A debate that many people have is the nature V nurture one -  are you born an entrepreneur or can you learn to become an entrepreneur?

ACTIVITY:

Complete the choice activity 'Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?' now so we can get a feel for how you all feel about this at the start of this curriculum area.  There's no right or wrong answer, it is just an opinion.  You can also post in the 'Born or Made Chat?' about this if you want to, or if you feel particularly strongly about the subject.

Those who favour Nature

Gary Vayerchuck, on the other hand, believes entrepreneurship cannot be taught, and hence you have to be 'born' as entrepreneur: 

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Gary uses himself as an examples and demonstrates an awesome lack of self-understanding in this video, almost to the point of narcissism - something which arguably many entrepreneurs of his ilk have (and something we will explore further later).

Evan Carmichael  balances this and helps us understand Gary's view by arguing for the traits of self-belief and drive being what underpins entrepreneurs and he suggests that these are not learned (and hence you need to be born with them) but equally everyone has them, only many don't unlock them!

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Focussing this on drive and motivation, the argument can literally be made both ways for entrepreneurship being about motivation and whether that is nature or nurture: 

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Those who favour Nurture

Seth Godin makes an important distinction between 'being an entrepreneur' and 'behaving like an entrepreneur'.  He argues that entrepreneurship is based on some actions, and hence it is a verb, something that you do, not something that you are.  Now some people will find the actions naturally easier than others, but everyone can learn the actions if they choose to.

Hence in answer to the question, are entrepreneurs born or made, the answer would have to be 'made' if you follow Seth Godin's logic.  You can read his blogpost on this 'The Four Elements of Entrepreneurship' to see his full line of argument.

Can it be both?

What if the answer is both!  What if there are certain traits that you can be born with a predisposition to which will naturally support your tendency to behave entrepreneurially, but equally these traits results in behaviour which can be learned or developed, particularly through experience, and hence you can develop your entrepreneurial behaviour also.  

This next video is taken from an introductory course for entrepreneurs, and you need only watch the first half (1min 20s) if you want.  

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One of the key attributes that entrepreneurs have is a tolerance for uncertainty and a capacity to manage risk.  That is not to say that all entrepreneurs need to be high risk with regards to their decisions - if that was the case, they'd probably all be broke.  Misunderstanding of this area is probably one of the contributing factors to the statistic that around 90% of start-ups fail!  

Entrepreneurs are good at taking calculated risks during times of uncertainty.  They also have a developed understanding of their attitude to risk, so they can manage it and work within it.

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

Something carries a 'risk' if there is a possibility that it might fail.  So when you take a risk, you are risking failure.  Dealing with failure is a whole skill set in itself which is to do with resilience, and that is covered in the next section, but in this section we want to focus on the fear of failure and how it impacts your propensity for risk.

Defining Failure

Failure is an attitude of mind as much as it is a judgement.  If you fail something, you did not achieve sufficiently well at what you attempted in order to have completed, passed or succeeded.  But failing at one thing does not mean you are failing at everything.  Indeed, failing at one thing is probably contributing to the success of another. 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Did you know that the Post It Note invention was an ‘accident’ and occurred when someone ‘failed’ to achieve their primary task objective?  A nice summary of the story can be found here:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/11/post-it-notes-were-invented-by-accident/

This is perhaps ‘the best example’ – in terms of monetary outcomes – of how failing at a primary task can achieve an alternative profitable or beneficial outcome, only sometimes we are too stuck on focussing on our failure that we neglect to see what we have succeeded at.

FAILING HIGH STAKES ASSESSMENTS

High stakes assessments are assessments that occur in school, University and Professional Bodies, where you have to pass the assessment in order to be able to progress down a certain pathway.  Judgements are made as a result of high stakes assessments that will impact future options.  An important point to note, is you will NEVER have to pass high stakes assessments of this nature in the 'real world' once you leave education and go out to work.  Hence they are not a good predictor of success in life - they are just good predictor of success at the next level of high stakes assessment.  Some people get good at passing them, others do not.  

Now, we are not advocating that you deliberately set out to fail such assessments as there are lots of implications for you, and your school, parents, etc in doing so, but we are trying to put them in perspective in the event that you do fail.  In terms of the rest of your life, it only matters if your chosen pathway absolutely depends on your passing, and even then there is usually another way.  For example, a girl really wanted to be a vet but was not good at passing exams.  In the end, she trained to be a nurse, and then having qualified as a nurse and succeeded at working in a hospital, she was accepted into vet school.  At vet school she managed to scrape through the exams by drawing on a lot of the medical knowledge she gained from nursing, and while by no means is she top of the class, she will be a more caring, compassionate vet for her background, learning and experience than the 18 year old who went straight to vet school having been good at exams. So, in the longer game, who is the more successful vet - the exam passing 18 year old, or the exam failing nurse who retrains?  

