One of the things I really love about music is that when we hear great music performed, we aren’t just hearing great music, we’re also hearing an individual who has risen to his or her full potential.

The guy in the video is of course Bono, U2’s lead singer. The song is “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” As you watch Bono singing to thousands of people, you can just tell that Bono has 150% embraced his role. You don’t get the feeling that he’s thinking “Gosh, am I enjoying singing this song? Is this really what I want to be doing with myself?” You can just tell that he is totally congruent with what he’s doing, and is expressing himself to his full potential. Sure enough, thousands of people came out to hear it.

This may sound silly, but sometimes when I’m working alone in a room and trying to accomplish what I think is my full potential, I think of myself as the “Bono” of my little world. The way that Bono sings on stage — with purpose, and passion, and strength — that’s how I want to build Omedix, or deliver our web services.

So what other jobs require that 150% embracing of your position in order to really truly be performed well? I think actors have to do that, too. If an actor half-asses a role, it just looks ridiculous.  Watch a random B-movie on Showtime at 2am on a weeknight and you’ll see what I mean.

But an actor like Russel Crowe who throws himself completely into every role he takes…he’s the Bono of his world.

In fact, I once saw a 60 Minutes episode featuring Russel Crowe. At one point he said:

“Do I feel in an odd way that there should be some kind of understanding between me and an audience now that if I’ve done the movie, regardless of the subject matter, you should turn up ’cause it’s gonna be a good film? I know that’s kind of wacky to say that, but, yeah, I do feel that.

I do feel after, you know, ‘L.A. Confidential,’ ‘The Insider,’ ‘Gladiator,’ ‘Beautiful Mind,’ ‘Master and Commander,’ ‘Cinderella Man,’ there should be some understanding between me and the audience that, you know, if I’ve done it. One, I’ve put a lot of effort into it. And two, there’s something about it that’ll touch your heart.”

You can’t help but notice the pride and passion in a statement like that. And again, in order to have that kind of personal investment in a professional endeavor, you simply HAVE to embrace it as your life’s true calling.

Other examples?

I think my Dad, a cardiologist, is one. He simply loves what he does. He loves being a doctor, and taking care of patients. He loves cardiology, in particular. I’ve asked him before, and he said he’d enjoy doing other things, but there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing…25 years into his career.

For myself, I had a weird epiphany sometime in early 2008. I just realized one day that I *love* business. I love the idea of having an idea, exploring it, analyzing it, planning for it, mobilizing resources to achieve it, and then going out and trying to do it…and maybe making some money from it, too. I can’t explain why, but that is incredibly exciting to me.

I really like computers, I really like programming, I really enjoy working with people, but my true calling is to be an entrepreneur and businessman. I feel like I have an endless fascination with how businesses are fun and how they succeed. I love to read about businesses and business leaders. I love to meet other entrepreneurs. I’ll work all day, and still be interested in those things. I think for myself also there really is nothing else I’d rather be doing.

And then there’s the opposite side of a spectrum.  I was in a doctor’s office a few years ago, waiting to meet with him about his practice’s Web strategy.  While I was waiting, there were two pharmaceutical reps there.  Apparently, a pharmaceutical rep has to prove that he did in fact talk to a doctor and give the official company speech on why a particular drug is so appealing to prescribe.  He proves that by getting a signature.  All he really needs to show at the end of the day is that he got that signature.

I watched one rep basically doing his job, and he hated it so much it was just painful to watch:

REP: “Dr. Jones, if I could just get a few minutes of your time to explain the benefits of Lipitor…”

DOCTOR: “Oh, um, I have to see a patient, and then I’ll sign your paper.”

The rep took a deep breath, lowered his shoulders, and hung his head.  “Yes, sir.  Of course.”

Ten minutes later the doctor returned: “Okay, let’s hear your speech.”

In a brilliant display of absolutely zero passion, the rep proceeded to explain how studies show that Lipitor bla bla bla bla.  I didn’t pay attention to the science of what he was saying, just the intonation.  He hated what he was doing.  He hated “condescending” himself to the doctor.  He hated repeating the official company line, and he obviously didn’t believe in what he was saying.

