Living Life as an Entrepreneurial Hero

by Jeff Sandefer

How Do You Get Started?	Dream big. Make no small plans, for they have no power to stir the blood. —Daniel Burnham Don’t let not having a big, crystal-clear goal keep you from moving forward. Start with a first step, a first experiment towards discovering a foe worth fighting, an injustice worth righting, or an opportunity worthy of your time, talent, and energy
What Difficult Challenges Will You Face Along the Way?	Four of the hardest challenges will be personal, because you’ll have to • Accept that life is hard and seldom fair • Know that you must persevere to develop the habits and character that will determine your destiny • Understand that choosing doesn’t mean you are in control, and that real entrepreneurs learn to fail quickly, cheaply, and often • Find the right fellow travelers, because you will tend to become like those who surround you
Accept that life is hard and seldom fair.	Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. —M. Scott Peck The first step is the hardest, but win or lose, it gets easier in time. Because having the courage to pick yourself up after you’ve been knocked to the ground is what makes life worth living
Persevere from difficult decisions to habits to character to destiny.	First we make our habits, then our habits make us. —Charles Noble Entrepreneurial heroes forge themselves one hard decision at a time, never giving up, always moving forward. You start by making difficult decisions. Over time, this becomes a habit. And the way you face these decisions etches character onto your soul, and that character determines your destiny. All of this requires intention. Because heroes don’t fritter away time, they invest it.
You get to choose, but you are not in control. Real entrepreneurs learn to fail quickly, cheaply, often.	The credit belongs to the man in the arena . . . who if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat. —Teddy Roosevelt You get to choose, but you cannot control the uncontrollable. And that means you will sometimes fail. The sooner you embrace failure as a friend, the better. Blessed is the entrepreneur who learns to fail early, cheaply, and often. Cursed is the traveler too fearful of 6 failure to choose the more difficult path. It’s not that heroes aren’t fearful. Of course they are. It’s that they learn to get knocked down and get back up again. And they learn how to get other people on track too. The Grail is more important than the ego.
Choose your fellow travelers well.	We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us. —John Locke Extraordinary things happen when you surround yourself with smart, talented, driven, good people who share your mission. Here’s a simple rule of thumb: an extraordinarily talented and dedicated person gets ten times more done than the merely good person, and the good person ten times more than the average performer. When it comes to employees, if you set the incentives correctly, you can’t overpay the best.
Will It Be Worth It in the End?	Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? —Robert Browning Blake Near the end, you are likely to ask three questions: 1. Did I accomplish something meaningful? 2. Was I a good person? 3. Who did I love and who loved me? Nothing about money, or fame, or power. Because money will come, and if you are lucky, you will make it your servant, not your master, and avoid the ruin that chasing after fame and power bring.
Taking Your Life in Hand	So, now only one question remains: Are you ready to write your own hero’s journey, where you are both author and protagonist? Do you have the courage to take that first step, to fight that first battle, even if you don’t know how the story ends? I hope so, because I believe that our spirits are thirsty for adventure, a thirst that too many of us deny, until that fateful day we realize that life has passed us by. Do you believe in yourself as much as I do? If so, it’s time for that first step to begin living life as an entrepreneurial hero.

Summary:

This is the plan on how to get started and if I have what it takes to get started on this scary rollercoaster of a ride.