reason:

The number of misguided entrepreneurs out there–who don’t understand what the purpose of starting a venture is (to create value and solve customer’s problems)–is unreal.  

Think of all the companies out there during the Dot-Com bubble.

Remember these guys?

Think of your friends who are trying to start “the next Facebook” or another college textbook rental website…ideas you can just listen to and know probably won’t work.

Why do so many people seem to not understand the #1 truth of entrepreneurship?

It comes from a deep flaw in human reasoning that I call The Curse of the Me’s.

The Curse of the Me’s

Thousands of years ago, the as revenge for a year of sub-par human sacrifices (“we said 85% lean damnit!”), the gods placed an eternal curse upon mankind; a curse designed to disrupt and slow the creativity and innovation until it ground to an abysmal and unproductive halt.

The curse?

The Curse of the Me’s.

The Curse of the Me’s sentenced its victims to the punishment of only being able to think about innovative ideas–such as starting businesses and producing value in the marketplace–from their own perspective (“me!”), and without giving much thought (if any) to the perspectives and needs of others (ironically, the people who the innovator will try to sell his product to).

The 3 manifestations of the Curse of the Me’s are well-known.

Do you notice yourself justifying your business ideas with any of these curses?

Curse #1: The “Me Me Me!”

What it is: You pursue a business idea solely based on a mix of defensive emotion (being proud of your idea), and what you want or would pay for, without trying to ascertain what the broader market would care about.

Example: You’re determined to make an iPhone productivity app that you like simply because you thought of it and it seemed “cool” to you; and even though you haven’t gone out and tried to ascertain if if would actually help other people become more productive, you know you’re on to something because you “just know it will work”, despite the fact that there are about 32,486 other productivity apps in the App Store as of right this second.

Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me! Pay attention to me!

How to fix it:I’d say this is probably the most common manifestation of the curse I see (including my very first startup idea, which was basically Yelp with 1 or 2 changes; I thought this idea was “great” for all the reasons I mentioned above).

Now, I’m not saying it’s bad to pursue business ideas you think would be useful for you.

I’m saying that your focus has to be more than just what you want: it has to be about what your customers (or future customers) want; after all, they’re the ones paying you, aren’t they?

Instead, take your business idea and go ask 10 people you think would be interested if they actually are interested.  Read 5 Steps to Be An Entrepreneur Today to understand how to do this quickly.

For more insight on this, read this excellent article by Paul Graham on coming up with startup ideas.

Curse #2: The “Me Too!”

What it is: Taking a “me-too” approach by taking an already-existing idea and changing it slightly to benefit you / some random group of people you thought of (again, just because you think it will “help” them, even though you did no research).

Example: Basically any idea that’s “like [insert popular website like Facebook], only for [insert supposedly under-served group here such as Husky lovers and igloo dwellers who live in Brazil].  EUREKA!”.

How to fix it: These kind of business ideas are usually justified by something like “what works for Niche A (or a large group that involves many niches) will definitiely work for Niche B.”

You then pat yourself on the back, crack open a brewski, and stare off into space with a goofy grin on your face as you imagine Brazilian eskimos going batshit crazy over your new business idea.”

“Me too” businesses have a false allure because it’s easy to ignore all of the things that made it easy / easier for the original company, and ignore all of the things that will make it so much harder for you.

While it’s true that basically every successful business builds upon what already exists in some way (and as such, is not fully “unique”), that doesn’t mean taking a carbon-copy of what already exists and throwing it over into some random niche will.

Whether or not your Facebook for igloo dwellers who live in Brazil is something for the market and your potential customers to decide; not something for you to decide while staring at a blank Word document for a hour trying to write down a good business idea that pops into your skull.

Curse #3: The “I want ME to look like an innovative entrepreneur!”

What it is: You care more about personal prestige and “making something innovative” (the metaphorical “next Steve Jobs”), while caring little about what you can actually do given your skillset, and what customers actually want.  Remember, if your 1st business idea is something innovative, you’re doing something wrong.