After all of this, he sheepishly held out a piece of paper with a bunch of illegible signatures on it, the doctor signed, they shook hands and he was on his way.

Was this man living up to his full potential?  I don’t think so.  I don’t know what he would have been happier doing, but he was not Bono talking to the doctor.

Steve Jobs gave an awesome Commencement Speech at Stanford in 2005.  One of the things he said in it is that you should accept that eventually, you will in fact die.  He said that once you accept that fact, you realize that you really do have nothing to lose by undertaking pretty much any endeavor.  After all, if you’re dead, who cares?

He then went on to say this:

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I’m about to do today?  And if my answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Whoah.

In a way, if you hate what you do every single day, aren’t you dying a little bit each day anyway?

There is, I think, one tricky twist in the road to doing what you love.  What if you are really passionate about your destination, but your journey is a pretty lousy one?  For example, having experienced emotional pain in its most visceral form in my darkest hours with Omedix — working 100-hour weeks, feeling completely demoralized, and then realizing I just lost $10,000 that month…and had no social life — I think I pretty much exhausted my tolerance for “suffering through.”  At this point, if I knew that’s what it took to get my company going, that the journey ahead would be THAT bitter, then I’d have to take a different road.  But I’m happy today, so what’s the lesson there?

I think the lesson is that if you know upfront you’re going to hate the journey, why not just find a different route?  If the journey itself is going to be that painful, can the destination really be worth it?  I think the corollary is that if you’re in the middle of your painful journey — what Seth Godin calls “The Dip” — sometimes it makes sense to keep on keeping on because the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow really is worth it; and sometimes it makes sense to get the hell out.

So what about more established career paths?  Is suffering upfront worth the rewards later on?  I remember at Wharton that many of the finance people said that they were dreading starting on Wall Street, but that if they could just suffer through the first two years, then they could basically work anywhere they wanted and they’d be set for life.

Hmmm.  Well, what else could you have done with those two years of your life?  And if you just suffered for two years, won’t it be hard to justify not taking those next easy steps?

Or doctors in medical school.  I meet a few doctors now and then who kind of hate being doctors.  One doctor even told me he’d rather do what I was doing (Healthcare IT).  I think these guys “suffered” through college, medical school, residency, and fellowship, only to realize that the destination wasn’t as great as they thought.

I guess what it comes down to for me is that if your journey is going to be bitter but your destination is sweet, maybe you can take a different road there.  I don’t know, though…this is not yet a fully developed thought.

Anyway, the takeaway of all of this for me is that we all owe it to ourselves to find our inner Bono, or at least to go looking for him. For each of us, in our own unique way, when we do find it, it’s just like we’re on our own kind of stage “singing” to thousands of people, sharing our own potential with the world, while celebrating that we have in fact found what we’re looking for.

How wrong I was.

Take Richard Branson.  For his very first entrepreneurial undertaking — when he was still just a teenager — he purchased young Chrismas Trees, planted them during the spring, and then resold them at a profit during Christmas time in the winter.  I actually do think that’s pretty clever, especially for a kid.  But really that’s as far as “clever” alone will take you.

Branson’s next undertaking was the founding of Student Magazine.  At that point, he had to have the leadership and people skills to:

• Recruit a staff
• Sell advertising
• Inspire the staff to produce the magazine
• Negotiate business deals

…and so forth.  And in spite of all of that, they were always short on cash, barely broke even, and still ultimately had to close down eventually (though not before snagging interviews with John Lennon and other really high-profile people!). 

Student Magazine was actually brilliantly innovative at the time.  Before then, at least in the UK, there was no such thing as a magazine that targeted students.  Today, there’s plenty of media targetting kids (ahem, WB), but at the time it was a really novel idea.

Anyway, eventually Branson quit the magazine and decided to run a record store — the original Virgin Music.  Branson and his cohorts actually called it Virgin because they figured they were all virgins at business (and they liked the edginess).

