Category: Skillset

The Murk

Navigating The Murk

August 5, 2021 /

Several years ago, in a small hotel conference room, I watched Dan Martell chart out a startup’s path.

He had a big a-frame writing pad and on the bottom left he started a line that went up and to the right.  Initially the line was straight, but after a couple of inches he started to scribble, and then take the line into a yarn ball of turns and twists.  Then the line started to straighten out to its original trajectory and eventually became true and finished on the top right of the poster board.

He tapped his yarn ball at the beginning of the line and said, “This is the murky middle.  After the initial optimism of your new startup you end up here.  Nothing is clear.   And you make an endless series of pivots to try and get your business to work with no idea of what will work and when it’s going to end.”

I come back to that illustration time and again.

It’s emblematic of what it means to be an entrepreneur because it is our quintessential problem.

The Murk is the fog of uncertainty where there are no known routes to success. It’s a problem that cannot be solved by reading a book or getting advice from someone who has been there.

Being able to navigate The Murk successfully and come out the other side is one of the core skills of entrepreneurship.

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Huginn & Muginn on Odin's shoulders

How to Choose Where To Put Your Attention

July 23, 2021 /

As an entrepreneur you work without the constraints that face most people in their work roles.  This is actually a double edged sword, because without that structure it’s easy to waste your time.

Because of this, one of your recurring challenges is simply knowing what to pay attention to.

The core entrepreneurial skill that addresses this challenge is being able to organize at the right level.  

Organizing at the right level is taking a variety of goals, obstacles, and data points and shifting your perspective again and again to determine what few priorities deserve your attention.

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Outperform Businesses of Your Size

June 16, 2021 /

Striving to achieve any business goal you encounter walls.  

Often, these are financial in nature: you don’t have enough money to hire a marketer, buy more inventory, or develop a product.  

Most entrepreneurs stop at these problems, believing that you can only address them once you have either earned more cash or taken on funding.

These are often false limits though and you can surmount them if you apply your entrepreneurial skill in creating value.

Doing so, enables you to “punch above your weight class” and perform at a higher level than similar businesses of your size.

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Folding Nothing

October 2, 2020 /

Folding nothing is a core entrepreneurial skill that concerns transforming value starting with nothing.  

It’s how you get from $0 to $1 to $10 to $100 to $1,000 to $10,000, and so on.

It’s a bit esoteric to think about in abstract, so I’ll explain how it works through a story.

Zero

Two years ago I forked a company named, “Resurgent,” off from our original Blue Bridge dev shop.

Resurgent is a consultancy that helps member based associations transform their website into a tool to grow membership.

Because I was approaching it as a consulting model, based on trust and expertise, I knew that speaking would be key.

I started Toastmasters and began to develop my speaking skills.  That was easy enough- just a matter of commitment.

The larger obstacle was how to get speaking gigs.  

Conference organizers are evaluated based on the quality of their speakers.  They need to put solid people on the stage who entertain and educate.

Consider your current situation.  You probably don’t speak at conferences.  You probably know very little about member based associations.  You’re actually very close to the spot I was when I was facing this obstacle because we had only one previous association client.

If you were me, starting at zero, how would you convince someone to let you on a stage? 

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