Enter the Entrepreneurial Rockstar

This modern entrepreneur works smart – fewer well-spent hours resulting in (increased) success. Yes it is possible; it just requires a mindset shift.

An Entrepreneurial Rockstar’s happiness doesn’t rely solely on financial success. Wealth, from a lifestyle perspective, is highly valued.

Rockstar Entrepreneurship offers a holistic approach to business. These cutting-edge entrepreneurs invest a greater portion of time and energy in pursuing, and maintaining, personal happiness. This is in addition to their focus on business deadlines and the bottom-line.

These modern entrepreneurs favour a collaborative approach, they work/surround themselves with the best people. The focus shifts from being the only to being one of. Relationships are prized and interactions are not valued solely by existing/potential monetary worth.

In its simplest form being an Entrepreneurial Rockstar is less about the wallet and more about the soul.

Make Mistakes

Being perfect is overrated.

Everyone makes mistakes, it’s how we learn. They’re an unavoidable fact of life and they’re one of a Rockstar’s greatest assets. They help us get to know ourselves intimately – the good, the bad and the ugly all rear their heads when we make a mistake. This is empowering because it allows us to identify our strengths and weaknesses.

The power isn’t in being perfect it’s in being human – no one relates to perfect, people relate to people. By embracing who you are (the good and the bad) you can interact with anyone, person to person, irrespective of their fame or fortune.

Start viewing your mistakes as a good, rather than bad, occurrence.

Rockstar Inspiration

Allow yourself to be inspired

A Rockstar is never too busy to be inspired.

Inspiration results in great ideas and success (in life) is based on the realisation of these great ideas. It is an integril part of a Rockstar’s make-up. Without it you (as a Rockstar) are setting yourself up to fail – in an unspectacular fashion – from the start.

As Rockstars we need to be able to see beyond the stress and feelings associated with being overworked. We need to move past the vision-clouding comfort zone to a place where we allow inspiration to appear in our lives.

This requires that we undergo a significant mindset shift. To achieve this we need to:

Mute the extras

Shut out all the extras. Inspiration doesn’t play nice. It doesn’t work when you’re stressed, overworked or short of time. Just stop and the inspiration will find you.

Be in awe

Teach themselves how to sit back in awe. The surrounding world is packed full of inspiration. If you can just get over yourself, for long enough, you’ll see it. It’s unexpected, unplanned and (often) completely random.

Just look a little closer, it’s right there!

Don’t Stereotype Yourself

Stereotypes are so twentieth century.

People like stereotypes. Labels put us at ease because it means we belong and we know others belong too. The more we share of a group’s values and principles the more akin to them we feel.

We learn early that it is easier to be a stereotype then to be unique. Being different is frowned upon and – from an early age – people limit their outlook and opportunities to ‘belong’ to the norm. Individuals are taught to measure their ideas, dreams and successes against an expected criteria. Anything that doesn’t match up is ignored or rejected. Original thinking is discarded.

Why do we let this happen to ourselves?

Belonging to a group or conforming to a stereotype is incredibly tempting to many people because it make them feel safe. They have a predictable behaviour pattern to measure themselves against. Rockstars go against this. Belonging is not what drives a Rockstar.

Rockstars define their own vision and are pushed by their own creativity – a community stereotype concept will never suffice. A Rockstar’s thinking is not restricted by the limitations of stereotypical behaviours and they measure the success of their strategies by their own criteria.

Leave the labels and stereotypes to those that need them. Rockstars don’t fit boxes.

Cash Flows, Financing and Wasting Money

From a very young age – a successful entrepreneur himself – told me that a solid business would start showing a appropriate profit within 2 years of opening its doors. To this day, I still use that formula when evaluating new ideas; whilst there’s no empirical evidence that suggests this works, it has thus far been a pretty safe investment & choice on my part.

If you consider that 2 year timeframe, you need to evaluate whether you have sufficient financing to carry you for the two years that you need to reach profitability. The biggest concern here isn’t the fact that you need to be profitable (break-even would for example be fine as well), but every startup needs to be cash flow positive. So many business ultimately fail not because they don’t have a profitable or sustainable idea, but because they don’t have cash at the right times and thus aren’t able to continue paying their bills.

