Is Your Brain Running Entrepreneurial Software?
Chapter Six: Digital Messiahs
Who can be our guide in a rapidly changing world?

“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
William Gibson, Canadian Author
A small group of people already know how to thrive in the digital world. They seek out opportunities to create new things. They learn what works and what doesn’t work through years of hard work, soul-searching, and feedback. And since they found out what works, that means we don’t have to. We get to fast-forward our own progress by looking to them for inspiration.
I’m talking about a very unusual breed of entrepreneurs, consultants, and freelancers. Specifically, people in these categories who have built profitable, fulfilling businesses according to the rules of the digital world. They have cracked the code on the creative economy that we discussed in Chapter 2. I will refer to this ambiguous group collectively as “entrepreneurs” for the sake of clarity.
Entrepreneurs are important because they represent an extreme end of the professional spectrum. Despite the rosy portrait that’s often painted by the media, entrepreneurship is brutal. Building a new business from scratch is the most difficult thing you can do in a professional capacity. In fact, at least 92% of new companies will fail, and that figure is probably much closer to 99%!

The odds are stacked against the entrepreneur when starting a new company. He or she is shaping the world in ways no one else ever has. Yet the successful ones somehow figured out a way to beat back distractions, find a valuable niche, build a great team, and sustain momentum long enough to achieve a nearly impossible dream. That ain’t easy!
We need to pay close attention to the few who managed to pull it off. The mindset and behaviors of these successful entrepreneurs are a rich source of clues to help us think through our own lives.
To be clear, I’m not saying that we all need to build businesses. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to benefit from the lessons they have to offer. The point is that we can look to these extreme cases and extract the best strategies and tactics to try out in our own lives.

What if you wanted to get in great shape? Would you want an average-looking personal trainer? Of course not. You would want someone who practices what they preach. A really fit trainer probably knows a lot more about what works in practice, not just the stuff that sounds good.
The same logic applies to the newest crop of entrepreneurs. They can show us what is practically useful, which lets us leapfrog over a lot of mistakes and wasted time.
Entrepreneurs, Assemble
I run an entrepreneurial education program at Stanford called the Silicon Valley Innovation Academy, or SVIA. The seven-week course runs each summer for visiting students, mostly international folks. They want to learn more about how they can tap into the Silicon Valley magic and build their own great companies. They are the definition of hungry: full of enthusiasm and limitless energy. Just being around them energizes me!
These entrepreneurs start the summer by assembling into small groups. Each group organizes around a specific vision for a new startup. We help them identify potential customers based on their idea. Then they try to talk to these potential customers about their product or service. This lets them know if their startup is actually addressing a real need out in the world.

The groups assemble at least once a week and update me and my team on their progress. This rhythm continues throughout the summer, so we get to see the rapid evolution of each startup. The teams go from vague statements about customers to being focused like a laser on specific problems that their startup can address.
Every entrepreneur will hear “No!” hundreds or thousands of times when starting a new company. Our SVIA startups are no exception. These kids — most of them 19 or 20 years old — are constantly having doors slammed in their faces, and rejection emails. For seven weeks straight.

How long would you keep going? A few days? A few weeks? Imagine the resiliency you would need to maintain your enthusiasm, not to mention the stress that you and your team would be under.
How much would you need to believe in your dream?
Is It Worth It?
In a recent SVIA, a young woman — let’s call her Melissa — came to me during office hours about halfway through the program. We sat outside at Coupa Cafe in the Stanford Graduate School of Business on a beautiful summer day. Normally these sessions go through a predictable process: talk about what isn’t working; talk about potential fixes to these problems; and talk about immediate next steps.
Melissa wasn’t interested in any of that. She cut right to the core of the issue that was plaguing her. She plopped down in the chair to my left, stared bleakly at me, and asked “Is this worth it?”
I could see tears starting to form in her eyes. She looked like she was going to crumple up. And I had nothing but sympathy for her. I’ve walked the same path. I’ve shed the same tears. Melissa came into SVIA full of confidence with a clear vision of the future she wanted to build. But with three straight weeks of rejection by the people she thought she was helping, the cracks were starting to show.

