Summary of counterproductive entrepreneurship myths and productive beliefs

I just finished a series on counterproductive myths I hear all the time that hold would-be entrepreneurs back from starting ventures, which could be business ventures, non-profits, or just projects they enjoy. Below are links to navigate the series conveniently. Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, but if it's for you or your business, counterproductive myths don't help you. Successful entrepreneurs succeed despite them, so they must have countervailing productive beliefs. I described the myths and countered them with productive beliefs that motivate people to start ventures. Starting companies and entrepreneurial ventures is one of my greatest joys. If you sense it could be yours too, I hope this helps. The four counterproductive myths: You need a great idea to start a business (plus illustration). Working for…

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Four productive beliefs about entrepreneurship, part IV

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let’s replace the fourth myth with something productive. Productive belief 4: the risk to the entrepreneur of starting a venture can be as small as he or she wants In competitive markets, risk and reward go together. Entrepreneurship may engender risks established companies don't, but established companies engender risks young ventures don't. A venture being new doesn't change the relationship between risk and reward. That relationship is about the magnitudes of risk and reward, not types. The consequence is…

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Four productive beliefs about entrepreneurship, part III

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let’s replace the third myth with something productive. Productive belief 3: you can venture with other people's money if money is an issue Productive belief 3a: you can make money while you start your venture I don't know any entrepreneurs who had enough money to start their ventures on their own. You don't need to. The first stages -- developing the product, market research, developing a rough business plan, finding early team mates, and so on -- can be…

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Four productive beliefs about entrepreneurship, part II

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Let’s replace the second myth with something productive. Productive belief 2: Starting a venture prepares you best for starting a venture Columbia Business School's entrepreneurship department surveyed a number of entrepreneurs on their success as entrepreneurs as well as many personal and professional characteristics (no link now, but I'll look into it). Among the questions they asked was what characteristic best correlated or predicted entrepreneurial success -- an interesting question if you are considering becoming an entrepreneur. I remember…

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Four productive beliefs about entrepreneurship, part I

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] If the four statements of the past few posts are myths and unproductive, what beliefs might the entrepreneur-to-be hold that are more productive? What other beliefs are motivating entrepreneurs who aren't held back by the counterproductive ones? The counterproductive myths are: You need a great idea to start a business. Working for an established company helps prepare you for starting a venture. I should make some more money before starting my venture. Starting a venture is riskier than working…

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Four counterproductive myths about entrepreneurship, part IV

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Myth 4: Starting a venture is riskier than working at an established firm Risk means different things to different people. Risk that matters to one person many mean nothing to another. People tend to think young ventures are risky overall because their stock value (or however the venture is valued) is volatile, which leads investors to call them risky. But the price of a stock is only one measure of risk, and that risk may be only partly relevant…

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Four counterproductive myths about entrepreneurship, part III

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Myth 3: I should make some more money before starting my venture I've never met anyone who didn't raise his or her standard of living after making more money. Making money leads to spending money. If you have the discipline to increase your income and parcel significant amounts for starting your venture, that discipline is so much greater than the average person's, and so valuable for the entrepreneur, it may be worth as much as the money you would…

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Four counterproductive myths about entrepreneurship, part II

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Myth 2: Working for an established company helps prepare you for starting a venture Why this belief is a myth is subtle. Working somewhere is better than nothing, but better than nothing is not a meaningful comparison. First a few words on why people believe this myth. Many people say they want to start a company soon, just after building more experience in the working world. I think their main motivation for this belief was that they know established…

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Four counterproductive myths about entrepreneurship, part Ia

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Google's history backs up that people did not believe good idea to start with, no matter what we think of it today. I couldn't resist looking up Google's history after yesterday's post. The overwhelming evidence that people didn't think their idea was good is, as this page puts it, Reluctant to leave their studies, Page and Brin offered to sell their search engine for $1 million to AltaVista. To their disappointment, AltaVista passed, as did Yahoo!, Excite, and other…

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Four counterproductive myths about entrepreneurship, part I