Example: “I just know I’m an innovative, management-type person!  So whatever business idea I come up with has to be one that changes the world!”…and then you come up with something overly-complicated of dubious usefulness (“dude, I’m like Van Gogh man, I’m not, like, understood in my own time).

How to Fix It: Again, this was my first startup idea.  I thought I was “so smart” because I picked up on 1 thing that Yelp was doing a subpar job at, and though I could make millions around providing a service that did that 1 thing better.

A lot of people I know like this are constantly wandering around, just waiting for a “great idea” that will “put them in with the big guys” to pop into their heads.

They dismiss other business ideas they think “aren’t innovative enough” and “won’t make enough money”, even though their own business acumen is too low to pursue more innovative ideas even if they had the chance to do so (not that they would acknowledge that their business acumen is too low, of course).

Or whatever they do come up with is so ridiculously lofty that their ability to actually execute the idea is virtually nonexistent.

If you want to be the next Steve Jobs, or out there producing products in Silicon Valley, then that’s great!

But recognize where you are now and build your skillset first to work towards that goal, instead of jumping straight in (for example, my friend who co-founded the Las Vegas startup Romotive spent years developing his robot-making skills before launching his company).

The technique is simple: Focus first on the customer, and second on you.

“Would you like fries with that?” Ask what people want, don’t assume!

In the comments below, let me know about how you come up with business ideas?

Do you think of things you think (or know) had a market that you could actually sell to?  Or did you just pick an idea you thought seemed cool?

What happened?

What’s your business idea?… a tech startup?  A product that will completely change the world?  A “Yelp for geriatrics”?

Before you get too excited, I must warn you:

If your idea is some world-changing, paradigm shifting technology or concept, you’re basically sinking your own ship before it even leaves the harbor.

What?

I’ll put it plainly:

Most people I’ve met who are starting a business for the first time (myself included when I started) have essentially no clue what’s needed to actually successfully start a company.

Everything’s a shot in the dark.

Which is fine…shooting in the dark is how first-time entrepreneurs learn.

But if your business idea is something that’s so much of an uphill battle that it’s basically rock climbing…something way outside of your skillset and ability to executre…what do you think your chances of success are?

I’m not here to discourage you.  In fact, I’ve got a perfect idea that can help solve this problem:

Go start a foundational business first.

What’s a foundational business?

A foundational business is a business that’s really easy for you to execute.

A foundational business is characterized by these key elements:

• The idea is straightforward and easy to understand (i.e. not very innovative).
• The idea primarily uses skills you already have.
• Can be implemented in a matter of weeks, or even days.
• Something you have a high degree of control over (i.e. not relying on other people to keep things moving).
• Has a super-straightforward way of making money (i.e. not “well this is Yelp + Facebook + freemium + ads”…I mean as easy as “You do X and you get paid Y”)

A foundational business teaches you the business acumen and mindsets needed to actually run a company.

You take the foundations you built with your foundational business, and apply them to a bigger venture when you’re ready.

Set the foundation first, and go for bigger and better things as your skills improve

You’re not trying to change the world with a foundational business.  You’re trying to learn (this is most important), and to undertake something that is more-or-less guaranteed to make you some money for your efforts.

Why a foundational business?

A foundational business allows you to get started quickly.

And the quicker you get started, the quicker you can start to learn how the game of business works, such as:

• How to set prices.
• How to deal with customers.
• How to create a revenue model that actually works.
• Learning how much your time is worth.
• Learning about yourself: what kind of work you can do and what your tolerance for risk and getting stuff done is.

“Innovative” startups take months of product development, require programmers, huge investments, and a lot of resources and intellectual capital to launch.

All of those “next Yelp’s” and “like Facebook, but better’s” out there take months trying to develop a product concept, finding talent, raising money…all of which are gargantuan tasks even for skilled entrepreneurs.

A founational business, on the other hand, gets started easily. Because it uses skills you already have, a foundational business amounts to you trying to monetize something that you already know how to do.  Since you already know how to do it, you can get started in a matter of weeks or days (rather than months!).  It lets you jump head-first into entrepreneurship, and to start learning about how business works ASAP, as opposed to having to wait months for development efforts.