Photo by Feliphe Schiarolli on Unsplash

This applies the 'failure' attitude of mind to high stakes assessments.  Look beyond the immediate failure to determine in what way it is contributing to the longer term success.

If you are particularly stressed out about exams or assessments, you can seek support from providers such as ReachOut who provide support materials if you are getting particularly stressed: 

https://au.reachout.com/

ACTIVITY:

Consider 10 careers that you might think about pursuing in your future(s) - remember you can change careers so you can have more than one future.  Note by each one the importance of your High School Assessment results (ATAR score or equivalent) or some other 'high stakes assessment' that might apply to that role in your succeeding in that career choice.  You'll probably find that for most of your choices, the high stakes assessment is irrelevant.  Given this, is your fear of failing your high stakes assessments reduced?  Record your answer in the 'Fear of Failing High Stakes Assessments Choice'.

Failure and Risk

Some things you do are absolutely certainties and there is virtually no risk of failure.  For example, getting up in the morning and getting ready to go to school.  You're going to achieve this one way or another unless some peculiar external intervention occurs such as an earthquake for which the odds are very very low.  

Other things you might consider doing have a lower level of certainty of success, such as cooking a difficult meal, where it might not turn out quite as recipe book picture suggests!  This is a good example, because although it might not look the same as the picture in the recipe book, it is still likely to taste good, and it will do the job of feeding hungry people which is the purpose of cooking and eating.

Then there are things that are not guaranteed at all, such as winning a race.  Only one person can win an Olympic Gold Medal in an event in any Olympic year, but many people enter and try.  In this example, the chance of success is very low, so the risk of failure is very high.  But people still do it?  Why?

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

Firstly, the perceived benefit of success is so high that the risk of failure is tolerable, and secondly the risk involved is perceived as a tolerable loss.  That is, the time and effort spent training to be an athlete is felt to be a tolerable loss.  The athlete is prepared to invest the time and effort in training knowing full well that the risk of failure at the ultimate goal of Olympic gold is very high.  Thirdly, there are other successes that are achieved on the way which are not the primary goal of the Olympic gold medal, but are successes nevertheless which make the Olympic failure smaller in comparison (for example being the State Champion, then National Champion, then Commonwealth Champion, etc).  Plus there are personal successes achieved such as improving their personal best time/score, and personal goals that the athlete sets themselves and achieves.

ACTIVITY:

Do you have an ambition that you really want to achieve but the chances of doing so are very slim?  (Often these ambitions are comparative or competitive, so your success is dependent on the performance of others - which is something beyond your control.)  Break this ambition down into achievements that you can succeed at along the road to this bigger success.  See if you can find 20 other successes to aim for on the way.  Write them down in the 'Steps along the road to success template'  (or maybe draw a web diagram or spider diagram to show which lead to which and how they related to each other) and save this in your portfolio.  You can then go back and tick them off as you achieve them over time.

FEAR OF FAILURE

Sometimes our fear of failure prevents us from even trying something.  This might be good if the risk of failure is too great (ie you might literally die trying); or it might be bad if the fear is disproportionate to the risk.

Have a watch of this next video which is a TEDx talk by Dan Meyer called ‘Cutting through fear’.  Amongst other things, he talks about sword swallowing!  It's quite long but entertaining.

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ACTIVITY:

Make a list in the 'If I couldn't fail template' of all the things you would attempt if you knew you would not fail. For example, you might want to run for Parliament, but fear failing to be elected stops you from entering the political race; or you might want to leave your job and open a café, but the fear of business failure because it is a complete change of career path.

Now we want you to think about what it is about failing at that task that stops you from even attempting it.  This could be lots of different things from becoming poor, losing your house, risking family relationships, friendships, or some form of pain, or hardship, or realising you have no knowledge of the field you want to go into.  Try to get to as much detail as possible and list as many as you can for each thing.

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

Finally, we want you to complete the table by thinking about what, if anything, you can do to mitigate the consequences of the failure, that is, how you can reduce the impact of the failure by doing something before you attempt the task so that you won't experience what you are worried about if you fail.  This might include discussing the matter with friends, taking out insurance, learning more about something, etc.  

Save the template into your portfolio and start mitigating those risks so you can start taking on the tasks you want to.

