Entrepreneur Rising

Entrepreneurship consists of many things; to name just a few how about internal drive, motivation structure and resilience to strategy, capital, and consistent execution.  While all this and much more is critical for successful, sustainable entrepreneurship, I’ve identified what I believe to be the “meta-levers”, or those bigger categories for which everything from strategy to tactics belong.  They are opportunity, resources and influence. Based on your passion, your business model and what you require to fill your needs, are you “leveraging your levers?”

Opportunities
Are you clear about what your opportunities really are?  Are you facing into or away from them and is that decision based on courage and faith or fear?  Are you over or under thinking your opportunities?

Resources
Have you properly identified those resources you currently have and are you using them effectively (not efficiently)?  Have you identified those you need to add to your toolbox?  Do you have alignment between your resources and opportunities?  Resources, by the way includes everything from capital, experience and connections to the more important things like choice, energy and focus (three resources that I would argue should come before the others).

Influence
Do you really understand the art and practice of influence? I did not ask are you an effective manipulator and do you always get what you want.  To oversimplify for a moment, leadership is about results and relationships.  Influence is the bridge leaders build (or fail to build) which connects desired results and those relationships one must build and nurture if they are hoping to harness the internal and external drive of his or her followers over the long haul.

Try this for 5 days
It won’t cost you a thing and will show you in black and white whether you are effectively pulling your entrepreneurial levers.

Make an excel spreadsheet and in the left margin from top to bottom type each of the three levers mentioned and put about 7-10 spaces between each.  Next, from left to right on the top of the spreadsheet, add each day of the week, monday through friday.  At the end of each day, or very early the next morning before you turn on the news or check your inbox, think through your previous day and under each lever, list the specific tactics or relationships you “leveraged” to get better results.  Then under each day, give yourself an A through F grade (just like school) and if you cheat…. well, you know the rest of the saying.

When I suggest this to clients, the most common theme I hear is that at the start of the week, the tactics and relationships that make the list are few and the grades are low, but as the week progresses (and their consciousness increases) the tactics and relationships leveraged not only increase but are more meaning-filled based on the results they are pursuing… and of course, their grades improve.

Will this single exercise make the difference in your entrepreneurial success or failure?  I doubt it but I can’t get a story out of my head that I read in a book years ago.

Ernest Hemingway was asked by a reporter shortly before his death “How did you go broke… you’re Ernest Hemingway”?  His response was brilliant and oh so true…”Gradually, then suddenly”.  Are you pulling the right levers?

Be Extraordinary and you’ll win more times than not.

This is something I came across in a book I found in my office at home.  It’s simple, to the point and about as meaningful as it gets for anyone really, but especially entrepreneurs.  I hope you find as much clarity and comfort as I did.  There are many ways in which I aspire to be like Steve Jobs but I’m happy to say on this one all important issue, I have found for myself exactly he is talking about.  I look forward to helping you discover the same.

With Enthusiastic Service to you,
Louis

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.  And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.  If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.  Don’t settle.  Stay hungry.  Stay foolish”.                                                                        Steve Jobs

Our subtle feelings tell us a lot about who we are- but the paradox is that our EGO prevents us from allowing ourselves the time and space to experience our feelings so we can learn and grow from them.

Feelings are thought of as messy and unnecessary because when we reveal them, it means (or so our EGO would and does tell us) that we are not strong, that only the weak are vulnerable and that you should never let others know how you feel.  So if we didn’t marginalize this that means we would have to do something about it and bam, our EGO trips us up again.

The primary reason for this is that our EGO’s are designed to be right at all costs, so it does an amazing job at preventing us from seeing and feeling our truth because if that happens…

It means that we have to acknowledge there is a problem- and if we do that, it means that we may not have been right up to this point.

The way this usually unfolds is that our beliefs (which for most are rooted in fear and comfort) grab our attention and say “hey, maybe this is really supposed to be this way and not that way” and as soon as that happens, our EGO steps in and say’s “I got ya covered, don’t be foolish; stay safe and comfortable because if you don’t, your going to be sorry and I will say “I told you so” for the rest of your life, I promise.