Melissa cared so much about her idea. I had seen the passion on day one, when she fearlessly stood up in front of a packed auditorium to recruit other people to join her team. Back then it had been so simple. “Here’s the idea. Isn’t it great? Don’t you want to join my team, everyone?” And now, not even a month later, the world seemed to be conspiring against her.
Now she was starting to understand just how hard entrepreneurship can be. She had lots of other options back home. No one would blame her for giving up now. But then her vision for the future would never come to pass. No one would ever have their lives transformed by her company. The world would remain unchanged. This was the realization with which she was struggling on that sunny morning at that small cafe tucked into a corner of the Stanford campus.
“Is it worth it?”
Looking Ahead
Entrepreneurs can show us how to live with purpose. This rare breed of person takes on the responsibility of building that purpose for themselves, and eventually for their employees. Most of us simply inherit a purpose from others. Building purpose is a whole other level of passion and commitment.
Our job is to learn from this unusual class of people who have done amazing things. Why? Because they already picked up a lot of hard lessons along the way. We get to push past a lot of the nasty stuff and go straight to the behaviors that work. Take the elevator, not the stairs.

What do entrepreneurs have to teach you? A lot, actually! We are all stuck in the same digital world. We are all constantly tempted by the same distractions.
What’s important to understand is how much some of us are able to beat the odds despite those distractions.
Here’s the simplest way to put it: entrepreneurs get a lot done. Most of us do not. What’s the difference? Let’s explore five behaviors that tend to separate entrepreneurs from other people: having a vision; using tools; bending the rules; continuous prioritization; and ruthless focus.
- A vision of what could be
Entrepreneurs distinguish themselves by emphasizing a natural tendency to be more mission-oriented. They are driven to do something big, a future they believe can be created. They see the way the world works right now, and they want to change it. Entrepreneurs tend to default to the inspiring goal, not the messy details. The business itself is not the point, which often surprises people. A business is just a mechanism for facilitating the change they want to see in the world. The vision for the future is what matters. And it is this vision that changes the way a person thinks and acts.

2. Everything becomes a tool
To make that dream a reality, entrepreneurs learn to manipulate the world around them. Everything gets relabeled. People, companies, money, and information are all lumped into the same category: tools. All these things that we see as separate are instead tools to use in the pursuit of the entrepreneur’s vision. If something does not help them accomplish their goal, then it doesn’t matter. Functional value is all they care about.

3. Suggestions, not rules
Entrepreneurs bend the rules when it suits them. They break rules, too. They will do whatever it takes to get to change the world. Many of us accept the way things are because we have no reason to dig any deeper. But an entrepreneur is constantly asking why things are the way they are. And dismissive answers will not dissuade them from investigating and manipulating whenever possible. Nothing stands in their way. This resourcefulness is a critical trait for anyone trying to build a new company from scratch.
4. Avoiding time wasters
Distractions are even more of a hazard for an entrepreneur than regular people. New companies involve a lot of moving parts. There are legal, financial, and operational issues popping up constantly. There’s the recruiting of people to their team. Don’t forget the constant challenges related to product development. And, of course, the never-ending requests from customers, investors, partners, and so on. It’s easy for an entrepreneur to allow the situation to become overwhelmed. A lot of entrepreneurs make that mistake when they start. Success will require that they identify and focus their time on accomplishing the things that really matter.
5. Focusing on outcomes
Results are all that matter, not intentions or appearances. The contract was signed or it wasn’t. The money arrived into the bank account or it didn’t. There isn’t much of a choice for anyone who is serious about building a business. Either figure out what will work, or go get a job and stop pretending to be an entrepreneur. The worst outcome would be getting stuck in purgatory for years waiting for a break that never comes.
Clarity and confidence separate the foolish and the wise. The amateur and the professional. The failure and the success.
Making things complicated is easy. Simplifying is hard. At the core of every business are just two activities. Build a product or service that people are willing to pay for. And sell that product or service to lots of people.
Build and sell. Build and sell.
This is where distraction becomes so different for entrepreneurs compared to other people. Moments count in the early days of a business. Everything and everyone must be aligned for the company to survive. Of course, mistakes are inevitable when you are doing something completely new. Where there is no room for error, though, is time.

Entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of wasted time. They need to be moving as quickly as possible toward building the right product and selling it to the right customers.
And that is why we can learn from them. Because they have learned how to be laser-focused despite all the distractions of the digital world.
Learning Curve
I’ve worked directly with hundreds of entrepreneurs and trained thousands more through custom programs that I’ve built for companies, military organizations, nonprofits, and universities at my companies, BMNT and NeuBridges. I know that entrepreneurs are truly a remarkable group, capable of jaw-dropping productivity both individually and as the leader of a group.
When I first started working with entrepreneurs, I thought the “secret sauce” would have something to do with how they were being educated. Maybe it was the curriculum or the professors. The difference must be how they were educated, right?
Wrong. It turns out that these pieces don’t matter. Or they may actually be detrimental. There is no strong correlation between higher education and the eventual success of an entrepreneur.
Success is not about learning for an entrepreneur. Success is based on outcomes. Learning is part of the process — another tool to use — but it is not the goal.

Everything changed for me once I started to understand the emphasis on outcomes. I actually started assessing the value of my engagements with entrepreneurs based on what they were able to do afterwards, not how they told me they felt, or how much they thanked me.
After much soul-searching, I came to some uncomfortable conclusions.
It turns out there are only three repeatable things I can do to help propel a committed entrepreneur forward:
- clarify their vision for the company
- propel them to take action as early and often as possible
- help them reshape their environment
I also give feedback on pitch decks and make introductions, of course, but I’ve found these to significantly less valuable. They don’t lead to those outcomes that truly matter to a young business. Why not? Because I can’t make the process of building a company any less brutal than it is. All I can do is help stoke the fire burning inside them. That’s what vision, action, and environments do.
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
We will cover these three topics briefly right now and then dive deeper into each one as it relates to our lives. In Part III — the next three chapters — we will unpack these concepts so you understand exactly why they are so critical for your reset.
1 — Missions
Let’s start with a mission. The single most important service I can provide to an entrepreneur is to remind them why they are in the program in the first place. Their vision for the future will drive them forward. They need to be asked questions that force them to clarify their mission.
“What problem are you trying to solve?”
“How are you changing the world?”
“Why would people remember your company in fifty years?”
The clearer the answer, the greater the focus and energy. The more compelling the vision, the better they are able to overcome the inevitable fear and anxiety.
Entrepreneurs who are on a mission quickly realize how much progress is lost to distractions. It’s death by a thousand tiny cuts. Choking becomes physically painful to them!
Every minute spent distracted is a minute they are not building their company. Every minute spent distracted means they are that much farther away from having an impact on the world. They are failing in their mission to build something meaningful. That is a powerful emotional pull to a passionate entrepreneur.
Most of the people I work with do not start at this level, though many get there eventually. They begin by aspiring to be entrepreneurial, which is often the opposite of actually being an entrepreneur. Aspiring entrepreneurs actually waste a lot of time. They act like entrepreneurs, doing things they read about or see in media or hear from their friends. They have lots of meetings over coffee, read articles about entrepreneurs, talk about their product that isn’t yet built, and make fancy PowerPoint or Keynote decks to ask investors for money.

Eventually they learn that stuff is worthless and start doing the tough work of building a business. Or they give up and get a job. Either way, the power of that clear vision helped them arrive at their destination much faster.
2 — Actions
Entrepreneurs choke just like the rest of us. But remember that you and I still get paid when we’re choking if we have a job. Your pay doesn’t get docked if you’re on Instagram or YouTube.

