Entrepreneurship | GROW GREAT

Episode 159 – When You Blend In…You Don’t Stick Out!

Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Which economy are we now in? I forget.

Information? Knowledge?

We’re definitely still in the “Attention” economy, but haven’t we always been?

We want to stand out from the crowd.

But…we also want to fit in.

We want to hear about how really successful people did it…so we can do it, too. Over and over you hear the question asked, “How did you do it?” That’s because we think there’s some secret that we don’t know. And it’s because we don’t want to put in the work…especially if we can just copy somebody else’s work. Remember those jerks in school who’d stretch their arms over their desk so we couldn’t see their work? We hated those smart alecks.

But if we’re all copying each other – or if we’re all copying the successful people and trying to do exactly what they did – won’t we end up blending in? If we all dress alike, talk alike, work alike…won’t we be alike? And then, won’t that make us all average?

Is your brain tired yet? Mine is always tired. But such is the life when you have to live with my brilliance! It’s a curse.

Well, here’s what we really want…

To be part of the crowd, but we want the crowd to applaud us, follow us, friend us, subscribe to us, read us, watch us, buy from us, and hold us up above all the rest.

We want to be like everybody else…but better!

With more business. With more followers. With more fame. With more income.

Well, of course. Why not?

Indeed. Why not?

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Risk-Taking: The Single Biggest Key To Entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship, Video / By Randy Cantrell

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXwRsjvl70?rel=0]

Honestly, I’m not sure there is a single biggest key to much of anything…especially business building or entrepreneurship.

• Connecting with people
• Gaining experience
• Knowing how to sell
• Good time management
• Having enough capital
• Blah, blah, blah

Some people think great “fill-in-the-blank” (i.e. business people, artists, singers and such) are born, not made. Others believe that hard work can accomplish most anything.

As is often the case, the truth may lie somewhere in between. I’d like to believe that all of life is what we make it, but I know much of life is beyond our control. Even so, I think we should tackle life with that perspective – life is what we make it.

If life knocks us down…we can decide to get up or stay down.

If life reveals an opportunity…we can decide to take it or let it slide by.

So it may be that if I were asked to single out one thing – one trait – that might likely serve as a key to successful business building, it might just have to be the willingness to venture into the unknown. To take a risk. To believe in what we’re doing, to have confidence that we can “make it” but to understand that failure is also possible.

Our culture is clogged with rhetoric likely based on this truth.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“No risk, no reward.”

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Episode 157 – Act Like A Kid: Turning Dreams Into Reality Through Pilfering And Cleverness

Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Piney woods, a childhood haven for imagination — Piney woods, my childhood haven for imagination*

Pine needles still provoke calm and creativity. I spent hours laying on the floor of piney woods, clearly away the pine cones to make a soft spot where I could just lay on my back and gaze up into the trees. The trees were usually too thick to see the sky. I had another spot or two where the pine trees were enormous, but not nearly as close together. I’d go to those spots if I wanted to look at the clouds drift by.

As kids we were either working to build a fort, a cart to roll down the hill or some other medieval-inspired project or we were playing hard. It didn’t seem we spent much time doing anything else, but there was a third thing we often did. It was a vital part of doing those first two things. Thinking. Dreaming. Conjuring up ideas. Being creative.

Every fort I ever built, every cart I ever dared drive (after helping build it), every tree house…they all began in my head and in the heads of my friends.

Nobody talked to us about that stuff. Parents didn’t talk about it. Teachers sure didn’t. We didn’t read books.

Adults read books about creativity, passion and doing cool things. Kids just think them up, then do them. And if our ideas didn’t work, the fun was in figuring out how to make it work!

It’s sorta sad to think of how many books on creativity I’ve read since I’ve been grown. And you know what? I needed to read them, and that makes it even sadder. As adults we analyze things. As kids, we just do them.

Maybe it’s time for us to be more like kids. I’m going to take a drive to the east Texas piney woods and go lay down for awhile.

* Photo courtesy of Bruce Crooks via Flickr

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Would You Miss Me If I Were Gone? (This All Started With My Thumb Drive Entitled, “When I Die”)

Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Video / By Randy Cantrell

Sometimes businesses die and nobody even notices. It’s as sad as going to a funeral where nobody shows up.

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Episode 156 – If Business Was Easy, Everybody Would Do It (Increased Sales Won’t Fix Everything)

Entrepreneurship, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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If Business Was Easy, Everybody Would Do It

Increased sales won’t cure everything. It’s fool’s gold to think you can sell your way out of every problem.

My work focuses only on 3 things:

• helping my clients get new customers

• helping my clients serve customers better

• helping my clients not go crazy in the process

But…

Not every business problem can addressed by these 3 things. Business can be stressful.

Sometimes we encounter product or inventory problems. Sometimes we may encounter a legal problem, or an HR problem. We can have a major computer problem. Or an accounting problem. Businesses have lots of moving parts so there’s always something that can break.

When your computer system is down, increased sales won’t help. Well, it may help you throw more money at the problem to get it fixed, but you still have to get the computer system back up.

Many business stresses can be solved by correctly addressing the 3 things I focus on, but not all of them.

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Special Episode – Whether You Want It Or Not, You Have A Lifestyle Business

Entrepreneurship, Podcast / By Randy Cantrell

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Why do most people think of beach life? Beats me. — Why do most people think of beach life when the term “lifestyle” comes up?

Today’s episode was a video, but the transcoding (or some gremlin) messed it up. Thankfully, given the redundancy here in The Yellow Studio, I did capture the audio…so today’s episode is audio only.

Not long ago a friendly debate broke out about the terms, “lifestyle business” and “lifestyle design.” I took the position that every business, every career is a lifestyle business. My logic was – and still is – fairly obvious, or so I thought. Our careers or businesses determine our income. They also determine our schedule. As a result, our time and our income are determined by them. They set in motion the kind of neighborhood where we live, the kind of cars we drive, the stuff we purchase and to a certain degree, the way we spend our free time. Our lifestyle.

My opponent didn’t buy any of that. He maintained that lifestyle businesses are those that afford people the freedom and flexibility to do what they most want. Clearly, he’s not known very many extremely success people who earn crazy money doing what they love. Celebrities and rock stars who are quite often kept on tight schedules. Industry leaders who are shuttled from one meeting to another with little tolerance for deviations from the schedule. Surgeons who can often enjoy scenes like the one depicted in that photograph, but most often are on call, waking up in the wee hours of the morning to perform emergency surgery.

What if a person loves winter sports? What if a person can’t imagine living without snow? They’d be miserable looking at that ocean view every day.

Just because my opponent had a certain view of “lifestyle” he had a hard time considering that others might have a different perspective. And he certainly couldn’t understand how a person with a JOB could possibly be considered to have a “lifestyle business.” I was irritated that anybody with a JOB was viewed as being less ambitious or less serious about designing their life. Thankfully, the conversation remained civil. I could have whipped him with my arm tied behind my back. 😀

Well, what if you do want to consider doing something different? How can you go about thinking about what you might like to do – something that thrills you? That’s what today’s show is all about.

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