Learn in a useful way, rather than just screwing up all the time.

Examples of foundational businesses:

• Freelancing
• Consulting
• Kickstarter projects
• Websites that offer a straightforward and in-demand service or product (and even this is probably too risky if you’re not savvy with online marketing and content development)

In short: ANYTHING that’s squarely within your skillset and your ability to do fairly easy qualifies!

The bottom line is straightforward:

For your first business, don’t just try to jump into the mix doing something lofty.  Because, even if your idea is good, if you’re not skilled enough to execute successfully, it will just fail.

And that would suck.

Give yourself a chance to learn first.  Then, go make your impact on the world after you actually know what you’re doing.

“But RC, I thought the point of entrepreneurship was to innovate and make big things.”

That’s a purpose of entrepreneurship…

…to those who have the knowledge, skills and ability to make a radically innovative product.

But if you can’t execute, then it doesn’t really matter what your intentions or philosophies about entrepreneurship are, does it?  You’ll fail no matter what.

Remember, ideas are only worth 1%…execution is worth the rest.

Someone came up with the idea to do this. Does that make it a good idea?

A hugely-successful person who started “foundational businesses” first:

Sheldon Adelson

You know the billionaire who kept Newt Gingrich going for months after it was clear he wouldn’t beat out Romney for the primaries?

Yep, that’s Adelson: the owner of the Sands Corporation, which owns some of the finest casinos in Vegas and Macau (I’m preferential to the Macanese casinos myself).

Adelson’s foundational businesses were many:

• Selling toiletry kits
• Selling newspapers
• Mortage broker
• Investment adviser
• financial consultant
• “De-Ice-It”, which sold some sort of antifreeze.
• Charter tour business.
• Where he first started making his big dollars: COMDEX, the premiere computer trade show of the 80s.

Except for COMDEX, nothing on this list is glamorous or innovative.

This was probably unveiled at COMDEX.

Starting a foundational business was advice I didn’t take, and I would have saved lots of time and frustration if I had taken it.

I should have learned more about how business works first and done something simpler, rather than just jumping straight into something that was hard for me to do (i.e. Focosos, my web startup designing a research project management tool for academic research).

I spent months recruiting programmers, and months waiting for the product to be developed after I found programmers; much of that came at the expense of just launching a business in something I had more acumen and expertise in (such as content marketing or consulting for CPA firms).

I mean, I’ve learned some great lessons the hard way, but honestly, I would have rather just spent the first year doing a business in marketing / content creation–something I already was pretty decent at–as opposed to just hopping into something difficult that took a lot of time and required a level of expertise that was initially above my abilities.

I’d still have had time for innovative stuff later on.  But I jumped into the hardest thing first.  And that’s caused a lot of unneeded frustration and failure.

An example of someone who will probably fail because they didn’t start a foundational business first:

Because I care about having friends, Mr. X’s real name shall remain a secret forever.

I heard through a connection about a guy who was starting a business on the side (he works a full-time job also).  We’ll call this budding entrepreneur “Mr. X”.

Mr. X wouldn’t explain much of his business because he wanted an NDA to go into the details (an instant sign of a rookie entrepreneur.  People aren’t going to “steal your idea“).  But from what was gleaned by asking Mr. X circuitous questions, the business idea, at the very least involved heavy purchases of expensive capital equipment.

Ye Olde Nondisclosure Agreement

The “secret sauce”, though, was that Mr. X had some sort of technology that would make his sales operation a raving success compared to any other possible player in the market.

To make a long story short, Mr. X  had done essentially no demand testing to see if people would actually want to buy their product…

…and more importantly, if whatever their technology was could actually do better than all the technology already on the market…

But that didn’t stop Mr. X from wanting over $1 million in funding

For capital equipment and “marketing”…

…for a product that had no proven demand and no revenue.

Let me show you what happens when entrepreneurs try to get a ton of money from investors for a no-revenue company:

Bear in mind, it actually wouldn’t be too tough for Mr. X to test the demand for his product

Instead of raising millions for capital equipment, Mr. X could just read trade publications and see if there were any competitors.

Why not ask potential customers if they would buy it?

