The Entrepreneur Workout Plan

Written by Matt October 02, 2009

4.8 (6)

One of the hardest parts of starting out as an entrepreneur is finding your path or industry. Before you start with any of the hard work in putting together your business, raising money, or hiring a staff, you must first discover your unique business idea.

Other times, you have a great idea that someone has already produced. So your challenge in this case is to find a unique niche or angle to differentiate your product or service.

In order to find your direction, here are five exercises you can use to build your creativity and dynamism as an entrepreneur.

1) Greatness 101

"If I have seen further than others, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." -- Sir Issac Newton

Learning from others is the universal method by which planet Earth's inhabitants build their knowledge base. While going out on your own requires individual initiative, fortitude, and talent, the development of your skill set will also require you first learn everything you can from others.

Toward this end, one of the best ways to learn from people is to get to know them personally. If your heroes are living, it's always beneficial to try to meet them. You can ask them questions and help gain inspiration for your own pursuits.

If your heroes are dead, it's best to read their biographies. Good biographies tell stories that give the reader insights into the inner workings of a person. Pick up biographies on all of the great achievers in the fields or areas of your interest, and make it your goal to get to know as many of them as possible.

Set a goal of a certain amount of biographies a month. Analyze each individual in depth, both based on cold hard facts and fuzzy intuition. Search for traits you have in common, and try to figure out where that person used those traits successfully or unsuccessfully.

By learning where they came from, what they thought about the world, and what they truly hoped to achieve, you can better descipher the clues to your own success. Knowledge is timeless, and by learning about how others navigated the murky waters of entrepreneurship, you can more easily illuminate your own path.

2) The Association Game

The most in-demand talent is the ability to combine multiple intellectual, physical, or strategic disciplines. In the 21st century, it's not good anymore (if it ever was) to be an expert at one thing. You must be able to relate your knowledge to different areas, and should ideally be able to combine knowledge from multiple fields.

Our most successful companies and innovators do this already. The newest fields in science combine existing fields, like bioethics, complex systems, genetic engineering, Google combines the power of algorithmic complexity with the subjective pursuit of human knowledge. Apple combines the power of aesthetics and usability with the colorless 1s and 0s of computer programming. Twitter combines the convenience of text messaging with the accessibility of the web. At the Prometheus Institute, our unique combination comes from combining creative marketing and abstract ideas for positive social change. You probably don't need me to continue.

If you're looking to become an entrepreneur, or already are, your approach should be multidisciplinary for the best effects.

To help you find knowledge that is useful to others, the association game can help. Whether or not you turn your unique know-how into a business, you can apply it as a consultant, speaker, nonprofit leader, coach, or teacher. As long as your knowledge is useful to others, you will find a way to make a living.

You know those magnetic poetry kits that give you a bunch of random words to shift around and combine on your refrigerator? Well, your pursuit of a new calling should be an equivalent experimentation, except with occupations instead of words.

Combine as many areas as you can until you come up with an idea that makes sense yet is unique. You can be a environmentally-friendly developer, a doctor and lawyer, or a sports business consultant. Whatever you choose, its uniqueness will be your greatest asset.

3) Take on a hobby or new personal project

Learn to master something new, whether it be just a hobby or a new profession. The endeavor will help you in a number of ways. It will increase your self-discipline and goal achieving abilities. Most of all, it will help you expand your mind to concentrate in different areas. You may even find a new business idea to pursue in the new field. But even if you don't, you'll have a useful outlet to maintain your emotional and physical health.

No matter what your hobby is, there are entrepreneurs who provide the tools, resources, equipment, etc., to the participants. As a hobbyist, you are the intended market, and should always be on the look-out for potential improvements among your existing options.

4) Write your future

Envisioning your success is essential to achieving it. This fact has been known to great achievers for millennia. Or as Bob Dylan put it, "You can't win with a losin' mind."

Now with the introduction of books and movies like The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know, many are even putting a scientific spin on that strategy, arguing that the science of quantum mechanics confirms the power of thought to influence reality.

Whether or not you buy that scientific mumbo-jumbo, the power of positive thinking can hardly be disputed.

One of the best ways of visualizing your success is to imagine the news/magazine stories about your success in the future. What would you like them to say about you, and why?

This method starts with imaginig where you want to be, even if you don't know how you'll get there. Write your ideal biography/puff piece/60 Minutes interview taking place 10 or 20 years from now. Specifically imagine the accomplishments, talents or abilities that you would like to be known for. If you're facing any obstacles now, think about yourself overcoming them successfully.

As you envision this biography (writing it down helps), the blanks in the details should soon start to fall in. Your calling should ideally involve a subject within your existing skill set, such that you should be able to intuitively figure out the successful path in that discipline. So the more you dream and write, the more your path will become illuminated. Doing so will help you find your victory both in mind and reality.

5) Incubation sessions

The creative process has three distinct stages.

The first is the preparation stage, where a person acquires the necessary knowledge to analyze a given question. This is the stage where an entrepreneur performs market research or a scientist performs research; the preparation stage provides the information necessary to discover a workable new idea.

The second state is the incubation stage, where the analysis takes place. This is where you think very hard about the problem you're facing, and use sheer thought horsepower to generate a solution. The key is to work hard but stay positive, even if you haven't discovered the solution yet.

In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell stipulated his famous 10,000 hour rule, arguing that a person needs to study a subject for 10,000 hours before they can master it. Some get lucky and succeed before they've studied that long, but the point is success takes a lot of work. Don't let your lack of success in the incubation stage get you down.

Finally, the third stage is the illumination. From the reports of creative innovators, the new idea comes "in a flash", and often even if you're not actively thinking about the subject. To encourage illumination, sometimes it helps to relax and think about something different or personally enjoyable to you. Having fun and feeling happy only help the inventor.

The great scientist Henri Poincare is famous for sharing the spontaneity of his creative process. It involved a flash of illumination after a period of sustained (and unsuccessful) effort. As he explained,

"I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetical questions apparently without much success...Disgusted with my failure, I went to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of something else. One morning, walking on the bluff, the idea came to me...[with] brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty..."

The practice of controlled relaxation is to continually cycle through these stages of the process, opening yourself to new insights while continually building your knowledge base. Study a subject, meditate on it, and then let it go to concentrate on something else. Rinse, wash, and repeat. You'll be surprised at what bubbles up.

Five exercises to help you find your path to the American Dream

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