Over time, Branson had to:

• Negotiate a lease for the space
• Negotiate with record companies to get music in the store
• Recruit staff
• Motivate staff
• Keep a cool environment while still making a profit
• Help sell records to customers
• Figure out what the hottest new records would be so he could stock the store right

Actually, for that last one, Branson didn’t even do it himself.  He had an assistant whom he described as brilliantly gifted at predicting the latest trends in music.  Based on his expertise, Virgin always stocked very hot and edgy artists.

Branson eventually went on to expand the record store to multiple locations, to raise money to purchase a mansion which he turned into a recording studio, to start a music produciton company, to sign major bands like the Sex Pistols, and eventually to sell it all for somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million.

Incidentally, I’m getting all my information from the very entertaining read: Losing My Virginity: An Autobiography of Richard Branson.

Anyway, as I got my own experiences in entrepreneurship and continued reading about others, I started learning that so much of entrepreneurship is people skills.  “Clever” is important, but really only in the visioning stage.  Coming up with a really cool vision really does require a deep understanding of the market, and the creativity to figure out where the industry is going.

But once you’ve got a vision for a business, then what?  I have a vision to create a new kind of retail experience where you use technology to figure out what kind of look you want.  Ok, great.  So, do I have the gumption to go out and:

• Get funding
• Recruit a staff
• Train a staff
• Motivate a staff
• Attract customers
• Etc.

Clever started with the vision, and then it took a seat while “tenacity”, “optimism” and people skills stood up.

The takeaway for me is just that to develop yourself as a successful businessperson or entrepreneur, it’s not enough to just know theories of business (the long tail, crossing the chasm, etc.) or to be smart.  It’s also not enough to know your business fundamentals (the concept of a budget, operational planning, sales & marketing, management concepts, basic planning skills).  You also have to develop people skills and emotional resiliency. I think part of being a great businessperson is also about being great at things besides just business.

So the next time you’re out just having fun with friends, as far as I’m concerned, you’re also working on your business skills!

I’ve been guilty of this, and it’s something I’m actively working to change.

Read the article for yourself!

• From both wealthy homes and poor homes
• Of pretty much all ethnic backgrounds
• From pretty much all educational backgrounds
• Of pretty much all ages
• In equal proportion from both sexes

Of course, as with any group, there are things in common. I guess “traits of an entrepreneur” is destined for another posting.

This post is about a very important difference I’ve seen in all entrepreneurs, and here’s what it comes down to:

All entrepreneurs I’ve met are ambitious; some of the entrepreneurs I meet are also grandiose.

What do I mean by grandiose? Well, take me as an example when I started Omedix. My goal was — prepare for buzzword overload, here…

To revolutionize healthcare by creating next-generation web solutions that integrate with every electronic medical record system and practice management system, and offer a “network” of practices that functions as a de facto national health exchange

Reality Check?  I was 24 years old, with zero experience building a company and no money.

There’s having the cajones to follow your dreams and achieve what others said couldn’t be done…and then there’s grandiose. To me, the critical distinction between “cajones” and “grandiose” is that with cajones you have a plan, you know what you’re signing up for, you know the risks, you know there’s a chance of failure and a chance of success, you know almost EXACTLY what your “risk proposition” is…and you still choose to go for it. That takes courage.

But grandiose is different. Grandiose is being so enamored with your vision that you never bother to consider the risks, or wanting your company to work so badly that you don’t think through the financials, or wanting to succeed so much that you disregard the challenges required to achieve your vision. In short, grandiose is being so obsessed and in love with your vision that thinking about the day-to-day realities it will take to achieve it becomes, well, boring.

What’s interesting about this is that many of today’s great companies started off as very simple visions. Take Dell as an example. Michael Dell started his company by purchasing computer parts on his own, and then manufacturing computers for friends & family in his college dorm room. At the time, it was cheaper to build than to buy so he made a small profit.

Eventually, he became so busy that he dropped out of college. Eventually, he moved out of his garage and into an office. Eventually, he began sourcing other products (like mouses, monitors, etc.) and eventually he began advertising every week in computer magazines. Eventually he pioneered the whole “built to order” concept as well as the “just in time” inventory concept and, well, he built a multi-billion dollar company.