RISK AND UNCERTAINTY

Risk and uncertainty is about understanding probabilities or other forms of modelling.  This is explained by Gerb Gigerenzer in this TEDx talk, which lasts just over 16 minutes, but is worth watching to the end to help you understand how risk literate (or illiterate you are).

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So the next time you see at 30% chance of rain on the forecast on your phone, will you be making the effort to take an umbrella?  What is the absolute risk rather than the relative risk?

ACTIVITY

Gerb believes the root to dealing with risk and uncertainty is daring to know.  Think of something that you feel is 'risky'.  Now find out as much as you can about that activity to see what the real risk is.  How much did you really know about this risk prior to doing this research?  Now that you know more, will you change your behaviour?  Post your findings in the 'Now that I know forum' to see what others think and also what others find out!

This next TEDx talk is by Debra Searle who ended up rowing across the Atlantic solo – watch the video to see why.  This talk lasts approximately 20 minutes but doesn't feel like it because it's a good story.  She talks about how we can learn to deal with choices we wouldn't normally make, and hence manage the fear of uncertainty.  She uses 'playing movies' and learning to ask for help, but her final message is ‘choose your attitude’ because it is a choice you always have.  She risked a lot in her story, only to realise what others also risked in her journey, and her story reminds us to consider the other important people in our lives in terms of the consequences of our actions on them, and the risks we are taking for them also.

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With regards to your journey forwards, what attitude will you choose?

ACTIVITY:

For the next 7 days, at the start of the day, choose your attitude - and it has to be a positive one.  Then list all the reasons why that attitude is going to be the one for you that day.  How does this exercise help you get through the week?  Post your reflections in  the 'Choose Your Attitude Chat'.

KNOWING YOUR RISK BOUNDARY

Hopefully you are now realising that risk can be managed, avoided and planned for.  In most cases in life, you have a choice about whether to take on the activity and risk the failure, or walk away.  Entrepreneurs will assess the risk and take it if it is within their comfort boundary of acceptable risk - and their acceptable boundary is often broader than others.

Your acceptable boundaries are based upon what you are prepared to lose - and it is personal.  You might be prepared to risk losing a friendship because you follow a path that goes opposite to theirs; a relationship with a family member because they don't approve of what you are doing; your high school certificate because you launch your business before you finish studying; your savings because you put everything you own into developing an idea; and so forth.  There is no right or wrong answer as to what you should risk, and it may change over time.

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

People often become more risk averse when they first have children as they now have dependents who rely on them, for example.   So your responsibilities can impact on your risk boundaries.

If you take a risk that tips you over your boundary you are likely to become very stressed and ill.  So knowing your boundary and when to stop taking the risk is very very important to your mental health and your success as an entrepreneur.  If a pursuit is not going to plan, there is nothing wrong with stopping it before you have risked everything you are prepared to - remember Gerb's point about knowing.  If you know you are not going to make it, quit before you fail.  But if you don't know, keep taking the risk until you reach your boundary.

ACTIVITY:

Consider all things that you have and could potentially risk losing through making the 'wrong' decision, or from a decision not turning out as you had planned - ie you fail at your primary task.  What boundaries would you put on those risks?  Given this, what activities are you now prepared to consider risking doing, and what are removed as possibilities?  This is not a fixed state - it can change as often as you want or need it to, but it is a good exercise to do before you consider any new venture or big decision.  The 'Risk Boundaries Template' can help you record this.

Resilience is about recovery.  It is being able to keep going when everyone around you falls, because you recover quickly and adapt.  Resilience is a mental state more than anything else.  The more skills and experience you have, the more resilient you can become because you have more to draw upon to help you survive the knocks, but above all it is the mental state to be able to draw upon resources, use them wisely and withstand the pressure you are facing.  The more resilient you are, the better and quicker you recover from failure.  So can this learned?  Absolutely!

Photo by Ryan Graybill on Unsplash

For some of you, this section of curriculum is going to be very challenging and painful.  If you feel you need support at all, please contact Kids Helpline, a 24 hour helpline where you talk confidentially about issues anonymously:

Call 1800 55 1800 or access this website: 

https://kidshelpline.com.au/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-KLb09r32AIVjJS9Ch0paQmFEAAYASAAEgKgE_D_BwE

This section is going to take you a personal journey to help you understand how you deal with rejection and failure, how you recover from rejection, and how you can develop resilience to this over time so that rejection becomes a useful response for you to build on rather than being seen as a failure.

There are a number of elements to be covered in this activity.