You would thus need to manage your finances conservatively and accurately, with the focus on being in control. I’ve always felt that as long as I knew exactly what was happening in my finances (albeit good or bad), that I could back myself to find applicable short and long term solutions for potential issues that may arise.

You should thus always know what your accounts look like and to give yourself enough space to find a solution if an emergency strikes, you need to ensure that you have enough funds in reserve to buy yourself some time.

Bootstrapping

The best way to give your finances are chance of surviving the startup phase, is by proper bootstrapping across the board. This means that you need to evaluate every cash outflow, irrespective of whether they are capital outlays or simply just expenditure. Don’t waste money on things you really don’t need.

This also means that you should only reinvest earnings into the business if you are relatively sure that it would lead to increases in your ultimate earnings. If not, then that cash has a better use just sitting in your bank account waiting for the day that you actually need it.

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t allow yourself a few luxuries (as this is one of the benefits of being the boss), but those should make up a small percentage of your expenditure and it should never jeopardize the long term viability of your business. If buying yourself a new Mac means that you may not be able to pay office rent next month, then you probably shouldn’t buy that Mac.

If you bootstrap the business for long enough, you will eventually reach a level where you can spend more significant amounts of money without actually jeopardizing the business. So be patient initially and make sure that you bootstrap as much of your activities as possible.

Being The Expert

Experts

Compared to the marketing ideas in the previous chapter, this will be considerably less “controversial”. The idea here is to market yourself as an expert within your niche, even if you may not have all of the knowledge & experience generally required to be seen as the expert.

Before we get into how you can become an expert, we need to look at how our societies identifies their experts. Generally speaking, the experts are either academic giants with their PHD’s & MBA’s or seasoned, well-travelled & obscenely rich founders & CEO’s of big companies. There’s also another field of supposed experts and they come in the form of best-selling authors; I mean – who is going to argue with someone that has sold millions of books on his topic of interest?

The difficult part here is convincing the Average Joe Public that you are indeed an expert and thus worthy of their attention. This is further complicated by the rules that we have inherited in our societies and we thus have to find a fine balance between playing by those rules, but also defying them in a Rockstar-like manner.

Becoming The Expert

Become a self-marketed expert means you need to show people that you have a great understanding of your niche and that you know how to profit (whether financially or otherwise) from that knowledge & experience. Your strategy is thus two-fold here:

#1 – You need to tell people about your knowledge & experiences by sharing those with them via a blog, self-publishing a book (can be downloadable e-books) and speaking at conferences. All of those mediums (especially publishing a book and speaking at conferences) will go a long way to establish an aura of expertise around your brand. People love insight into the way that successful people think and how they go about engineering that success; so provide value for them in sharing your experiences & knowledge, and you’re already closer to being an expert in their opinion.

#2 – The first step can only be successful if you have had some related & relative success in terms of the experiences and knowledges that you are sharing. It doesn’t matter how well you can communicate these facts in theory; people will only assign you credibility if you can prove to them that what you are saying actually works (i.e. you need to be practicing what you are preaching).

It’s important to note that in this regard there is only value & viability if you are marketing substance in this regard, as you are not going to become an expert based on superficial facts. Your audience will also be quick to realize any superficial information and I’d bet that this would lead to them quickly ignoring your future attempts at marketing your expertise.

Tipping Point: Recommendations

The tipping point for your expert branding, will come in the viral form of word of mouth: the more other people start talking about you and what you’re doing, the more credible your messages become.

Large parts of our societies are followers and they accept “facts” based on popular opinion. So if you can get a bunch of people honestly & objectively (i.e. this needs to be truthful and there’s no way to “buy” these opinions.) saying loads of positive stuff about you, then these followers are bound to believe the hype and “adopt” the idea that you must indeed be an expert. Afterwards, the viral pyramid comes into play and if your marketing messages have enough legs, you should find it snowballing as your expert brand just continues to grow.