Going all the way back to the first computer he built, Michael Dell did NOT start by raising capital to go build a factory. He just did something that added value for somebody, and then he took it to the next logical step. Was he grandiose? I don’t think so. Did he have cajones when he chose to drop out of college so he could “build computers for people”? Yeah, I think so.

By contrast, most of the first-time or aspiring entrepreneurs I meet sound the way I did before I had any experience: you’re going to take over the world, and you’ll figure out the details later.

I guess what I’ve come to realize is that, while the vision is sexy and while the vision is what the media and American folklore love to latch onto (”One great man…had a vision…that one day…premium coffee would be available on every street corner”), the real substance is in those so-called boring details.

I was so obsessed with my own vision when I started Omedix that I didn’t even bother to make a budget! I mean, honestly, that is the FIRST thing you do when planning a business, and it took me — get ready — about a year before I did that. My logic at the time? We’re going to be so successful eventually that short-term losses don’t matter. That’s not cajones; that’s grandiose.

I find that the best entrepreneurs are not risk TAKERS, but risk MITIGATORS. They eventually take the risk, but only after they really know what they’re doing. They’re also total realists…about everything. What will this cost? How long before we make money on it? And so forth. That sexy grandiose vision stuff: I think it starts out pretty simple to be honest.

I’m not trying to malign the notion of a passionate vision. In fact, I think it’s visionaries that ultimately push the world forward. But at the end of the day, what will it realistically take for your vision to become reality? How will it make money? If your vision requires $100 million, 7 years, and partnerships with every major company in your industry, is that really the BEST next step? Why not start smaller, or consider partnering with someone who has that kind of experience, or starting a business that COULD grow into that but won’t start that way. Why be grandiose, when you can just be courageous?

I guess what it comes down to is that dreams are wonderful and amazing and inspiring, but if we leave them as dreams without ever hatching a plan to turn them — step-by-step — into realities, then all we have are daydreams. There’s nothing wrong with daydreaming of course, but it takes real courage — real cajones — to step outside the dreamworld and start planning your first few steps.

Fast forward about 2 years and I was actually starting to feel kind of burned out. I was so sick of working and working and working…and I felt like I didn’t have all that much to show for it. It’s hard to describe but here’s the way it felt:

Imagine you’re sitting in some newfangled car and you want it to go fast. You’ve been told that in order to make the car go, you have to push on the gas pedal. You happen to notice about 10 different levers on your right and you don’t know what they do or why they’re even there. When you press on the gas the car barely moves. When you push harder it moves a little bit faster but it’s still pretty slow. Plus, pushing so hard on the gas is making you tired.

So then you decide to start adjusting the levers. You push one lever all the way down and notice that the windows go down and the car is now going in reverse. You push another lever all the way up and now the car keeps on turning in circles. You play around like this for, say, 2 years, until you get the exact configuration of levers so that the windows are just the way you want them, it’s easy to push on the gas, and your car is moving speedily along.

I suppose that’s a bizarre metaphor, but imagine when you’re still in the beginning phases of figuring out the car and you’re feeling very ambitious. That’s great and all, except that “try harder” is not the problem. The problem is that you weren’t pressing on the gas with the right lever settings in the first place.

One thing I’ve discovered about myself and about so many other entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs is that you don’t bother becoming an entrepreneur unless you’re ambitious in the first place. When you start your own company it’s the most exciting thing in the world and ambition is at full force. But you can very easily burn yourself out by just stomping on the gas without bothering to configure those levers the way they need to be configured.

I’ve seen different people handle that challenge differently. Some people never realize there are levers in the first place, they exhaust themselves pumping the gas, their car goes nowhere, they get frustrated and they quit. Other people spend so much time tweaking the levers without ever trying the gas that their car also goes nowhere and they too are tired.

The successful ones, it seems, press the gas a little to see what happens, and then try adjusting those levers. They ask questions of people who’ve driven this car before. They read up how others configured their levers. They try some lever configurations no one else has tried. In some cases they nearly crash the car, but then they stop, regroup, adjust the levers yet again, and then press the gas a little to see what happens.

When you finally get the configuration just right, “ambition” becomes a wonderful thing again. Suddenly the harder you pump that gas the faster your already-fast car starts going. Now you actually get REWARDED for your ambition!

