Starting Something New: The Entrepreneurial Blueprint
It’s not too late to decide to change the trajectory of your life. You can course-correct your life as you go.
— Ham
I wrestled with what to do. Become a doctor? Start something new? I felt trapped, the momentum of my life decisions since age 14 driving me to a path that wasn't what I had envisioned.
I knew in my heart, that I wanted to transition and become an Internet entrepreneur.
Question 1: Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
Getting started is the hardest thing because it requires force. From status quo to step 1 change. It’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” It’s the force described by Newton: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by a net external force. That force is your entrepreneurial spirit to make a decision, that influences your mind, which then influences your body to act. It’s embodied in Nike’s motto, “Just do it.” Carpe diem, to seize the day.
Should I drop out of medical residency? I already had my medical degree. I should finish what I started as I only had a year left. Logical.
I was excited but also very nervous about starting something totally new. But was it new or just buried deep in my heart? What were these fears that suddenly appeared with the thought of starting something new?
A fear of failure. A fear of letting people down. A fear of criticism. A fear of change. A fear of the unknown. A fear of uncertainty. A fear of loss of identity. A fear of loneliness. They seem to engulf the excitement and passion of starting something new. Each fear posed as mountains in my new path.
Making a Decision
In 1993, I heard my Sunday school teacher, Bill Pottenger, an assistant professor at the University of Champaign, proclaim that a student there, Marc Andreesen, had just invented this thing called Mosaic, the first Internet browser. He explained how this was a big shift, a revolution in the making, that would merge all current and future forms of media onto the Internet.
I decided then that I wanted to be part of this upcoming Internet Revolution. I knew instantly that it was going to be bigger than the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution of the steam engine and factories, the Transportation Revolution of trains, automobiles and planes, and greater than the Media Revolution of radio, TV and cinema… combined.
I had an idea in 1997 to start a Yellow Pages online, but medical school, church and marriage kept me too busy. I knew I needed to really scope down this idea of the Yellow Pages online to start with just one category, much like how Jeff started Amazon with just books.
I could realistically devote:
Time: an hour a day and a few hours on the weekend
Money: $100 a month
Know How: very little
Resources: none internally
Faith: very little but lots of hope and passion
It was my final shift of the year, December 1998, at Pediatrics Emergency, I decided that I was going to start my Internet business in January 1999.
Once I made that decision, I knew it would be a ride of a lifetime.
And it has been a rollercoaster with lots of ups and downs. Just like life… With no coasting off into the sunset. We all know that this ride will eventually end. So make this ride full of what you enjoy and love and find meaning in.
Question 2: What do I need to do to make my side hustle into my life hustle?
Begin with the end in mind.
First things first.
These are two of the principles of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
My first domino to knock down was to make as much income as my current job as a medical resident, only $45,000 per year. My second, bigger domino: make my upcoming income as a family doctor, $150,000 per year. I had 1.5 years until I finished my medical residency, but I set a goal to accomplish this within 6 months and build an automated business where I didn’t have to be “in the business”.
My large end domino was financial freedom. I pegged this at $1 million per year. This would eventually grow to $1 million per month and then $10 million per month and I would ask myself 'When will it be enough?' Later I would determine this to be billions, as my dreams would require this much.
I’ve been successful whenever I saw the end in mind and started with first things first. When the end was foggy, it took much longer and often ended in failure.
Hitchcock first visualized all of his movies, then wrote them and then made them. When Jordan Peele was asked how he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for ‘Get Out’ as a first-time Director, he said, “Every time I went to bed, I pictured the movie I wanted to watch and then I made it.” I have a movie (or three) I’ve visualized that I will make in 2030s. (I think in decades.) A movie is only two hours of visualizations. And you can edit it every night with no cost but to dream.
Every building is first seen in the mind, blueprinted by an architect and then built. This is what we call ‘Vision’.
Question 3: How can I blueprint my startup? My life?
The how-to path may not be clear, but the start and end points should and can be seen.
Think through to the end. Then think backward to the start… Today.
Write the blueprint for your new startup, your new career, your new feature, a new you.
Then materialize it by experiments and course correct.
This is the way of the Entrepreneurial Spirit. The key word here being spirit, an invisible force of nature like the wind, able to move trees and if big enough, move the world. This is the spirit of creation, which resides in each of us. The great entrepreneurs are the ones who have freed this spirit from the confines of their minds and bodies.
This entrepreneurial blueprint should be executable by you. An executable blueprint. Write out your blueprint, digitize it, and print it out. Then start executing it into being.
Your Entrepreneurial Blueprint
Step 1: Make a Decision to start something new
Name it! Like a new baby, a new company, a new product.
Once you give it a name, it’s conceived. Congratulations!
Step 2: Envision your end goal (domino)
Start a side business with the first goal to make as much as your current job.
Have a target financial goal and timeline to accomplish it.
Step 3: Envision your first goal (domino)
Decide a start date.
How much time to devote daily.
Like a regular job, but this is your side job.
This can be 30 minutes, 1 hour or 4 hours a day.
Step 4: Scope down your idea
So that you can accomplish it.
Step 5: Envision an EXECUTABLE Entrepreneurial Blueprint
Keep it simple. Make it visible and read it daily.
Write down your blueprint plan, your logic, and the way you will make money to get to your target revenue over each month to your target date.
Print this out and put it by your bathroom mirror or bed to remind yourself at the start and end of each day.
Step 6: Get buy-in
From your significant other(s).
Getting them onboard allows you ‘to do’ and the best way is to ask for their support.
From the customer(s) early on
Life Advice Now
To my 29-year-old self:
Write your thoughts and questions in a notebook
Write it with a pen. The traditional way of writing unlocks even deeper thoughts.
You can transcribe later to digital. Steve Jobs wanted to use the finger to write on tablets. Maybe he read about how the finger of God wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.
Believe in yourself more
There is a lot of uncertainty when embarking on a new journey--excitement but a lot of questioning oneself about ability, skill, support, success, and failure.
Remember that anything you learned or became good at started from inability, ignorance and inadequacies. You had to practice and repeat. Whether it was learning a language, or learning to ride a bike. The same goes for anything new.
Get a coach
Find someone who has done something like this before and watch their videos, read their writings on how they approached it and the steps they took. Don’t look at their success but listen to their story when they started.
Buy their book if they have one and read their ‘origin story.’
Write out your Entrepreneurial Blueprint on one page
Write your GOAL. Your start date. Your target date.
Write your three biggest assumptions.
Your plan in steps (I call them dominoes).
And rewrite your plan as you experiment and learn new information.
Key: Find the Secret Insights for your Blueprint
This is the secret edge you will have.
The more you have the better.
Try to find 3 secret insights.
Think and perform rapid experiments
Conducted daily or weekly.
Think of each experiment as a domino to be set up quickly and then knocked down.
Conduct the experiments by thought in multiple iterations. Then design them to be implemented in the simplest way possible.
It’s ok to fail. Failure is learning and having the mindset to continually get back up, adjust and experiment again.
Edison conducted 10,000 experiments that failed to figure out the light bulb. 10,000!
Try to go for 10 experiments as simply and quickly as you can with no dependencies and resources.
Expand experiments to 100 and learn and improve each one. By the 101st experiment, you will know what you are doing.
Next week: My Side Hustle Becomes My Main Hustle
How I grew to $25,000/month within 6 months.
See you next Thursday!
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