This is made even more significant, when you get some kind words from influential people, as this just adds immense & exponential significance to that snowball effect. So make sure that your branding & marketing appeals to them and then ensure that they are actually exposed to those messages in their normal day-to-day activities (i.e. they’re probably not gonna go out and look for you).

Ambition is hard work

As a youngster, my parents always encouraged me to be ambition in everything that I attempt in life, so to say that this kind of thinking has been ingrained into my life would be an immense understatement. But as I’ve grown older and hopefully more mature, I’ve learned that ambition comes packaged with one major proviso: it’s a heck of a lot of hard work.

See, it’s fine to be extremely ambitious (as every Rockstar should be), but most people will fail at their ambitious journey to Rockstardom if they fail to work extremely hard at those dreams & goals. But that should’ve already been quite obvious to most of you; nobody gets anywhere in life without the hard work.

What I meant to say though, is that ambition in itself is hard work; almost to the extent that it becomes a curse.

I’m an incredibly ambitious person (this book being evidence of that) and a lot of my ambitions tend to not be overly realistic. But many of them are very achievable too, so I’m pretty much left spending my work time in chasing down these ambitions in one way or another. But because I’m so driven in achieving these dreams & goals, I only really have one way to be successful and that’s to continue working hard in satisfying that ambition.

The problem is that ambitious people tend to not be able to shut down completely or just stop having new great ideas which they want to pursue; so it’s difficult for such people to be content in not working very hard within that pursuit. I’d also like to think that part of this ambition and willingness to work harder than anyone else, is part of a Rockstar’s required make-up.

Ambition & hard work goes hand-in-hand for Rockstars and the only way to satisfy this inherit, natural hunger is to throw everything you have into that pursuit.

Be Impulsive

As a Rockstar you’ll encounter situations where the best choice will be an impulsive one.

Situations will frequently arise where you will need to make a decision without any time to do the traditional planning or analysis. You can’t hit the pause button – Rockstars live, work and play in real-time.

A given situation’s window of opportunity is finite and, to stand the chance of exploiting that situation, an impulsive decision is required. Basically you have to gut-it-out: back yourself, trust what your experiences has taught you. It is not as risky as it sounds.

The reality is, every decision has an element of risk attached to it. We just label that risk “calculated” because it’s less fear inducing. By its very definition, however, not every single element of risk can be calculated and that’s what makes it a risk. This means that even informed decisions don’t always result in success. In many cases, the opportunity can be missed all together.

Ignore the competition

Rockstars leave the next move choices to their competitors.

Deep competitor analysis is old-school; mountains of inconclusive data is poison to unique ideas. Reactionary responses to what the other team is doing is Not Rockstar.

Rockstars are not followers. We are proactive; we trust our own abilities and choices. We don’t jeopardize our decisions by basing them on the actions of others or second-guessing other people’s strategies. Pursuing a dream is risky and everyone has an opinion. Rockstars cut out unnecessary influences and trust their own minds.

This doesn’t mean cutting out knowledge of the developments in the industry. Knowing what is going on is part of the game but, in the short term, outside changes shouldn’t lead to a reactionary response or a sudden change in tactics.

Rockstars have a vision; we mindfully develop and tweak our processes to fit our goals, allowing for contingencies and taking into account the volatility of the market. Doing this allows us to predict important developments and be ahead of the pack, creating our unique strategies, and adapting them to the bigger changes in our industry.

Be Addicted

Addictions get such a bad rep these days, but I’d venture to say that an addiction of the right kind of things and the ability to balance that addiction marks a true Rockstar.

Looking at myself and what I’ve learned / experienced on my journey as an entrepreneur, I can easily point to a few things that have me totally addicted. What are these things? Simple stuff like being loyal & transparent, being genuine (as far as possible) in all my interactions, working very hard, but finding a balance between & play and so forth.

So if those things are generally considered “good (Rockstar) attributes”, then why would an addiction in this regard necessarily be bad?