So at the very best we build up a story and a lifestyle that serves our insecurities and at worst- it keeps us from discovering our true purpose in life.

Everything life really comes down to how you choose to frame it and for the vast majority, their frame is based on more unconscious, ego & safety driven beliefs.

We then continue to perpetuate our search for more of the right answers, as opposed to doing the real work of our lives, which is to ask the right questions.

In course 1 which is titled, Conscious Self-Leadership, we will discuss an entrepreneurs most important self-leadership exercise, which is to discover their personal hedgehog.

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with.  We already have the capacities, talents, direction, mission, and callings.

~Abraham Maslow

I have had many conversations with clients who genuinely believe that they are unable to overcome difficult obstacles and ultimately achieve what they want.  I am happy to report that the majority of them, (let’s say 8 out of 10) when poked and prodded to produce real reasons why or how they can’t, in fact begin to see why and how they can.  In some cases the realization is slow and in others more quickly and as new beliefs are considered, old beliefs begin to change, and corresponding behaviors soon follow.

When that happens, the reality that results are possible creates hope and excitement, which drives a more pure and clean motivation and increases passion.   This leads to continued clarity in decision-making and finally the tireless drive to the end goal.  It’s what I call the “emotive locomotive”.

The process I just described is rarely clean and easy, but I promise you it’s much better than the alternative mess that is created when we choose to stand stubbornly in our own way.  If it sounds as if I am overly confident, it’s because I am- and because I have first hand experience with the most difficult client of all… me.

So why is it that a few tastes of failure prompt us to stop believing in our dreams and desires, but more importantly, seems to choke off our willingness to push through and figure out what to do when we don’t know?

My experience has been that the majority of this comes down to courage; the courage to fight, the courage to try and the most difficult of all, the courage to believe.  We do an amazing job of hiding and disguising this issue as lots of things it simply is not; the most often is the use of the word confusion.  My experience, personally and with clients is that confusion means that we are typically more clear than not, we just lack the courage to go where we know we should.

So I draw your attention back to the quote by Abraham Maslow.

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with.  We already have the capacities, talents, direction, mission, and callings.

Sure there may be skills and experiences to learn in order to ensure your best chances of success, but doesn’t the drive to go out and get them come from within?

Just another thing Mr. Maslow was correct about.

I returned this evening from a trip with my father Lou, brother Tim, uncle Bobby and close friend Antonio from Italy.  This is my fourth time and without fail, I found myself on the flight home wrestling with what’s more amazing; the beauty and serenity of the landscape and architecture OR the fact that these people, mostly out of necessity created one of the most beautiful places on earth.  Check out a few of these photos and when you finish reading this post, it will all make sense.  Pay special attention to the photo’s of Venice (located on water).

On this trip like most I take, I brought my tattered copy of “As a man thinketh” by James Allen.  If you don’t own a copy, I strongly suggest you get one and if you plan on attending the entrepreneur rising workshops, then you might get a copy as a gift from me.  It may be one of the top 5 best books ever written.  There is also a version “As a woman thinketh” which is the same book; equally amazing and relevant.

In the book is a poem about persistence and the human will and while I am certain I have read it hundreds of times, it resonated more with me on this trip when I think about the history of the Venetian people and the incredible fact that their entire community is built on water off set from the Adriatic Sea.  They created what we know today as Venice in the 1400′s when there was no modern machinery, no computers and auto-cad drawings to help the sculptures create the exacting details and appointments that adorn the buildings.  They did it largely out of necessity to protect themselves and as far as I know, they had no one before them who modeled this great achievement, and of this I am certain, there was no “how to book” available for them in Home Depot.  It was first conceived in their mind, then in reality.  It may take a few readings but it’s remarkable.

You will be what you will to be;

Let failure find it’s false content

In that poor world, “environment”

But spirit scorns it, and is free

It masters time, it conquers space;

It cows that boastful trickster, chance

And bids the tyrant circumstance

Uncrown and fill a servant’s place.

The human will, that force unseen,

The offspring of a deathless soul

Can hew a way to any goal,

Though walls of granite intervene.