[This post is part of a series on four main myths that discourage entrepreneurship and how to overcome them. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Many classmates in business school said they wanted to start businesses yet few did. For that matter, many people in life say they want to start businesses yet few do. I asked many why they don’t. Four reasons dominate my non-scientific survey, all of them myths. Myths aren’t necessarily problems, but each of these discourage people who want to start businesses from doing so, so they are counterproductive in most cases. Also, since entrepreneurial behavior and beliefs are useful…

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Switching domain name and software

I'm switching from spodek.net to joshuaspodek.com for various reasons. Thanks to Sebastian for setting it up and getting me blogging regularly. Thanks to John for everything at spodek.net and getting me started blogging in the first place. I'm starting to get the hang of the blogging process besides just writing thanks to these guys.

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Your understanding of creativity holds you back from creating

If you accept mainstream ideas of creativity, then your understanding of creativity is holding you back from creating things and being creative. Mainstream views on creativity sell books, movies, magazines, and so forth. They sell over-romanticized myths that, while entertaining, undermine your ability to create things and solve problems.Let's start with two contradictions to lay bare the counterproductivity in mainstream views.First, mainstream views value creative, original, so-called outside-the-box thinking, but when push comes to shove, we don't value it in practice. To illustrate, say you have a problem you don't know how to solve. You need someone else to create a solution. It could be anything -- a leaky sink, a managerial issue at work, what to make for dinner, a musical score you want…

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The Worst Problem In The World

The Worst problem In The World is two people with different standards who don't realize their standards differ evaluating each other and acting on their evaluation. This is not hyperbole. Think of a recent news headline involving conflict. It was probably a variation of The Worst Problem In The World. Many significant conflicts in the world are either solvable or are variations of The Worst Problem In The World. Many major conflicts  in your life with other people are probably also variations on The Worst Problem In The World. Here's an example: person A is vegetarian and believes eating meat is cruel; person B eats meat and believes people should be free to eat what they want. A's standard is cruelty. B's is freedom. When…

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How much can you change your taste?

"Free food tastes better," someone said to me. It rang true. I immediately added the corollary "free alcohol tastes better too."I thought it resonated with me because I was a graduate student for so long. Then I noticed something at a fancy gallery opening with art selling for tens of thousands of dollars. Normally galleries serve wine, sometimes another alcohol if they have a sponsor. At this opening they were serving cans of Budweiser and everyone -- rich people and social elites -- was drinking it. I'm sure some people love the taste of it, but I'm more sure if these people were at a fancy bar paying for their drinks not a single one of them would order Budweiser.Yet there they were, happily drinking…

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Improving on focusing on what rewards you

Focusing on what creates emotional reward is great. If it works for you, you can do better. When something brings you emotional reward, here are two things you can do more than just focusing on it to bring more reward into your life: overindulging in your emotional reward and sharing the reward. Overindulging in reward means if your manager pats you on the back and you feel good about it, find a way to feel great about it. If you finished a project and you'd normally feel great for a day about it, find a way to feel great about it for a week. Overindulging in reward achieves two things. First, reward motivates similar behavior. Bluntly, you train yourself to do things you find rewarding.…

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Choosing what you like is not denying what you don’t

Do you feel if you don't deal with difficult things you're denying or avoiding reality? Does that bring you down or make you feel irresponsible? Does that compel you to do things you don't want to? Here's how to make sure you don't. After a conversation last night, my friend said she looked at enjoying life in a whole new way for the better.Let's start with an analogy. On a corner of Manhattan, dozens of people may pass you in a minute. You could stop and talk to any one of them. It's so diverse, one might be a student, another a dancer, athlete, lawyer, CEO, model, housewife, and so on. If you began a conversation with any about his or her life, you'd get…

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Creating more freedom

The New York Times wrote yesterday about Eben Moglen, whom I wrote about recently. "We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now," he said. "What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been." ... If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy. "It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse," Mr.…

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How do you keep going in the face of adversity?