Maybe he could start by raising $10,000 or some smaller amount of money to start the project on a small scale, and scale up from there (after proving some traction, raising money becomes much, much easier).

Why should Mr. X have started a foundational business?

Because he doesn’t know anything about creating products people want.

He doesn’t know anything about understanding “what actually goes into launching a successful company”?

If he knew the mechanics of bootstrapping and successfully starting a company on the cheap, he would be actively looking for ways to launch this idea easily, instead of trying to raise over $1 million for a random idea he and a friend came up with.

And because Mr. X doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s bitten off more than he can chew, he’ll probably spend the next 6 months spinning his wheels, making no progress, until finally giving up in a moment of overwhelming frustration.

He’s failing because of the way he’s executing, not because the idea’s inherently bad.

If Mr. X did try to launch a foundational business first (let’s say, putting his idea on Kickstarter, or offering a service from an expertise he already had), he probably would have seen the nuts and bolts of starting a company, and had a better idea of the skills needed to successfully launch a venture.

But instead, Mr. X chose to start a business where basically everything was beyond his control and ability to execute on (and something he naively thinks will need $1 million to start, and even more naively thinks that he will be able to get $1 million for).

“But RC, [Insert Successful Person Here] started a successful company in college / high school / as an infant!  Why can’t I?”

Because the issue isn’t them.

The issue is you and your abilities.

And if you look at people who were successful starting companies at an early age, you realize that many of those companies were…foundational businesses.  

Cameron Johnson

Take Cameron Johnson, for example, who started his first company at age 9 selling customized birthday cards (probably using the Windows 98 version of Print Shop Deluxe), and made $50,000 selling Beanie Babies over the internet.

Great business ideas, but not exactly something “unique” and “innovative”…these ideas had a super-easy business model and were super-easy to execute (easy enough a kid could do them…literally)

What’s your foundational business?

What’s a business you could execute easily, given your skills and abilities?  Write below and let’s talk about it.

Have you started a foundational business, and are now onto something more exciting?

Are you working on a foundational business now to develop skills for a bigger venture?

Let me know in the comments below!

“There’s so much to know about being an entrepreneur…where do I even start?”

To most, entrepreneurship seems like a mysterious and perilous myth.  We think:

Entrepreneurs are different from the average person.

They like to create something out of nothing.  They take on crazy risk and do really exciting things.

They chance getting completely burned from the work they do (and sometimes they do get completely burned).

They think working in a corporate jobs is hellishly boring (…well, maybe they’re not so different after all!).

And that makes us wonder:

What is it that keeps these guys going?

Are we different from them?  Can we ever obtain the level of success they have?

What if I told you success in entrepreneurship wasn’t a secret?

Wouldn’t it be cool if what you need to be a successful entrepreneur is actually super-straightforward?

My work with entrepreneurship has shown exactly that.

Now, I never would have believed it before I started doing startup work on my own.

And I’m not saying that the execution of this is easy…quite the opposite actually.

Understanding how to be an entrepreneur is important, but easy. Going out there and actually doing it…that’s a different story!

After I got over the fear and the pounding apprehension of doing startup work, and went out there and just tried to make it work…I started to notice that the difference between successful entrepreneurs and the average person boiled down to just a few things.

6 things, to be exact:

Six simple techniques and mindsets that successful entrepreneurs use to start businesses and make money.

When I figured this out and pinned it down (I’ve spent the last year boiling down the attributes of successful entrepreneurs), I knew I had to share them with my readers:

Introducing the Entrepreneur’s Manifesto- 6 Simple Techniques to Startup Mastery

The Entrepreneur’s Manifesto is a 6-part series that dissects and analyzes entrepreneurial success.

It teaches the little things that entrepreneurs do differently that puts them in a league all their own.

And more importantly, it teaches you how you can do it too.

What you read will surprise you.

You’ll realize the same thing I did when I went to figure out the secret of successful entrepreneurs:

Success has been sitting in front of your nose the entire time.  

Remember my #1 saying about entrepreneurship:

“starting your own company is a skillset. It’s not magic; it’s not luck. It’s a process that you can learn, master and execute.”

