How to Train Your Mind to Become Entrepreneurial Pt 2

Continued from part 1

The key to taking risky bets is learning how to turn off the fear to light up the brain’s reward pathway, the side of the brain responsible focus, learning and pleasure which chemically wires us to be motivated. While independent of one another, the brain can’t be in loss and reward mode at once; when one is on the other is off. Some are born with a reward pathway that is easily activated. For the rest of us, there are a number of simple techniques that can be effective in trigger a focus on reward. By learning the ins and outs of our own wiring, we can start getting out of our own way to become more skilled entrepreneurial risk takers.

What three tips would you offer on how someone can start their first business?

1. Treat entrepreneurship as an evolution. Where you start is rarely where you land once you have been in the market for a while. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got their start hacking ma bell, amid their experimentation in phone phreaking Wozniak discovered his technical chops and Jobs learned he could sell and that led rise to one of the greatest technology businesses of our time.

2. Because you don’t know where the road will take you skip the early planning and focus on getting to market as quickly as possible to let the customer refine your focus.When you skip planning, it’s not a matter of if there will be fires but when. Focus on keeping cost of failure low and entrepreneurial adaptability high.

3. The road to success will be long, windy and full of potholes. Be militant about conserving resources. That means start small, focus on bootstrapping and take steps to lengthen your financial runway so you can last the journey.

Dan Schawbel is a Gen Y career expert and the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen Y research and consulting company. He is also the #1 international bestselling author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future and was named to the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list in 2010. Subscribe to his Personal Branding Blog for more self-help advice.