The Beauty and Bane of the Serial Entrepreneur
The other day it occurred to me that the #1 thing my successful students have in common is:
They’re serial entrepreneurs.
At a Roundtable meeting, 3 out of 4 people in the room has started and built multiple successful businesses. They have a hunger for adventure and can NEVER sit still for very long.
They’re also resilient and agile and nothing can keep them down for long. When confronted by a mountain or a vast brick wall, they’ll find a way over, they’ll find a way under, they’ll blast their way through, they’ll bribe the sherpa to take them around the back way, they’ll hire munchkins from the opposite side of the continent to infiltrate the enemy camp… but somehow or another, they’re going to get it done.
Tom Hoobyar once said, “Entrepreneurs are feral men.”
From Wikipedia:
“A feral organism is one that has escaped from domestication and returned, partly or wholly, to a wild state. The introduction of feral animals or plants to their non-native regions, like any introduced species, can disrupt ecosystems and may, in some cases, contribute to extinction of indigenous species. However, returning lost species to their environment can have the opposite effect, bringing damaged ecosystems back into balance.”
You wonder why you could never sit still in school.
Now you know. You didn’t discover you were a wild animal until you went into business. And you found out you had 100X more mojo than all the little rabbit fu-fu’s that got straight A’s and full tuition scholarships to Northwestern.
I always loved the old bit of advice to professors: “Be nice to the A students because someday they’ll become your fellow professors. Be nice to the B students because their parents sign your paychecks. And be nice to the C students cuz someday they’re build you a performing arts center.”
You couldn’t sit still in school, but have you noticed that you can sit still in front of your computer for hours when you’re hot in pursuit of a problem you’re trying to solve?
ADHD isn’t caused by lack of focus. It’s caused by not having something sufficiently interesting to do. Ritalyn is not the cure. Adventure is the cure.
Now the problem with serial entrepreneurs is, they have a hard time committing to things. There are several dysfunctions that come with Feral ADHD blood, beasts that must be tamed:
- Flitting from one opportunity to another to another to another and never finishing anything (yes I admit that can be rather entertaining though, for quite some time!)
- Looking down on the little rabbit fu-fu’s as, well, little rabbit fu-fu’s (hey pal, the world does need at least some people who will obediently follow the car ahead of them to work every day for the next 45 years.)
- Optimizing their business only for profit, rather than keeping the BIG picture in mind. (There’s more to the health, value and goodness of a business than its bottom line.)
- A hit-and-run, speed-seduction mentality towards acquiring customers. In the “speed seduction” world, the way you keep your current girlfriend in line is by having another one “ready to go” if the current one gets lippy. You dump her before she dumps you. (“Sex in the City” flips that around so it’s the girl who dumps the guy before he dumps her. Either way, it’s abusive and dysfunctional. Good marketing is “Getting and keeping customers.” Not “Churning and burning customers.”)
- Being willing to promote products you would never recommend to your sister or your mom, just because the commission is good. This disease is rampant online and it’s the #1 reason why Google has adopted a “slash and burn” policy towards affiliate marketers.
At all my seminars I give an “optional spiritual talk.” It’s optional and advertised as such because about 1/4 of the people at any given seminar think that spiritual stuff is just “sunday school” and isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
But others know better. The talk I’m giving in Maui is, “The spiritual basis of alchemy.” Those who come to the summit will hear the whole thing, but I’ll give you the short version right now:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Which is pretty much the aim of any sound market research program, is it not?
Children have no problem understanding this. Sometimes we adults have a hard time.
Our dysfunctions are well known. But when you get it right – when you hit the right balance of startup power and sustainability, when you have a mindset of delivering enduring value to customers, when you’ve built your network of highly resourceful geeks, freaks and misfits, that’s when the fireworks happen.
And as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes you to acquire those skills. If you’re a feral man, if you’re a feral woman, then you’re not going to be happy sitting in a cubicle farm.
Joe Jackson put it this way in his song “Wild West”:
Out to the west there’s a trail that leads somewhere
And a call of the wild that takes some people there
Through Monument Valley to California sun
From New Amsterdam to the Way the West Was Won
Well, years will go by when you won’t get nowhere
You’re cold and you’re tired and you’re free and you don’t care
You keep pushin’ on when your friends keep turning back
And you keep building towns and laying railroad track
And things get crazy and you have to use that gun
And you wonder if this is the way the west is won
But keep thinkin’ that way and you won’t get nowhere
‘Cause you got a right just to get where you’re goin’ to
Gotta keep runnin’ gotta be the best
Gotta walk tall in the wild west
You keep on the move or you try to settle down
And there’s strangers from further and further away in town
And you give them some tools and they know what must be done
And you know who’s the boss and you know the west was won
And they say…
Where I come from you can’t get nowhere
I’m breaking my back for some opportunity
Making my fortune and I’ll take it all home
Tell my kids about the wild west
But there’s still beauty as the flowers bloom on desert sands
And there’s still hope as the sun rises over the Rio Grande
But it’s so crowded now and nothing’s simple any more
And they’re still knocking at your door
You hear guns in the night and you hope they’re not for you
‘Cause a dog eats a dog then he eats his master too
In the land of the free and the not so often brave
There’s both love or money, now choose which you will save
But… keep thinkin’ that way and you won’t get nowhere
‘Cause you got a right just to get where you’re goin’ to
Gotta keep runnin’ gotta be the best
Gotta walk tall in the wild west
Source: Perry Marshall’s books on Google Advertising are the most popular in the world. He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
He has helped over 100,000 Google Advertisers save billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax.
