Welcome to good Life Project, where we take you behind the scenes for in depth, candid conversations with artists, entrepreneurs, makers and world shakers.
Here's your host, Jonathan Fields.
So, a few years back, I was giving a keynote before a room full of entrepreneurs, and from the audience of voice yells, why are you telling this to us?
We're not the people who need to hear this.
This is a waste of time.
Pin drop in the room.
Beyond the fact that a good percentage of the eyeballs in the rows in front were rolling, it was my first official keynote heckle, and I was talking about mindset and entrepreneurship, more specifically, how we need to embrace uncertainty and recognize that creeping emergence of decision making based not on optimism and possibility, but on fear and the desire to prevent loss.
And my friend in the audience was bothered because in that room, a room full of successful entrepreneurs, this wasn't an issue.
They all got where they wanted to be by taking these risks.
They were the ones without fear, the idea marauders, innovators and envelope pushers.
And indeed, when they started, nearly every person was there.
But what about now?
What about a few years into their ventures?
One of the biggest misses in the entrepreneurial process and mindset is the assumption that mindset and willingness to embrace risk and creativity are fixed traits.
In fact, the more successful most people become, the more they abandon the very mindset that fueled their success.
I call this creator's recall.
And here's how it works.
So when you're just starting out, especially if you're earlier in life, you don't have a ton of significant responsibilities.
It's a lot easier to be hyper creative, to be innovative, to put everything you have on the line and take risks, because you have a very small amount to lose, at least very little that isn't fairly easily recoverable.
So when you start a business or adopt a do or die attitude, all in mindset, you come up with ideas that are crazy ideas, and they're creating a breakout business.