Experience。
The Beatles would never have gotten good if they just read books about music。 Tiger Woods started swinging the club (iʼm being literal) when he was three, etc。
If you want to be an entrepreneur, start coming up with ideas now, ideas that are doable with limited resources。 Start doing them, start selling them to customers, investors, acquirers。
Just start。
Self-analysis。
Thinking about what you are doing and coming to logical conclusions about how to be better。
For instance, in poker, reviewing the hands you played that day and thinking of ways you couldʼve played them differently。
Tutor/Mentor。
Every great chess player has had a teacher。 I donʼt really think there are any exceptions to this。
That probably goes for most games, sports, or anything thatʼs difficult to get good at (race car driving, etc)。 Most entrepreneurs I know have had mentors。
For myself, I worked at a big corporation before I was an entrepreneur。 The corporation: HBO / TIme Warner, is one of the best-run mega-corporations out there。
The corporation itself was my business mentor (“corporations are people, my friend” – Mitt Romney)。 Iʼve also spent a lot of time with one of the best unsung businessmen in history。
History。
The Beatles clearly studied the music of Elvis。 They probably also studied jazz from the 20s。
My guess is they also studied the art of the fugue from Bach。 Bobby Fischer once disappeared for a year (as a 13 year old) and studied every game played in the 1800s。
When he resurfaced he had subtle improvements on obscure chess openings (the Latvian Gambit, for instance) that were last seen at high-level play in the 1800s。
A great example of his knowledge of the history of chess is how he secured a draw in the last game of the Fischer-Spassky match when he transposed a complicated very modern Sicilian Defense into an old, drawish Scotch Gambit to secure the draw and win the match。
Talking。
Associating with not just tutors but other serious students of the field you are interested in is a good way to exchange ideas, synthesize the ideas you have about the field you are in with the ideas you have, mate them, and come up with new ideas that neither of you wouldʼve thought on your own。
The collaboration between Lennon and McCartney being a great example of this。 The collaboration between Brin and Page being a modern entrepreneurial version of this。
(See, “Why is Larry Page different than me and why didnʼt Google buy my company?”)
Failure。
Learning from your accidents (“I will no longer drive through a Stop sign”) catapults you through the learning curve very quickly。
My kids often give up instantly when they lose at something。 Thatʼs ok。 They just arenʼt interested。 But once you find something where you pick yourself up and you say, “I have to do better next time。
” Then you know you are onto something – a passion, a dream, the field where you can become a grandmaster, the field where you can become an entrepreneur。
Itʼs a secret you learn about yourself and you can be privately proud that at last you have found the area where very few people will be able to compete。
99% of people give up after a failure in a field。 Itʼs the best filter that will tell you that you will eventually succeed。
Then, once you fail and want to learn from it – go to #2 above – Self-Analysis, and begin anew。
Explore。
How do you get to be a great computer scientist? Study biology。
How do you get to be a great investor? Study music。 Ideas mate with each other and then evolution will get rid of the deformed offspring and keep the offspring that quickly adapt to the new generation of trials。
The only way to have those offspring in your hands is to fully explore brand new fields and make the connections, correlations, causations between the field of your interest and the new field you are studying。
I would like to get good at meditation, for instance。 What I have found recently is that studying quantum mechanics provides unbelievable insights that I would not have dreamed of。
Or being a good daily blogger – I found that studying the insights of Charlie Brown has been immensely helpful。
Balance
- In the post, the Nine Ways To Guarantee Success, I list nine things that could get in the way of success for entrepreneurs but it really applies to any endeavor。
Avoiding the nine obstacles of: sickness, doubt, vacillating, etc。