1.       Dealing with the emotions of rejection/failure

2.       Using rejection/failure as a positive

3.       Seeking rejection to test and push boundaries

The first is perhaps the hardest.  For rejection not to hurt at all, you’d need to be an incredible egotist and narcissist and it is only human to feel negative emotions in reaction to a negative response.  And effectively that is what failure/rejection is – it is a negative response to an offer we make.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

Dealing with FEELING POWERLESS

The negative emotions relating to rejection stem from our feeling powerless and out of control, ie we did not receive the outcome we sought.

This first video is a TEDx talk given by a woman presenting in a prison to an audience of prisoners.  This is an incredibly confronting video and hopefully shares an experience of a life that is way beyond where any of you will go.  She went so close to the edge, tried to kill herself, was drug and alcohol addict, and then realised that this did not define her and hence you can be who you want to be.  Recovery is an option and you are not defined by your failures.  

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The key messages in this video are that everything you experience, someone else has experienced so you are not alone; and your secrets keep you sick - and most people keep their failures and rejections secret because talking about failure is not the conversation most people want to have.  But it is the conversation that helps you recover from failure/rejection and builds your resilience to move forwards.

Regaining power starts with having a voice so you can stop hiding your failures and rejection, but share it to connect with others who have experienced similar events.  

ACTIVITY:

Select one rejection/failure that hurt you particularly badly.  List down all the things that contributed to the rejection/failure outcome, both in the build up to the rejection/failure and at the time of the rejection/failure itself.  For example, if you spoke up about something in class and it was put down by others - contributing factors might have been the question asked was not clear enough; the answer you gave was misinterpreted; the people listening weren’t interested in what you were saying; the teacher was running late and hence you were rushed in giving your answer; even down to it was raining so you were in a bad mood!  

Once you have your list, put a line through everything on the list that you could not have done anything about – ie they were out of your control, so they are crossed out and no longer on your list.  For example, it was not your fault that people weren't interested in listening, or that the teacher was running late, or that it was raining.  You could do nothing about those elements.  Hopefully this has at least halved the list, if not more. 

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

The lesson here is that you cannot solve a problem that you cannot own.  So you cannot own the weather – hence you cannot solve it.  What you can solve is how you feel about the weather and how you let it impact you.  So you regain power by owning the problem, or redefining the problem into a manner that you can do something about.  Powerful people own their own problems.  

So, taking an example above, you were rushed in giving your answer, can be rephrased as you felt pressure to answer quickly so answered without really thinking through the problem.   The problem therefore was you spoke without thinking.  This is solveable.  Next time, you will not speak before thinking about what you are saying. 

Or building on the example from the video, the problem is not that alcohol or drugs are addictive, the problem is that you relied on alcohol and drugs to the point they are now addictive - now you have control.  You can make the choice to not rely on them and seek rehab help to break the addiction.

ACTIVITY:

Go back to your list of contributing factors and by each one left on the list, reframe the issue into one that you own.  So, if the weather really is a serious issue for you, it was raining becomes I get upset when it is raining.  Now you can do something about it.  Don't get upset by the rain!  Each reframe sentence should have 'I' as the first word.  Once you have reframed the problem into an 'I statement' that you own, rewrite the sentence to give you back the power - ie what are you going to do about it.  This should be an action list for you to put into practice.  Write it out and put it on your bedroom wall to remind yourself daily of how you are going to take back the power in your life.

This task isn't easy so you might need some help working through some of the issues with others - the Powerlessness Chat is a place that you can do this.

DEALING WITH THE NEED FOR APPROVAL

The other cause of emotional discomfort with rejection is that as humans we naturally seek other people’s approval, and nobody likes it when people don’t approve of them.  Sometimes we want someone’s approval so much we will end up doing things we really don’t want to do, just so that they approve.

ACTIVITY:

Think about a time when you found yourself doing something you really didn’t want to do.  What was it you were doing and why?  Whose approval were you seeking?

Photo by Luke Ellis-Craven on Unsplash

Now the approval may be a pay cheque, or family peace and harmony, or some other thing, but the point is, you are not succeeding at what you want to do, and are facing failure or rejection because you want that approval.  Once you realise this, you can choose if you want it to continue.  Do you really want their approval that much?  For example, are you doing someone else's homework late every night to please them and they don’t really appreciate it? 

The really interesting thing with approval is what happens when you stop seeking someone’s approval.  For most people, your approval seeking behaviour is seen as you approving of them – that is, if you want their approval therefore you must approve of them.  Think about bullies, for example, everyone wants their approval so they are not the next 'victim'.