Be not impatient in delay,

But wait as one who understands;

When spirit rises and commands,

The gods are ready to obey.

When I began my first entrepreneurial venture almost 20 years ago, l had no idea how important the concept of time was… nor did I realize how much it was truly worth.  As an example, I understood how time was the only remaining ingredient in a perfectly prepared bread dough but I wasn’t even in the ballpark when it came to evaluating how best to use my time to grow and develop the business.  I thought if I continued to work harder and longer, things would get easier and easier… not so much!  Does that saying, “you can’t see the forest for the tree’s ring a bell right about now?”

MASTERING THE MOMENTS is really the difference between working IN the business vs. ON the business and the two require very different perspectives; looking back, I would have given half my years salary to know what I know today.

The aim of each Entrepreneur Rising workshop is to help you understand how to identify your highest value business priorities, then strategically and tactically implement efforts in each leadership area that will move you closer and closer to your ultimate vision.

PURPOSEFULNESS IS THE KEY.

Entrepreneurs at all points in their business game MUST learn to purposefully master each moment by leveraging the highest amount of the right behaviors at the right time, every time.  Unless you are willing to leave your business success to chance, I’d suggest you take an honest audit of how well you master your moments.

Entrepreneurs just like cooks and artists’, need a context for which their vision can be realized.  For a cook, a nice copper stockpot may do the trick and for the artist, it’s the easel he or she rests their perfectly stretched canvas on that allows them to focus on the result they seek.  Take a way the pot or the easel and the opportunity to create is still there, but I guarantee it will be messy and unnecessary.

For the entrepreneur, having a context to frame their priorities is critical if sustainability, scalability and ultimately salability is a part of their end game.  Business can be complex and complexity that is unmanageable will usually suffocate the life and passion out of an entrepreneur’s energy.

Having a clear context to organize and implement your specific business priorities is critical to growing your vision, but without it focus can be easily lost, frustration will increase and the next fatal step typically follows; you begin to question yourself and your vision and the cycle of spinning ensues…

The aim of each course in Entrepreneur Rising is to provide a clear and practical framework so that each asset (be in human or mechanical) converts every bit of energy into the results that matter most.

Passion is the greatest motivator of all; it is self propelling and hardly ever requires a kick in the ass from others.

While my previous story was not meant to short circuit anyone’s learning and certainly not meant to pontificate, it was meant to communicate my passion for entrepreneurship through education, enthusiasm, engagement, enjoyment and encouragement.  I don’t claim to know it all, but I know what I know because my mess has been my mission and I suspect that most of you reading this just might feel the same way.

Through Entrepreneur Rising, I want to increase the total tonnage of happiness, significance and wealth for those in my world and having navigated through my own self-perceived mess, my mission is clearer than it’s ever been.  I want to build and support a community of entrepreneurs who allows their faith to create their evidence because in the end Clarity and Vision always Wins.

For those willing to sacrifice and be authentic, a happier, more significant  and wealthy life is waiting for you, but you have to do the work, not the work of your business but more importantly the work of your life.  If not you, who? If not now, when?

I hope to see you soon and if you see me in the restaurant, stop me and give me a hug; we could all use more of them and I am not ashamed to say I need and want as many as I can get my arms around.

I’d love to hear what resonates so please don’t be bashful; share your comments or send me an email at lvd@louisdeangelos.com

Positively in service to you,

Louis

Push through your fears, because most of them are perceived. But give in long enough, and those fears will become your life’s reality, largely by your own authorship and design.  Most people, paralyzed by a crippling duo of fear and the story they tell themselves, will miss out on living a life where their soul becomes aligned with it’s purpose.  Choose to push through your fears, and life will not be the struggle you always thought it would be.

Remember your EGO’s sole job is to keep you feeling safe and it does so at all costs; those who lack the drive and fight to push through their fears risk never really knowing what they are capable of becoming.

