When you start living like an entrepreneur…

…you start developing habits that allow you to build the foundations of an entrepreneur’s mindset. That careful balance of preparation, skill, and opportunity. These behavior traits start to manifest themselves in subtle, yet important ways:

1. You start reading more about the subject. You look for role models who have made it Big. Donald Trump (The Art of the Deal). David Ogilvy (On Advertising). Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Stanford thesis on PageRank and how it works). Mark Cuban. Michael Dell. Warren Buffet. My list of heroes for entrepreneurs are two-fold – those in the valley (Tom Perkins, Larry and Sergey, the Twitter founders, my ex-CEO who sold his firm), and those in entertainment (Hugh Hefner, P.Diddy, Chris Angel). Most interesting is the story of Hefner. Borrowing against his furniture for $6000 at the age of 25, he launched the first issue of Playboy with the Marilyn Monroe cover. As his daughter Christie recalls, (Authors @ Google) “my dad never thought Playboy would become as global and as successful as it did. He just wanted to be good enough to not have to ‘get a real job’.” Read more