Once you stop seeking their approval, they start worrying that you no longer approve of them and hence you often find that they start seeking your approval instead.   This is why bullies tend to back down to upstanders (see the Being Different curriculum area for more on this topice).  When the don't get the tacit approval of nobody intervening when they bully others in public, they lose their power. Being neutral is very powerful.  In many ways it is more powerful than rejection as you don’t really know where you stand with someone.  So if you stop seeking approval from some people, you’ll stop experiencing rejection.

Photo by Eduardo Santos on Unsplash

Richard Sudek is an entrepreneur and gives a TEDx talk on failure that is great.  Part of the reason is, it is one of the rare talks where someone is using cue cards and is clearly nervous about giving the talk.  He reiterates the message in the previous video about keeping secrets being a cause of problems not a cure, by talking about failures and the need to share them to help move on.  Sharing is a way of giving yourself power back, and of other people being able to give you approval for sharing the learning if no other reason, and hence you start to feel better about yourself again.

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The idea of racing towards failure as fast as possible because you are equally rushing to success faster is great.  Learning gets you to success faster, and you learn from failure.

ACTIVITY:

Share a story of failure/rejection where you were seeking someone's approval and failed to gain it in the 'failure forum'.  Draw out your learning from this and hence how this now contributes to your resilience.  Get feedback from others as to how you can build on this further.  Give feedback to others also regarding learning you get from reading their stories.

Seeking rejection and failure to push the boundaries

So now that you have identified areas where you can use failure to learn for success; you can go that step further and test the failure points to find the boundaries you need to go to for success.  This can be a good process in proving your concept, as well as a means of building your resilience.

Now to really build resilience, you want to be able to handle failure and rejection, to develop yourself as a resilient risk taker, and someone who is not bounded by fear of rejection, or the word ‘no’.

The TEDx talk by Jia Jiang discusses his take on rejection, and how he learns to manage his emotional reaction to rejection in his development as an entrepreneur.  He learnt how to turn rejection into an opportunity purely by asking questions, rather than running.  Watch this video, and I'm sure you'll guess what your next activity is!

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ACTIVITY:

For those of you feeling brave, rather than aiming for 100 rejections, aim for 10.  Share your rejection tasks in the 'Rejection Task Wiki' and maybe swap a few ideas amongst yourselves.  Try to have some fun doing this, and also see how sometimes failing can be difficult, and how you can succeed at other outcomes while aiming to fail.  Write about this in your journal.

The last section focussed on how we build our resilience from becoming skilled at reframing failure.  In this section we focus on success, what it means to us, and whether we want it enough to risk the failures.  

Let's start with this video titled 'the life of an entrepreneur' by Chris Record to challenge your stereotypes of what you think life as an entrepreneur will be like: 

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For entrepreneurs in particular, failure is key to success as it shows you are pushing boundaries, testing ideas to their limit to find the iteration that works, and are prepared to take risks in order to pursue an idea you are committed to - within the boundaries you established in the previous section.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

FAILURE IS A NECESSARY CONDITION FOR SUCCESS

Once you are managing to better deal with rejection and failure emotionally, you can start to think about how you can use it as a positive.  This involves reframing, not just as a learning experience, but also as a stimulus for new directions and ideas.  The important thing is to hold on to your passion – how this is operationalised can vary.  Don’t be too set in your ideas as to how they come to fruition as being able to respond to rejection to find a new ways forwards which meets the passion in a different way may be possible.  Sometimes it is the delivery mechanism rather than the idea that is being rejected – we need to be able to discern between them.

Steve Jobs talks about loving what you do as the key to not quitting when you hit failure.  You have to love it and have passion.  If you don’t have that yet, you’ve not found the right thing. 

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Once you’re sure you have the passion, it is about using failure as a preparatory exercise for success, in terms of helping define parameters, boundaries, and the nature of the true value proposition.  In this TEDx talk, Eduardo Zanatta discusses the role of failure in achieving success.  He discusses the role of failure as preparation.  This is a great talk in terms of very clear simple messaging to focus on.

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ACTIVITY:

What are the beliefs that you hold about failure?   For example, what negative words do you hear about failure externally that makes you think failure is bad rather than something to be proud of?  Now come up with words that would underpin the belief that failure can be good.  Put these together as an infographic to share with others in the 'failure wiki' to contribute to an amazing collage on the benefits of failure.

