Hello and welcome back to class. So today we'll focus on entrepreneurship quotes to inspire and instruct. So why start? Why start a business? Well in this case, perhaps, to change the world. Minor ambitions here. I'm going to read these quotations for this presentation. That's kind of how important they are. Here from the CEO of Evernote. If you don't know this tool, Evernote, it was one of my early favorite tools, your external brain if you will. A place to capture thoughts, share with teams, etc. Says there are many bad reasons to start a company. But there's only one, good, legitimate reason, and I think you know what it is. It's to change the world. That change could mean a lot of things. It could change your specific world, right, your small world that is surrounding you, your family, your community. It could also be the opposite. It could be the world, right? Much much bigger. Not telling you which one it should be, but certainly having a big goal is part of what pulls you through the sometimes challenging parts of entrepreneurship. Why start? Well to live like few can. Here from Lori Greiner, inventor, author, and entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week. A little counterintuitive, that's the point of course. Now she's not suggesting to work 80 hours a week forever, right? For a defined period of time. But the idea is that you're creating a life, a schedule, a flexibility that otherwise would be impossible, right? Unless you put this upfront time to create real assets that helped, kind of, pay you disproportionately in time freedom and wealth later on. You should start, according to Mark Twain, to avoid regret. It says 20 years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails, explore, dream, and discover. This means a lot to me. I can see some of you thinking this is a bit too big picture, whatnot, but the point is still the same. When you flash forward to 20, 30, 40 years from now. And think what will you be excited, satisfied, gratified to have accomplished, created, and catalyzed in the world? Perhaps you will have looked back and wished you pursued your own path to create outsized impacts, financial, personal, social, and otherwise. When should you start? Well, the answer turns out is now. Here from Nolan Bushnell, an entrepreneur, "The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that, it's not quite as simple, but kind of it is. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them. Now, not tomorrow, not next week, but today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. Now there is some dreamer, I think, in many entrepreneurs to see a different future, right? Said differently, I've heard other entrepreneurs say there are two parts to any business timeline really. The first part is to start and the second part is everything else. There’s never a perfect time. Said differently by my boy, [LAUGH] one of my favorite authors and entrepreneurs. Tim Ferris says, for all of the most important things the timing always sucks. These guys have their choice words, don't they? It says, the stars will never align, and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. Conditions are never perfect. Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it's important to you and you want to do it eventually, just do it and correct course along the way. Just do it and refine, fix it later. And I'll say that when decided to be an entrepreneur many years ago, we were actually in Puerto Rico on vacation. Our oldest was very young. My wife was also quite pregnant. And I had my Blackberry, if you recall Blackberry devices. Had Blackberry, along with me, of course. And it kept reminding me that I was not on vacation. Now importantly, I was also reading a book called The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, although it sounds like a late night infomercial. Is anything but that, a very practical guide to lifestyle design, let's say, or building businesses in a different fashion. So I was, as the cover of his book suggests, I was ironically reading it in a hammock on a balcony overlooking El Yunque, the rainforest there in Puerto Rico. And contrasting that with the Blackberry always going off. Now look, it's an imperfect comparison of course. I never imagined I might have imagined a little bit. I didn't quite imagine the level of work, and effort, and stress, and so forth with choosing your own path, but well worth it. And that was a terrible time, I think, to choose to start a business. But again, no perfect time. Good ideas are not enough. So as Guy Kawasaki says, ideas are easy, implementation is hard. If you're really really worried about protecting your idea as if that is the holy grail, most investors will tell you that if they talk to peer investors across the country, they've heard your ideas ten times, making up a number of ten times. That's not the important part. The important part is can you execute? Challenges come before opportunities. So here from Henry Ford, who by the way, failed big time on his first business. When everything seems to be going against you remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. Diamonds are created through pressure, intense heat and pressure, and that's, in a sense, what this process can be like, right? It is a set of frequent obstacles which requires you to be creative, innovative and certainly persistent to get around those. Speaking of persistence, Steve Jobs co-founder of Apple says, half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. The last mile is the least crowded. I think the theory there is that folks were getting tired, right. They're sitting down to have a Coca-Cola or pick your image. The last mile is the least crowded, so be that person going the last mile. Albert Einstein, given credit for many wise quotations. I think many not perhaps his, but all the same. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. I certainly venture to bet he made many mistakes, but we do not know him for that. Wise people have told me and I've read you are not remembered right for your mistakes you're remembered for your successes among many other things by the way. But another way of saying this is if you're not failing then you're not daring greatly let's say. I'm paraphrasing some other very important quote I read elsewhere. So you should expect mistakes not be surprised or disheartened. Now you will also be surprised and disheartened, but get through those to the next one. Same train of thought, redefining failure. Edison has said, I've not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. 10,00 is a lot, when I, with the family, toured his estate in Florida and saw kind of visceral, tangible proof of his path very inspiring. But look we don't remember Edison for the failures, right? We remember him for his creativity, persistence, genius perhaps, and prolific invention like the light bulb. By the way the other part of this is sometimes when you fail repeatedly you learn, well you should learn from all those, but you may need to pivot. You may need to not just continue on the same path, but to learn from those failures and pivot in a slightly different direction. Again, not to be surprised by that, but it could, should happen. Here Winston Churchill you'll see a repeating theme here and this is a very important part of our entrepreneurship. Don't loss hope because you'll be tempted to loss hope, says, success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. You've got to love this guy. His quotations were amazing his leadership style is very impressive guy who sees things that we all should keep in mind. Michael Jordan so near and dear to my heart to our heart here in North Carolina. As a professor at UNC, he went to school at UNC. And was born here in the state. Anyway we all know him for his excellence on the court, but he missed he says, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game's winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that's why I succeed. So I'm kind of beating this into your head, into my head in some ways to be reminded failure is part of this, not an anomaly. Finally, risk is required. Now I'm not quite sure I would go as far as the founder of McDonald's here. If you're not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business. I mean, these guys and their language. I tell you. Glad my kids aren't around. Anyway, it's not quite like that. I never saw myself as a risk taker. But if I look from the outside in to what I'm doing, it is very, very risky. Maybe the idea is that if your goal is motivating enough you're concerned less about the risk along the way. Key conclusions. This is just a small sampling of many inspiring quotations on entrepreneurship. Please read more and read them often. The middle here, entrepreneurship is simultaneously about changing the world, so an external focus. And satisfying an internal hunger to create, build and do good. So both an internal and external driver at times. Finally, mindset is a big determinant of success or failure. As James Allen wrote, as a man thinketh in his hear, so is he, or she. I think it's about believing in order to see versus seeing in order to believe. Chew on that one for a second. Finally, questions for you. So again, pause the video, get out that pencil, or pen and notebook. Which of these quotations in these slides resonated the most with you and why is that? What does it say about your hopes and fears regarding entrepreneurship? The middle here which of these quotations do you disagree with? Similarly why and what is say about your perspective on entrepreneurship? It's good to vet these to compare answers with your business partner, spouse, mentor, or advisory board. Finally, where else can you look to find more quotations? Once you find more that you like, where and when can you review them on a regular basis to stay focused and optimistic? All right you've got your homework, your mini homework. I'll see you in the next video.