Here's a model for you: think of a baby learning to walk.No baby learns to walk right the first time. Not even the tenth time. So-called failure for them is not just figuratively painful, it looks physically painful. Yet babies learn to walk. They try and fail. And try and fail. And try and fail. For months they try and fail.This model alone shows how poorly the popular use of the term failure describes that part of the learning process. Failure is inevitable. Failure teaches. Failure is what experience means. Babies build experience when they fall. That's how they learn to walk so well.Can you imagine if after one fall a baby said, "Oh well, I tried my hardest. I just can't walk. I'm not…

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On reading the 2010 New York City Marathon results

I've written before how I like to read the results of the finishers of marathons I run, especially the last and oldest. From the publicly published information, it's the most inspiration you can get. I'm sure it barely scratches the surface of what some athletes overcome to finish, but I look for inspiration where I can. Since I registered for last year's New York City marathon lottery (but didn't get a number), I got the Road Runners Club's magazine with the times from last November's race. Before starting at the last finishers I notice they list the wheelchair finishers after the runners. I didn't realize there were two divisions where I thought there was one -- wheelchair and handcycle, men's and women's for each. Only…

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E-book overload

Typical e-book readers today have a few gigabytes of memory, enabling holding thousands of books.Where did the choice for this amount of memory come from? Am I missing something? What is the value of holding that many books? Even if you were trapped on a desert island you would die before finishing reading them, leaving aside the issue of recharging the battery.On the face of it you could say you never know when you might want to read a given book, so why not have it available. Many books are available for free, presumably everything in the public domain that someone has taken the time to convert.How does having all those books available improve your life? Alternatively, if you had 5,000 books available to you…

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Predictably Irrational

Do you want a better life? The book Predictably Irrational is a great entry point to one, and to my philosophy. It's also a great book in its own right -- informative and well-written. From my perspective it's a great gateway to how to live a better life. Its title describes its two-part thesis. First, humans react irrationally to many things. Using "irrational" this way presupposes a definition the book implies is ineffective, but it's the usual economic definition -- roughly speaking in one's material interest. Second, we react predictably. However counter to our interests or otherwise irrational our reactions appear, on average we react the same. He gives many examples from observations and experiment (what a dream psychology experiments seem like from a former…

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Another way to reduce stress more

After yesterday's post, I thought of another little rule I made that makes something some people consider difficult into a game. I'm almost embarrassed to share it because of how geeky it is, but it makes something otherwise challenging into fun, or at least a way to make myself a better me. First, you should know, I love eating food that tastes good and chips are included. I can eat a big bag in one sitting, no problem. But I like to keep myself in good shape and chips have a lot of empty calories. So here's the rule: I have to take at least three sessions to eat the full bag of chips, counting no more than one session per day. One exception: if…

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One way to decrease stress

Here is a simple way to reduce one type of stress. I used to get annoyed when people would show up late to meet me. I imagined them disrespecting me and such. One day I made a rule for myself: Everybody gets fifteen minutes. That's it. If someone shows up anywhere less than fifteen minutes late, it's fine. I don't ask questions, I don't ask where they were, I don't suggest anything. After practicing the rule enough, I genuinely don't care. It's fine. Before this rule I might have wondered if I would lose time, people would take more for granted, or other unintended side effects. The contrary has been the case. A huge source of stress and judgment disappeared. My feared unintended consequences never…

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What is a belief worth?

Continuing this post that our access to reality is limited by our senses and our minds can't comprehend it all, what then do we have in our minds?We form beliefs or mental models. What is a model? A model is a simplified representation of reality for a purpose. That previous post dealt with the ramifications of models being simplified -- that they are all flawed.If they are all flawed, what use are they? How do we evaluate them? That's where their being for a purpose comes in.The only meaningful measure for a model or belief is in how well it serves its purpose. If believing men are from Mars and women are from Venus leads you to have better relationships and a better life, it…

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What do you never regret?

One measure of something worth doing is if you would ever regret it. I'm making a list of things that no one would ever on their deathbed look back and say "I did X too much."I doubt anyone looked back at their life and said, "I danced too much," "I sang too much," or "I played with my nieces and nephews too much." Can you add to the list?No one ever saidI danced too muchI sang too muchI played with my nieces and nephews too muchI spent too much time outdoorsI skied too muchI laughed too muchI played sports too much...What others?

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