UNDERSTANDING SUCCESS

Society tends to define successful entrepreneurs as millionaires.  They are people who have started multiple businesses and many have been successes - such as Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Alan Sugar to name but a few.  But money isn't the only measure of success.  Being famous is important to some people; winning is important to others; or simply making a difference in a manner that matters to the individual is sufficient for some.  We can get sucked into a game of spending all our energy and effort trying to achieve measures that other people consider to be success, but they don't actually matter to us.

Photo by Japheth Mast on Unsplash

Most of our school and working lives we are encouraged to succeed and often to excel, even at the expense of others.   Being considered a success confers certain privileges on one and this tends to be the case no matter what culture or country we are from.  In western thinking extrinsic measures of success are often material and associated with wealth.  Intrinsic measures are those we experience internally (and sometimes privately) and are far subtler.  So what does success mean to you?

ACTIVITY:

Find up to four images that represent success to you.  Post them in the 'success wiki' with a brief description of what they represent for you.  See how your vision of success is similar to or different to others.  

MEASURING SUCCESS

Now that you have images that represent your success, you need to develop measures so that you can keep track of outcomes as you achieve them.  What measures would you create to know if you are progressing to achieve the images of success you posted in the wiki?  

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

All measures should be based on forms of data.  Most of us are familiar with the data garnered from facts and figures as an indicator of business health, but look beyond these as there are also observable data such as changed behaviour or felt data (being aware you are feeling different), subtler but no less valid as a measure. Remember you are measuring outcomes, however they may occur.

ACTIVITY:

Once you have defined your measures write them down against your images in the success wiki.  Encourage each other to be inventive with measures and share ideas.

QUITTING 

So, what would make you quit before you succeed?  Do you reach your risk boundaries and then give up?  Do you hit your first points of failure and not have the resilience to get up and carry on?  Does the success you are seeking not matter enough to drive you through any pain you might encounter on the way?  

The more you behave like an entrepreneur, the less likely you are to quit.  Entrepreneurs are driven by their vision of success, what that may be; they are resilient to failure, pivot and pick up again; and they push the boundaries of risk.  

But quitting doesn't always have to be bad - you need to learn what to quit, and what to stick with.  This next TEDx talk by Dr Rachael Homer includes fantastic examples from her medical training on when to and when not to quit!

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Rachael argues that we need to get good at quitting the goals that are not important, but stick with the ones that matter.  

ACTIVITY:

Complete the 'Quitting Template' by identifying 10 things that you currently do that you are wasting your time on and ought to quit, and 10 things that are important to you that you should not quit, no matter what.  Now, start quitting the things that are wasting your time and use that time to support the things that are important to you.

NOT QUITTING

So knowing when and what to quit and when to keep going is important.  This next video makes the point that you will be successful if you keep doing it.  It was made for entrepreneurs and resonates strongly.  The argument made is that if you keep going for long enough, you will succeed - it is simply a matter of not quitting.

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Entrepreneurs make decisions and take action - regardless of how uncertain the situation or incomplete the data picture is.  That is part of behaving like an entrepreneur - being prepared to and able to act when others would wait to see what emerges.  What emerges is the entrepreneurs outcomes.  Entrepreneurs are resourceful.  

This next video if of Anna Ross from Kester Black, talking about how she made the decision to move from her business being a side-hustle to an ethical international business, and the actions this caused her to take.

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RESOURCES AND RESOURCEFULNESS

Often we feel we cannot take a particular course of action, or make a particular decision because we do not have the resources.  We tend to think of resources as being linked to money and finance, or we value other resources in monetary or financial terms.  This limits our consideration of resources to a ‘value’ rather than a utility, and really we need to consider the utility of the resources we have, and how we can utilise resources differently for different purposes. 

The international renowned leadership trainer Tony Robbins notes that most people claim that they fail because they don’t have enough resources (money, time, people, etc).  He argues that the real reason people fail is because they aren’t resourceful enough, and that the ultimate resource is resourcefulness – creativity, passion, honesty, care, decisiveness, sincerity.  He argues that we need to be resourceful enough to succeed, because people who are prepared to die to succeed tend to succeed!

Note that this short video of Tony Robbins includes swearing - the key messages are in the paragraph above so if swearing offends you, please do not watch this.:  

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ACTIVITY:

Make a list of all the resources you have that you could utilise to support an entrepreneurial endeavour, or a Courage Quest.  This can include people you know that you could ask to help you, physical resources you onw such as an iPad, or access to resources that you might need such as a large paddock for a holding a concert.  See if you can get your list to 100 resources you can draw on and save this in your portfolio to draw on as and when you need it.  Use the 'Resources I Have Template' completing column 1 - you'll get to the next columns later.

