If that is the case, they’ll probably fail. I’ve noticed many personal projects cash out into having nothing more that ‘entertainment’ ‘participatory’ or ‘inspirational’ value. Most amateur projects are based on a ‘great’ idea or the artists’ immediate need for expression (or income!). (Y/N) – “My work is focused on a particular problem that people (or organizations) have.”Īnd you solve it in a unique way. One of the reasons personal blogs consistently fail is there is no particular reason they exist, no way they can fail, nobody they serve, and so eventually they just get forgotten about. If somebody asked me what’s an easy way to get tons more personal freedom, I’d say: “spend much less money than you currently do.” (Y/N) – “I have defined in hard terms what it means to fail.”Ī project is already dead in the water if it doesn’t have a fail point. If you need more than that, you are putting your work at risk. You only need the opportunity to do the work and enough money to pay the basic bills. (Y/N) – “I don’t need that much to live.” When you are getting started, you need to be a servant, not a visionary.Īnother way to put this: find the processes (work) that you love, not the products (particular instances of product or art). If you are obsessed with some lofty product ideal to start, you are in a dangerous position of ‘knowing what the world needs’ without knowing anything. I appreciate the idea of visionary entrepreneurs being passionate about a particular product and making a million bucks off of it, but noobs too often see guys like Kevin Rose, Steve Jobs, or some mega-blogger and confuse the result with the process. Bloggers will, for example, avoid choosing a focused niche for their writing because they “don’t want to be pigeonholed.” Ask yourself: what marketplaces (or groups of people) cares about your pigeonholedom? If you are over-focused on your end product, what you want to see in the world, or are unwilling to draw clear lines to when and how your project could make you a living then you are hurting your chances of sustaining that kind of work.Ī common example of this is writers and bloggers who insist on writing whatever comes to their mind and meets their tastes, rather than looking to do a useful service to others via their writing. * * * (Y/N) – “Making a living by doing the type of work I want to do is my top priority.”
In my experience, the entrepreneurial frame is also extremely effective in areas like art and non-profits.
If you can mange to say “yes” to most of the questions, you’ve got the entrepreneurial frame (there’s a scorecard at the end!). If you’ve got a project or business idea that you care about, I encourage you to run it through the following checklist. The entrepreneurial frame helps you to balance distant goals and big dreams with the simple and routine actions that lead to them. The good news? It’s not so hard to get it for yourself.
One you have it, finding some kind of success with your projects becomes profoundly easier. More than anything, the statement refers to a way of looking at the world: the entrepreneurial frame. I’m sure you’ve heard an entrepreneur say: “if you took away my business, I could build another one from scratch.”
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