But no one gets paid during the early days of a company. The whole team is sprinting, full steam ahead! The sheer velocity of startups is enough to scare away most people. You need a lot of risk tolerance to do well as an entrepreneur or part of an early team. Reid Hoffman, billionaire founder of LinkedIn, has a memorable way of describing the experience: “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.” Many of us are not ready for something like that, even if we think we are.
Speed is a consequence of action. Specifically, successful entrepreneurs focus on two actions:
- talking to potential customers about their problems
- building early versions of the product that solves that problem
Both are absolutely critical for an entrepreneur. It’s easy to get stuck in a room with your founding team, arguing about random features that won’t be built for months. As crazy as it sounds, people fall in love their ideas and can actually be afraid to talk to the very people that they want to pay them money.
I acknowledge this strange tug-of-war whenever I’m coaching someone. That person needs to know it’s normal for them to avoid getting in front of customers. Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to. I provide the encouragement — sometimes even the introduction — that pushes them into the realm of taking action.
Here’s a typical conversation to illustrate the point. Let’s pretend an entrepreneur wants to build a company that sells widgets. It doesn’t matter what the widget is. The point is that they are trying to sell them.
Entrepreneur: “So our widget is a huge improvement over the existing options. We are going to sell directly into this market and displace the competition.”
Me: “That’s interesting. How do you know your widget is a huge improvement?”
Entrepreneur: “It’s obviously better. Look at how much faster our widget is compared to the current models.”
Me: “And do customers care about widget speed?”
Entrepreneur: “Of course they do!”
Me: “How do you know that?”
Entrepreneur: “Because…everyone wants their widgets to be faster.”
Me: “Maybe you should go talk to some people who actually buy these widgets.”
Entrepreneur: “Um, okay. Where should should I start?”
Me: “Well, I have two friends who run widget companies. You can start there. I would also suggest Googling ‘widget companies’ and see if you can find out who their main customers are. Then you can find out who their main customers are and start reaching out to people through their contact page or LinkedIn. Try to interview at least 10 of them in the next week, which will probably require that you email at least 100 or so.”
Entrepreneur: “Whew. Okay. That’s a lot of work.”
Me: “Yes it is. Have fun! Tell me what you learned next week.”
3 — Structures
Structural control is the other valuable insight I can give to an entrepreneur. The right structure is crucial to someone building a company. We’re talking about structure in the broadest sense. Everything from the people they meet with and the room where they work, all the way to the type of content they read.
We need to rebuild the structure of our daily lives.

The transition to successful entrepreneurship requires that a person take control over the structures that influence his or her behavior. People who are serious about their vision will consciously shape their world in ways that help them work toward that vision through productive action. They will want to spend more time on their company, while shrinking the time wasted on the random distractions that will pop up.
Everything, from getting rid of negative friends to removing apps on their phone, serves that core purpose of outcomes through intense, focused work.
Purposefully changing your environment also makes life easier and more enjoyable. Each of us has accumulated junk in our lives that takes up time and energy, crowding out the relationships and work that energizes us. Soon you will realize how much time we all waste bumping up against obstacles that are easily avoided.
That’s it. The vision. The action. The environment. You just learned all you need to know! But just in case you feel compelled to dig deeper, we’re going to explore these behaviors in more detail. We will walk through the process of clarifying your vision, reshaping your environment, and quickly taking action. And then we will go through the process of customizing and applying them to your daily life.
The Verdict
The final weeks of SVIA didn’t get much better for Melissa after our meeting. She did push through the entire curriculum, learning a lot as she went. It wasn’t until the last week that she turned the corner.
Melissa’s lightbulb moment was toward the end of the program when she realized that many of the key partnerships that the business needed were available through her university back home. She could actually build a program to accomplish her goal, but it didn’t need to be a company. In fact, she could quickly create something that could be implemented in the next school year!
All the work Melissa put into her idea laid a strong foundation. She had a deep understanding of the problem she was trying to solve, but couldn’t make the business side work. Why? Because she didn’t have to. Her mission could be accomplished without starting a new company. It was actually much easier than that. The mindset and habits she developed in SVIA would let her quickly develop and deploy her solution. Melissa got to build her dream, after all.
You will also have to ask yourself the question “Is it worth it?” when you try to pursue a valuable mission. And like Melissa, the answer will take a form you could not have imagined at the beginning.
With entrepreneurs showing us the way, we can turn to the principles that will take your life to the next level. We’re on to Part III, where we explore the three key elements of a reset in the digital world.
What to remember about “Digital Messiahs”
- Entrepreneurs are a source of inspiration for determining which behaviors are useful in the digital world
- They benefit most from refining a vision, taking action, and shaping their environment
Take three minutes to consider these questions
- Can I describe a vision for my life in detail?
- Have I considered how my environment affects my thoughts, feelings, and actions?
- What would my daily routine look like with fewer distractions?
If you want to spend ten minutes learning more about entrepreneurs and their lifestyles, read “Use These Daily Routines of 7 Famous Entrepreneurs to Create Your Own Routine” by Siobhan Harmer.
If you want to spend four hours learning more about entrepreneurs and their lifestyles, read Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