Developing Resourcefulness

Most people consider resourcefulness as being able to survive in the wilderness, finding good substitutions for a resource when it becomes scarce, or being able to drum up something from nothing.  While these are all skills that can be learned, they do not have the focus necessary for your VP to succeed.  To be resilient, you need to do more than simply survive; you need to be able to achieve what you want in a manner that matters to you, and that is the resourcefulness we seek to develop here. 

Research into resourcefulness linked to stressful events shows that planning, avoidance coping, and support seeking prior to, during and after the stressful event all increase an individuals resourcefulness during the period of stress.  

Jennifer Witterick in her TEDx talk refers to resourcefulness lying within ourselves and tells her story of how, when she set her heart and mind on something, she made sure she succeeded.  There are a couple of really interesting points here, including her reading The Hunger Games 5 times to learn how to write in that genre. 

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ACTIVITY:

Go back to your list of 100 resources (Resources I Have Template) and classify them according to whether they can help you with planning, or your can seek their advice and support prior to or during a stressful event, or whether the resource can help you cope with your avoidance strategies and support you in actually getting on with whatever you need to do!

DECISION MAKING

This next video introduces the idea of entrepreneurial decision making as leading to action.  

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ACTIVITY:

Try writing a 'to do' list each morning and see how much you have achieved at the end of your day, and how many extra things you achieved that were not on your to do list.  Consider the additional unplanned things on the list - did you make a conscious decision to do those extra tasks or did they somehow just happen without you deciding at all?  How in control are you of your time and the actions you take?

Reflecting on your week, and how control of your actions you are, there might be decisions you want to make that will give you more control over your time.  Write down these decisions and focus on how you can put them into action.  Commit to this by commenting in 'To Do Chat' about this activity, and what you are going to differently.

DECIDING TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT

This next video is of a young British Asian man who made a million pounds at the age of 16 by making the decision - against his cultural roots - to leave the family business and do his only thing.

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ACTIVITY:

Is there something you want to do that goes against the advice of those around you, and undermines the wishes of those who support you.  Think carefully about this, about what it is you truly want to do, and how you can put together your idea in a manner that you can present to your current supporters to get them on board.  Find a vision that represents what you want to do and download it as the screensaver on your phone.  This will remind you of what you want to do every time you look at the phone and keep you focussed on getting the approval to do it.

This next video is a light way of considering the choices entrepreneurs have:

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This final video in this section is of Kylie Lewis, an entrepreneur and mother, reflecting on the choices she made and the notion of regrets.  Have a listen and see how this helps you be more comfortable about the choices your are making.

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Hopefully by now you are convinced that everyone has the capacity to be an entrepreneur if they want to, and for some people this will be easier than for others.

The extent to which you are behaving in an entrepreneurial manner will depend on your vision of success, your tolerance for risk, your resilience to failure, and your commitment to making decisions and taking actions. 

Photo by Luiz Hanfilaque on Unsplash

These can all change over the course of time, with experience and with the progression of your life.  There may be times, for example, when you want to behave more entrepreneurially than others.

To finish this area of the curriculum, we just want to focus on the difference between being self-employed, being a small business, and being 'an entrepreneur' as perceived by the wider world, although we think they are all steps on the same scale.

BEING SELF-EMPLOYED

This is when you effectively work for yourself.  You invoice your customers, they pay you, and you take this as your wages/salary.  You are responsible for paying your tax (rather than an employer), you are responsible for your pension contributions (there is no matched employer contribution), and you basically get to fill your day working for the customers you choose to work for.  

The types of roles that suit themselves to being self-employed are professions such as accounting or book-keeping, and service provisions such as gardeners, cleaners, or other services where most people would not want to employ you full time.  

Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

The alternative to being self-employed in these situations is to join someone else's group through which you do the work and they take a cut of your earnings in return for your being 'employed'.

For a look at the advantages and disadvantages of being self-employed, have a look at this next video which gives a real life view of being self-employed:

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You don't have to have a 'great idea' to launch yourself into self-employment, you just need to have a skill that people will be willing to pay for.  The entrepreneurial element comes in to how you differentiate yourself from everyone else in the same market.  What makes you unique at what you do?

ACTIVITY:

Make a list of all the skills you have that you could put to use to provide a service to others that they would be willing to pay for.  Don't worry if this includes things you don't want to do - you don't have to do them - it is just good to have them on the list so you know they are a fallback position if you need them.  Use the 'Skills I Could Sell Template'.   You could set yourself as self-employed in any of these areas, something you might want to consider for a few hours a week both to earn some money and get some experience.  