I think it comes down to focusing on the right things in life and then valuing those things that contribute most to your life, your business and your environment. These things may differ from one Rockstar to the next, but they’re inevitable characteristics that an average person would associate with some of good social standing.

By focusing on these things – and fueling your addiction to get even better at implementing those in your life – you have a clear, yet modest, view of your life going forward. Greed, arrogance and ignorance kind of walls by the wayside, because they’re pushed out by one’s addiction of the good things in life; thus minimizing the risk that you’re missing the whole point of being a Rockstar.

Picking your team

I’m going to be slight hypocritical here in saying that when it comes to compiling your team, you shouldn’t look to hire already-made Rockstars. Odds are that these Rockstars are too expensive, have too much experience (i.e. they’re inflexible) and they have a chip on their shoulders (from the sustained success until that point).

Suffice to say, I’m thus not a big advocate of head-hunting either.

Instead I believe in unearthing the raw talent and then polishing that into a more rockstar form. For example, I’d pick a hard-working, committed and loyal person over the obscenely talented one every single time; talent fades away when it can’t find a proper fit within the team environment. Those characteristics are also unspectacular and it should breed a culture of staying humble whilst always contributing value.

Remember that your business is unique and the requirements placed on your team will thus also be specific to what you need to achieve. So a great candidate in general could possibly be your second or third choice if you consider their credentials within the context of your unique needs. Keep this in mind when you are looking at the combination of individuals on your team, as their individual contributions aren’t that important when considered individually; it is however those contributions in combination with the rest of the team that should be extremely valuable.

Rogue-starness

Rockstar success is about taking the advice you can use and leaving the rest.

Rockstars are rogues in their approach to business. They constantly challenge their own, and other’s, viewpoints regarding business.

As a Rockstar it’s expected that your ideas and decisions will be different, they’ll give you the opportunity to achieve the exceptional. You’ll make your own mistakes, learn your own lessons and experience your own adventures.

Be an authentic Rockstar and sculpt the rules, ideas and snippets of this book to fit in with your own plans.

Personal Responsibility

Whether Rockstars are at work or at play they are still the same people.

As Rockstars we’re in touch with who we are; our work is merely an extension of our already existent life. To achieve lasting success the choices we make, from a work point of view, must align with our personal goals, dreams, ideals, and needs.

Before we became Rockstars many of us wrongly expected ourselves to invest everything in our businesses. This came at the expense of our personal goals, dreams, ideals and need. Rockstars value themselves and their personal happiness is a priority; it’s a major (and unique) ingredient of their success.

A Rockstar needs to constantly evaluate the projects they are involved in. Anything that doesn’t align with their goals, dreams, ideals and needs should be improved upon or removed. The more you (as a Rockstar) work on this personal and professional alignment the more efficient you’ll become.

If you find something isn’t working for you – whether it’s a project or a something relating to your own behaviour – take the initiative and make the change.

You are a Rockstar and you have the freedom to act instinctively, altering anything you believe is holding you back.

Be Yourself

Even in his flawless disguise, every Twitterer at the party knew that he wasn’t one of them; his inability to state what he was doing―in 140 characters or less―was a dead giveaway.

It can be tempting, especially when you’re just starting out, to pretend to be someone or something that you’re not.

Often and when there’s something business related to be gained, we doubt ourselves and our ability. We replace self-belief with the belief that becoming someone or something―other than who we are―will (in given circumstances) result in more business. But in reality, attempting to become someone that you are not won’t result in more business and it certainly won’t result in the right type of business.

Your brand is as much about who you are as it is about who you’re not. Be yourself and leverage that brand to its fullest potential.

It is so important when you focus on personal branding that you don’t betray who you are and what you stand for, as your branding would be superficial and flimsy without these values (which serve as a kind of backbone). This is especially significant when you consider how many self-proclaimed “successful” people we meet every day, and as a result, how we’ve developed the inherit ability to spot a potential fake.

Your “truth” in your personal branding is relative to your honesty, transparency and willingness to admit that you’re not as perfect as your branding could falsely suggest. So whilst you’re not going to trumpet your imperfections, you can still just be normal and just be yourself.

