The Entrepreneurial Adventure

An excerpt from the bestseller
“How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds”
By Robert C. Worstell - edited from the talks of
Earl Nightingale
Listen Now: http://livesensical.com/go/10cyl-ss/

The Entrepreneurial Adventure - 1
It takes longer than we realize, and the journey is an
arduous one. But, one day we wake up, and we've achieved a
kind of independence never known or perhaps understood
by the employee, no matter how high he or she may travel
in the hushed corridors of executive country.
All business activity in the United States and its territories
began as entrepreneurial adventures. Trace any corporation
back to its beginnings, or the beginning of its parent's
corporation, as is sometimes the case, and you'll find it
began as an idea that would fill or help fill a need or desire
on the part of human beings who would become customers.
We look today at a complex multinational organization like
IBM and forget that the company began in the mind of a
single human being. Anyone who starts or causes to be
started a business venture, is an entrepreneur.
The entrepreneurial adventure is endlessly attractive to
those endowed with entrepreneurial spirits, adventurers, in
varying degrees, whose visions of the future tend to be
hopeful and enthusiastic, rather than defeatist. The
entrepreneur is the person who says, “I think it'll be a big
success.” The non-entrepreneur says, “You're going to lose
your shirt.”

A survey taken many years ago of the most successful
people in a large American city turned up the fact that most
of their ultimate success depended in large measure on the
jobs they had lost; whether they had resigned or had been
fired wasn't all that important. And under questioning,
those very successful people thought about that interesting
fact for perhaps the first time and shuddered to think of
what their present lives might have been like had they clung
to one of those early jobs which, at the time, seemed so
important to them and their families.
Now they're not all entrepreneurs, of course, but they were
people with faith in themselves and their ideas, which is the
mark of success, wherever it's found. During those
important steps in their careers, they were no doubt warned
by well-meaning relatives and friends to hang on to that job
they had held, and lectured on the dark and dismal pitfalls
of venturing off on something as ephemeral and evanescent
as an idea. But of course, good ideas are not as ephemeral or
evanescent as their status in thought might indicate to the
more fearful. They're the most important things on the
planet earth, and it's producing ideas that raises the human
being to his or her highest levels of achievement.
Report excerpted from How to Completely Change
Your Life in 30 Seconds

Ideas solve problems and make our lives infinitely more
interesting and rewarding, less dangerous, better fed, better
employed, richer in countless ways, and wonderfully more
comfortable. Without ideas, we'd still be sitting in the trees
grooming one another. All the creatures on the planet have
life-saving techniques. Some are fleet of foot, others sharp
of claw and fang. There are fish in the deep, dark trenches
of the ocean that dangle tiny lanterns above their waiting
jaws. But for the human being, there is the brain, the idea
producer, to save his or her skin in a myriad of ways. And
the United States, the first nation in history with the word
happiness in its official chartering papers, offers a number
of options to those desiring to share in the good life. One of
those options is the right to go into business with little
more than an idea and the determination to succeed.
The idea that results and a person running the risks of
starting his or her own business depend strictly upon the
person - regardless of background, education, previous level
of accomplishment, and aspirations. For most of us, going
into business is a pursuit beset by many problems,
irritations, headaches, sleepless nights, long hours, and low
pay. Ah, yes, being in business for one's self does not
necessarily mean an inordinately high income. On the

contrary, it often means very little or no income at all for
long periods of time. But once the business hits, whether it
takes five years or 15, you've got the world by the nether
parts. You decide what you're worth in the salary and bonus
departments. And the company can pay for much that
would ordinarily come out of an employee's pay.
America's top executives working for large multinational
corporations usually earn more in salary and perks, stock
options, and bonuses than the great majority of
entrepreneurs. But the entrepreneur has something else.
He has control. And once the business is truly successful,
which means it's probably in a state of happy expansion, he
or she can hire the best executives to run things while he or
she takes a few months' rest in Hawaii or Greece or plays
golf in Nairobi and does a bit of deep-sea fishing in the
Seychelles.
You say it might take 15 years for that kind of success? Yes, I
do. But how long would it take you if you worked for IBM or
Chrysler, 15 or 20 years I suppose, if ever, right? And the 15
years aren't all pain and suffering and sleepless nights.
There's a lot of joy in there, too. There's the joy of seeing

your own ideas in action and of watching your own ideas
and efforts win against the competition. There's the joy of
watching the money pour in along with the orders. There's
a, sort of, kind vindication in that.
When I resigned from CBS, my friends told me repeatedly
what an idiot I was. I had reached the top. I went to work in
the beautifully paneled brass-trimmed elevators of the
world-famous Wrigley Building in Chicago. I rubbed
shoulders with the rich and famous, and I earned top dollar
in my profession. Man, I was on top of the heap. I had it
made, and I was only 28 years old. But I dreamed to be an
entrepreneur - in total control of my destiny - and as my
friends learned, it does little good to remonstrate with an
entrepreneur.
Christopher Columbus, brilliant navigator that he was,
could have spent his life in peace navigating up and down
the coastal waters of Europe and remaining within the
known boundaries of the period's world's maps. But at the
edges of the known waters there appeared the terrifying
legend: “Here there be dragons.” And it was there that
Columbus desired to sail. And it's there that every
entrepreneur desires to sail.

It's interesting to note that on the maps beyond the known
world, there was never a legend reading, “Here there be
unlimited opportunity for exploration, no doubt much gold
and silver and precious gems, and strange creatures living
beyond these boundaries waiting for discoveries and
development for the daring and intrepid sailor.” Even
though it had always been that way before, no one ever
suggested that it might also be that way in still undiscovered
areas. It's the natural proclivity of cartographers and advice
givers to look upon the unknown as bad. For they, like
children going into a darkened basement alone, feel that the
dark and the unknown must hold strange and fearful
creatures unimaginable in the known and lighted world.
They cannot think otherwise. It's their nature. Yet, at the
time of Columbus, not a single live dragon had ever been
seen upon the planet earth by anyone. Dragons were, in
fact, fairytale creatures, yet they always inhabited the
uncharted regions of the world. It said so right on the maps.
So when you get an idea that you think will result in an
excellent business of your own - and it needn't be a new idea
by any means - keep it to yourself and your secret notepad

for a period of time while you simmer it on the rotisserie of
your mind's consciousness and unconsciousness. Let it turn
while you view it from every angle. Look at it from the
standpoint of the worst possible scenario. If it's a good,
sound idea, it should survive even the worst times, as good
businesses do.
It usually takes longer than we realize when we begin. At the
decision to become an entrepreneur, we seldom take into
consideration the length and arduous nature of the
contract. But if our idea is sound, and if we are sound, and if
we fully understand the concept of service and the
importance of working capital and constant upgrading of
our product or service, and if we have the perseverance of
Columbus, we'll wake up some fine morning to find
ourselves one of the competent ones of our generation.
We've achieved a kind of independence never known or
perhaps understood by the employee, no matter how high
he or she may travel in the hushed corridors of executive
country.

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The Entrepreneurial Adventure

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