BEING A SMALL BUSINESS

This is when your service provision involves you employing other people as part of your team, or you have a shop, or some other activity that requires a number of people to operate.  Many franchises are small businesses, such as Domino Pizza franchises, Prontaprint, or Bakers Delight.

Photo by Joshua Rodriguez on Unsplash

Again, you don't have to have a 'great idea' to have a small business, indeed a franchise is effectively working with someone else's great idea, but you do need to have the business sense, skill and ability to make the business a success.

Equally, a small business is where most entrepreneurial endevours start, as new ideas take hold in the market and grow.  It can take 4 years of small business existence for a new business to take hold and grow, and many don't make it out of the small business function at all.

ACTIVITY:

What sort of franchise would be possible where you live?  Explore the franchise package offered by the franchisor (you should find everything you need on their website), and make a list of all the advantages and disadvantages of taking a franchise option.  You can do this task with friends or others in The Inventorium if you live locally to each other.  Don't worry if you don't want to open a franchise - going through the exploration is good learning for starting your own business yourself.  Post your ideas in the 'Franchising Chat' to see if the opportunities for you are similar to others.

BEING AN ENTREPRENEUR

Those people who are at the high end of the entrepreneurial behaviour scale will have ideas of their own, which the see fitting an opportunity, and they believe they can provide a solution that can scale up to being a business that goes beyond their immediate location (ie national or international).  This is a key differentiator - entrepreneurial ideas can scale.  This doesn't mean they have to - if you take your idea to a small business and don't have the appetite for risk, that is fine, and it is completely up to you.

This next video sums up the difference nicely: 

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Serial entrepreneurs tend to start businesses, grow them, sell them and then go back to the beginning and start all over again!

Also, not every idea an entrepreneur develops is their own idea.  They are very good at spotting opportunities in the market and exploiting them, which often means finding expertise elsewhere to develop the solution to the market need.

ACTIVITY:

If you think you have an idea that fits this category, go to the Lean Canvas section of curriculum (found in the Brains Trust section)  to explore and develop the idea further, and also consider entering the 'Upstart Challenge' (found in the Courage Quest section).  

BEING AN INNOVATOR

The final term to explore is that of being an innovator.  You will often see the words innovation and entrepreneurship being linked together or substituted for each other.  The two are quite different and you can be one, the other or both.  

Innovators generate ideas that can be put into action.  They come up with the solutions to the problems, the next iteration or improvement to a current product or service, or simply a new way of achieving something.  

A good overview of innovation is found in this next video: 

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Like entrepreneurial behaviour, innovative thinking can be learned but some people have a natural propensity to innovate that others do not.  The Design Thinking curriculum and the Idea Generation element of the Upstart Challenge curriculum (found in the Courage Quest section) can help you with exercises to develop your innovative thinking skills.

Being an innovator is not enough to be an entrepreneur.  An entrepreneur takes the innovation and makes it into a viable business product or service.  Without the entrepreneur the innovator is simply producing ideas that work, but nobody is putting them into action.  

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

ACTIVITY:

Patents are a legal means by which you protect your innovation, but the process is slow and expensive.  The publishing of a patent gives your innovation details to everyone so new inventors can then try and improve upon it.  Given this, do you think you would apply for a patent for your innovation or would you try to keep your 'secret sauce' to yourself?  How else might you protect your ideas - and actually in the long run - does it matter?  Discuss how you feel about these issues in 'Protecting Ideas forum'.

SO WHAT TYPE OF ENTREPRENEUR ARE YOU?

Don't worry if you don't know what type of entrepreneur you are, or even what you want to be.  In this next video, Anna Ross from Kester Black tells us about how she got started and where she found her inspiration, and it is not what you would expect - in fact it is a bit of a happy accident!

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https://www.wesst.org/business-resources/entrepreneur-quiz/

while this second one looks at what type of entrepreneur you are, offering four different categories for you to fit into:

https://quiz.infusionsoft.com/questions

You can take them as many times as you want to.  Have fun!

Below are some additional resources you may want to access if you are particularly interested in this area.  There are no activities associated with them and they are not compulsory.

This is where you can upload any resources you find useful in this area to share with others and we will consider adding them to the main curriculum the next time we review this area.  Thank you for sharing.

If you've completed all the activities in this section and want to submit them for review for a certificate, press the submit for review button.  If you want to redo any of them first, no problem - it is up to you when you submit.