There was one really big bright spot that always made me feel better.  It was a job I had in a family friends pizza restaurant, efficiently called The Pizza Place.  I started working there the summer I turned 10 and loved every single minute of it.  The smell of the bleach water that eventually permeated all seven layers of skin on my hands came to represent hard work and independence for me- with the added benefit that it was the farthest thing from a textbook even if the fumes gave me a headache from time to time.  I was one of those kids who did not use his school experience to the fullest and looking back today with a more thorough understanding of my confusion, I’ve learned to appreciate my experience instead of beating myself up as I have so many times in the past.  It is a part of my story and a big part of how I framed my world  growing up.  Why not celebrate it?

The pizzeria was located in the mall about 10 miles from our house and I wanted to be there more than anywhere else for the 8 years from 10 to 18.  I absolutely loved being a part of that place no matter if it meant washing tables or shredding 10-pound blocks of mozzarella cheese in a machine that could grind a car bumper.  I considered that job my real education, mostly because I understood what was going on around me and for the first time in a long time, it felt good to be me.

The insight I gained about the value of relationships and the simple truth that there is absolutely no substitute for hard work has helped me relate to and connect with some of the most amazing people in the world, most of them entrepreneurs as abnormal as me.

I earned 2.25 per hour and that was serious cash to a 10 year old.  Wonder if it still is today?  Twenty-five plus years later, I often go back to that place in my mind where for the first time in my life, I felt great about what I was doing and even better about the person I felt I could become.  I came to know myself in a way that I never knew before and the applause and attention I got from the adults I worked with served underlined why I had to spend my life around people, preferably serving them in some way or another.

It’s that experience that helped me decide at 19, I was going to move to Louisiana to open a restaurant and failure was simply not an option.  For the first time in my life, I found something that made me feel worthy of happiness and worthy and proud to become me.

It wasn’t that I was defiant about the possibility of failure, but just like the idea of Bo Derek wanting to marry me was never really going to happen, neither was the idea that I might fail.  Sorry Bo, you waited too long and Kristen got me.

There is a lot to be said for faith and even more to be said for faith when there is not much evidence to support it but that’s what entrepreneur’s do.  I had the evidence that I could make pizza and make people smile but no evidence that I could start and operate a business.  There is a great book by an amazing thought leader named Peter Block.  The title of the book says it all – The Answer to How is YES. The premise (and I am way oversimplifying here) is that when we are really clear about what we want, our faith carries us to the place where we can figure out the how to get it even if we have no idea what that means at the start of our journey.  Try to create the “how” before you have genuine faith that you can and you will and you’ll quickly find yourself on a slow road to confusion and disappointment.  I allowed myself to be a victim-participant to that trap a few times and it’s a painfully unnecessary way to spend your time- although our ego prefers it.

Put your faith in the first position, your intellect and experience in the next and be clear that there is no substitute for hard work, determination and passion.

Positively in service to you,

Louis

I became an entrepreneur at the age of 19, before I ever knew what the word really meant.  I guess I was one long before then but my first official experience with entrepreneurship came when I opened my first business in 1991, a little 965 square foot pizzeria in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1991.  Funny story… I was too young to get a liquor license so guests would stop at the grocery store behind the restaurant and pick up their own beer and wine.

I remember the first time I heard the word entrepreneur was at a career day in high school.  I still remember the musty, sweaty smell of the gymnasium mixed with an occasional whiff of that nasty-sweet smelling cologne Colours from Benneton.  (I wore it myself a time or two and there’s a high likelihood you did to- so go easy on me.) Nonetheless, I vaguely remember associating the word entrepreneur in the same context as the word “engineer” or some other smart sounding profession. I also remember sitting in the gym and having this awful but familiar feeling that would set up camp in the pit of my stomach at random times, and it felt as though it was not in a hurry to leave.  That feeling relished in poking me – telling me that I was not good enough to have a real career. So needless to say, it kicked my ass for the better part of my youth up until the time when I discovered my true passion.

Looking back, it was no coincidence that feeling always seemed to find me when I was feeling less than who I was put on this earth to be.  Then some 20 years later while reading a book about fear, I understood that feeling was really just a part of my ego doing it’s job, trying to keep me safe in a tidy, neatly-designed box called comfort.

Unfortunately, that’s not what they were teaching us at career day (or ever, really, for that matter).

Positively in service to you,

Louis