Incidentally, when you finally get the levers configured well, your car looks sexy, and you’re moving fast, people watch it go and say “Wow, that guy’s got it made. Look how lucky he is.” Little do they know about the levers that had to be configured so exhaustively before it works the way it’s supposed to. Little do they know the levers rattle sometimes and have to be re-adjusted, or updated to match new road conditions.

Anyway, enough of my ridiculous metaphor. My point is that ambition is really just a willingness to expend a great deal of energy to achieve your goals. When you’re in a setting like high school or college or an established corporation where the levers have already been configured for you and you’re just given a gas pedal, you really can “win” by working harder. That’s how your car is set up.

But when you setup a company, your car goes nowhere until it’s configured and if you’re not careful your ambition can wind up exhausting you.

Ambition is a good thing; a great thing, actually. But I’m starting to learn that ambition is not infinite or inexhaustible.  We get tired.  We get burned out.  But what keeps you going is when you see your car moving.  You know that if you can just push yourself to pump the gas a little harder you’ll recover your energy while your car is coasting along.

I’ve now learned never to pump the gas too much until my levers are where I want them to be.

“A man can achieve anything if he can think, if he can wait, and if he can fast.”

“Business is nothing more than managing constraints and doing a good job of predicting the future.”

The second thing is the insight she has from the whole experience, which isn’t revealed until the end, but which is such a simple and powerful message: basically, go with the flow. One of the best web videos I’ve seen.

It sounds awful even just writing all that! Actually, the obsession with “I personally” is ultimately I think the completely wrong attitude when it comes to growing a company, but that’s the topic of another post I’ve been germinating lately.

Anyway, one unfortunate side effect of being the bottleneck is that it creates a feeling that I’m never finishing everything I want to, which is stressful. In school, we were always taught that finishing 100% of our homework was a good thing. You worked and worked until you finished what you had to do, and then you go have fun.

But what if you’re in a situation where you will literally NEVER finish all your work?

That was by far one of the most frustrating aspects for me of entrepreneurship. I was never “done”; I was never “caught up”. My personal productivity was always less than the amount of things that needed to be done.

So what do you do with a situation like that? Do you just raise the white flag and mentally adjust to “I’ll do the best I can”? Do you enlist the support of others to lighten the workload? Do you try to alter the whole dynamic of it all (stepping “outside” the problem)? Well, yes.

I actually have adjusted my attitude on this to three Key Ideas:

(1) I can only ask of myself that I do my best.

By definition, I can’t possibly do better than “my best.” So it stands to reason that all I can expect from myself is my best, and anything beyond that is simply unreasonable. This was a pretty helpful realization because it relieved me of the stress of trying to get everything done and instead made me realistic about what COULD be done.

(2) Enlist the support of others.

If I want our company to increase revenue by 5x this year, can I work five times as many hours? Can I work fives times as productively. Well, no. And yet there are companies that have grown by more than 5x in a single year. Where does the magic come from? It can only be through leverage: by enlisting the support of my colleagues, by enlisting the financial support of investors, by squeezing more juice out the oranges our vendors send us, by capitalizing on the relationships we have with our clients, etc. I’m still not nearly as good at this concept as I’d like to be, but I’m starting to realize it’s the ONLY way that great companies are ever built.

(3) Make the mental choice: Is your life a series of stresses or a series of adventures?

And finally, after a long talk with my Dad one day, he summed it all up for me so well: “You can either choose to view life as a series of stresses, or life as a series of adventures.”

Wow.

It’s so true. I realized after he said that that there will ALWAYS be something to stress about. Those stresses don’t get in the way of life; they are PART OF life! And so, when the next stressful event comes up, we can choose to be stressed (which is natural, and often healthy even), but we can also choose to see it as a fun little adventure. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, here in the USA most of us have our safety, a roof over our heads, and food in our stomaches, not to mention friends and family. At the end of the day, whatever we’re stressing about isn’t really life or death most of the time.

So those are my three big Key Ideas. I don’t practice them perfectly yet, but at least when I go to the office tomorrow and realize yet again I won’t be able to get to everything that I want to, I’ll have some perspective on it!