I’ll be writing an article about each of the 6 parts of the Manifesto, starting next week:

The Manifesto

An entrepreneur:

1.  Constantly creates solutions to problems
2. Realizes the value is in the execution, not the idea
3. Is in it for the long haul
4. Cares greatly about relationships with others
5. Thinks time management is their second God
6. Creates systems for success, and realizes doing so is the only way to be a successful entrepreneur

If you can approach these 6 things with the proper mindset and determination, your odds of entrepreneurial success are a helluva lot higher.

“Umm…RC, you’re telling me that your 6 articles are going to make me a successful entrepreneur??”

Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

These articles are for you to use as a launching point.  By changing the way you think about entrepreneurship, you change the way you act.  

But acting is up to you.

If you’re still skeptical, I understand.  Given the way most people write about entrepreneurship, I can see why.

Most blogs and articles I read about “how to start a business” are, quite frankly, stupid.

It looks like they were put together by a freshman English major interning at an SEO company learning how to stuff articles with keyword at the expense of actually-useful content (not that they’d know anything about starting a company anyway!).

How many more “The 5 Tips to be an Entrepreneur” articles does this world need?

Answer: none, and the ones that are already out there should suffer a fate the equivalent of an e-tarring and feathering, and dragged through cyberspace on the back of an e-horse drawn e-carriage while all of the other articles e-laugh and e-sneer.

What an odd analogy…

Around here, I do things a bit differently than most blogs.

Here at Decoding Startups, I make a No Bullshit pledge to my readers.  Everything I write about and talk about is something I’ve:

• Done myself,
• Something I’ve studied from extensive, citeable research, or
• Learned by actually going and asking a successful entrepreneur “how did you do that?”

You’ll be this happy with the Entrepreneur’s Manifesto, or your money back!

And that’s what makes the Entrepreneur’s Manifesto so powerful.  It’s something that has worked before, and it’s something that will work for you too.

 In the comments below, let me know what you want me to focus on, and what’s important to you.

Do any of the points above surprise you?  Anything you think I’m missing?  Let me know!

What I didn’t talk about, though, was how to get kickass mentors to willingly give their time and energy to help you accomplish your startup and entrepreneurial goals.

Don’t think I just wanted to leave you hanging.

While you were in shock and licking your wounds from that article, I was out finding someone I could interview…someone who had already found phenomenal success in finding awesome mentors…so I could bring them on over to Decoding Startups to share their knowledge with everyone here.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to report that my search was successful.

Enter Liz Seda.

Liz is the writer over at A Life on Your Terms, which teaches how to live a purposeful, meaningful life on our own terms.

Liz’s life story–which she talks about on her blog and a bit in our interview–is extremely interesting (my favorite part is how she got into college without taking the SAT.  I wish I had that one figured out in  high school!!!), and her accomplishments impressive.

I cajoled Liz into giving this interview because she is actively working with some awesome mentors in the blogosphere- Scott Dinsmore and Leo Babauta.  When I heard this, I knew she’d be a perfect interviewee for my segment on finding kickass mentors.

Common concerns people have about finding mentors we addressed:

• How do I even start to approach a mentor?
• How do I provide value to a potential mentor?  Aren’t I just taking all of their time?
• Tons of people ask them for things: how do I stick out?
• How do I make the relationship mutually beneficial for them, even though they’re smarter / more knowledgeable than I am?

 Check the interview out here.

Some of the best insights from the interview:

• How a 15-paragraph e-mail convinced an A-list blogger to take her under his wings (and they said “short e-mails are better”!).
• How providing value before asking for anything in return earned her the respect and admiration of 2 A-list bloggers.
• How much easier things have been for her after building relationships with ultra-helpful mentors.

Here’s the big takeaways from the interviews:

• Always ask how you can provide value to someone else before trying to take value.
• Business = people; people = relationships.  Focus on the people and relationship element first.
• You probably can offer value to people with more experience and expertise than you…just be creative with how you do it (Liz was able to!).

In the comments below, elaborate a bit on your mentors.  How did you get them?  How did you convince them to help you?