Don’t multi-task, multi-project instead

Rockstars are famous for their ability to multi-project and tap dance… but we’ll save the tap dancing story for another day.

As Rockstars we are often involved with more than one project at the same time. The level of time and energy invested in each project will differ, Rockstars feel passionately about each and every one of them. Old school conservatism advocates focusing on one project that utilises the individual’s core competencies. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach; apart, of course, from the fact that it’s not Rockstar at all!

A Rockstar attribute is our need for speed―we like things to happen quickly. We lose interest when life, projects and people don’t move fast enough. One project is (in most cases) simply not enough to keep a us occupied. Multi-projecting is what keeps Rockstars sane and it distracts us from the destruction that accompanies boredom.

For Rockstars to effectively multi-project, there needs to be one main project―the sustainable business―consuming 80% of our working time. Here, it is business as usual, allowing the Rockstar to live life and meet responsibilities. The remaining 20% should consist of side-projects and reflect the Rockstar’s interests and passions. It’s this 20% that keeps the Rockstar refreshed, inspired, creative and a step ahead of the game.

Inspirational Interactions

The best way to grow ideas to their optimised point is to challenge them.

Rockstars enjoy having their ideas challenged because they know that challenging ideas propels their evolution.

When someone challenges our ideas and viewpoints and those challenges hold constructive substance and value, we are afforded the opportunity to revise and improve our original ideas or opinions. Rockstars call these types of constructive challenges “inspirational interactions.”

People are traditionally the best source of inspirational interactions. Individuals’ differing views, beliefs and opinions mean that wherever you go, as a Rockstar, you’re bound to find someone to challenge you.

The goal―what we as Rockstars strive to do―is to be open to these interactions; to put our ego and arrogance aside and hear what the other party is saying. We do so because questions and debate surrounding an idea can strengthen it, help us pinpoint its issues or potential issues, and spark off an even more powerful idea.

Get Out More

The biggest challenge in coming across these inspirational interactions is to actually get yourself out of the office, away from the desk and to free yourself from your surroundings a little. Just as you can have inspirational interactions within those spaces, it’s likely that you’re so accustomed to routine interactions around the office by now that you’ve been blunted from seeing their real potential. By actually putting yourself in other environments and interacting with different people, you’re much more likely to gain that inspiration.

Going out can mean hooking up with some like-minded business friends or just running out for a cup of coffee, even if you need to take your laptop along. Just a small change in scenery or a shakeup in your routine should get some other ideas working in your mind.

The bottom line seems to be that inspiration is not always in the things we look at every day, because we’re often just “too close” to those things to view them holistically and objectively. Rockstars understand that a little break within their routines should be more than enough kindling to create a few sparks of inspiration.

Become a Visionary

I don’t really believe in being born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth. Some people are naturally more talented than others, but hard work will generally get you much further in life than having natural talent.

In other words, anyone can learn most of the same skills that you would attribute to your average, successful entrepreneur.

One of the skills that I’d associate with most Rockstar entrepreneurs is the ability to be a visionary in terms of the strategies, processes and ideas that are implemented within their businesses. In a world where most problems have already been solved, it is essential to be unique and creative in terms of the products and services that one provides to consumers.

The only way to achieve that level of uniqueness and creativity is through being able to have a vision of where the business should be going in future (and then making your business decisions accordingly).

Getting back to the point I made at the beginning of Rockstar Business: I don’t necessarily think that all Rockstar entrepreneurs are born as visionaries. If I take myself as an example, I definitely don’t consider myself a visionary, even though I have been able to make sound decisions now (based on a future idea or vision) that have turned out to be great down the line.

The trick is to allow yourself to be a visionary by allowing yourself to dream.

I find that a lot of people have a lot of great ideas, but they somehow tend to limit those ideas (in terms of never pursuing them), because they become “realistic” (and negative) before they have even had the opportunity to flesh out those ideas.

Most of the future-defining ideas that have been concocted by true visionaries weren’t very realistic at first. Just because some ideas don’t seem practical at first shouldn’t prevent you from exploring them in more detail. I believe that every successful entrepreneur is also a dreamer at heart, which means that every one of us should also be able to be a visionary. I also believe that every great business has been built on a dream.

Allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to be creative and more importantly, allow yourself to become a visionary. It only takes one Rockstar idea to turn into a successful business to convince others that you are indeed a true visionary.

Whorestar

“Whore” is a very derogatory word in today’s societies, but instead the “street-walker” should be lauded for their self-marketing and self-promotional efforts. As a Rockstar, you can definitely learn a little from that.

Of course, I’m being tongue-in-cheek. I’m not suggesting that you actually become an active member of the sex industry, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t market yourself to the extent that people would want to label you as a “whore.” What does that actually mean though?

People can only remember and follow you if they actually know about you. Why wait for other people to spread the word virally, when you can do some the talking yourself? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a Rockstar doing their own talking and marketing―so long as your marketing efforts are truthful and you’re being yourself, of course. I believe in taking some control over what is said about you. Plus, sitting back and waiting for things to happen virally is a little too passive for my inner Rockstar.

Ultimately, if others want to play “pin the label” on you, then let them waste their time. You’ll be too busy telling other people how to be a (Whore)Rockstar.

Roots & Hobbies

Being a Rockstar is secondary to the rest of one’s life. Everyone has pre-Rockstar roots and hobbies that will contribute to one’s journey toward exploring and cultivating a Rockstar persona. Whilst one becomes so busy in pursuing these Rockstar ideals, it is so easy to forget where we came from and how our hobbies and passions have helped to shape the men and women that we have become today.

Part of your challenge as a Rockstar is to fill your time with enough of your “roots” so that you will never forget who you are as a person. It’s furthermore important to remember your roots because reminiscing about where you once were and where you are now gives you a much more holistic view of your life. Reminiscing about one’s life in such a way also takes you away from the comfort zones and boundaries that we erect around ourselves, thus giving much more context to your daily decisions and actions.

The best way to return to these “roots” is by way of the hobbies that you are most passionate about. The idea here is not necessarily to sit and contemplate one’s life, but instead, you should strive to “lose yourself” within some meaningless enjoyment and indulgence of those hobbies. The benefit is that you will provide yourself with a much needed break from the goals you always seem to be chasing―taking a break and losing yourself in your hobbies will help you feel mentally refreshed and inspired to keep pursuing your goals and dreams.

There’s also another case for why your roots and hobbies remain important, regardless of what you are pursuing in the Rockstar Business areas of your life. Your soul, personality and identity are naturally entrenched in the spaces of your roots and hobbies, and I’d bet that because of all the passion that is generated there you are more than likely to find a few great ideas by sifting through the “information” available to you about yourself when you indulge in them.

Your hobbies will help bring you balance and serve as an escape from an unbalanced, “business-only” pursuit. Your roots will keep you grounded (amongst your great Rockstar successes) without weighing you down.

Defying the Black-and-White

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about myself, it’s that irrespective of how “right” something may feel in our black and white world, I simply can’t commit to it if my heart’s not committed. This literally means that I would pass up on an easy buck if it just doesn’t sit right with me.

Does this mean that Rockstars are irrational and picky? Definitely not.

However, it does mean that Rockstars recognize that the main reason they do what they do is the fact that their hearts are entrenched in their pursuits. The great thing about that is that our hearts are what set ourselves apart from the next person; ultimately, our hearts play a major role in whether we can live Rockstar lives.

The easiest way to be average is to start following average advice and average rules passed on by average people doing average things in an average job. Get the point? Most of the rules and restrictions we impose on our lives were created by other people: our equals, not any kind of superior human being. So why would you want to do whatever you’re told makes sense in the average world, when it contradicts your heart and gut feelings?

Rockstars make decisions that are the best for them personally and for the people around them. The only way to make those kinds of decisions is to stick to what we Rockstars know best: our hearts. Ditch the complicated and contradictory “facts” of the black and white world in favour of the very heart that makes you a Rockstar in the first place.