Unscripted: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship pdfdrive com

Balance was nowhere to be found.
Scott DeLong, founder of the content aggregator ViralNova, which he later
sold in a deal potentially valued at $100M in cash and stock, echoes the
importance of temporary imbalance on his personal blog. He wrote:
I spent 5 years completely obsessed with business. I sacrificed my social life and
nearly lost the ability to even know how to have fun. It did, however, pay off and
now I am getting back to enjoying life with a lot more freedom and a lot more
money. Like anything difficult, it’s worth it in the end. So obsess over your
venture…if you find yourself thinking about it around the clock, it’s almost
impossible to fail because you clearly want it bad enough to do anything to get it.
And that’s what it’s all about.
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Like Mr. DeLong, today I lead an incredibly balanced life, compliments of
imbalance. Ahh, the great irony of long-term balance is short-term imbalances

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win it. If I want to launch another multimillion-dollar company, I implicitly
know balance will be forsaken. Decide what’s more important to you: permanent
balanced mediocrity or temporary unbalanced exceptionalism?
#4) ENVIRONMENT IS EVERYTHING
I have three different gym memberships. Spattered about the Phoenix area,
the closest one is minutes away. But I rarely go. Instead, I drive thirty minutes to
the farthest gym, Lifetime Fitness. Why? 
Environment is everything.
In my hometown of Fountain Hills, Arizona, the median age is ninety-two.
As you can imagine, the local gym is not a hot spot for hot bodies. Not only am I
the youngest, I am the fittest. And since I’m not exactly GQ material, I’m not
bragging about it. Anyhow, this geriatric environment is detrimental to my
workout. When everyone around me is in worse shape than I, it isn’t particularly
motivating. In truth, I find it depressing. No, I’m NOT better than anyone there
—I hope thirty years from now I’m still working out. It’s just I don’t need a
reminder that one day this will be me: rolling into the gym with socks-and-
sandals and a pair of sweats pulled so high you'd think I was wearing a unitard.
On the flip side, my workouts at Lifetime are incredibly fulfilling, and sweaty.
Why? Everyone around me is in better shape than I. Bodybuilders, fitness models
—the place is like a beauty pageant jointly sponsored by Lululemon and Under
Armour. This environment motivates me to work harder.
This same concept applies to your work environment. I truly feel my life did
not begin until I escaped dreary Chicago and moved to sunny Phoenix. I needed
the environmental shift to succeed. Without it, this book wouldn’t exist, and to
be honest, I’d probably be strung out on Prozac due to a vitamin D deficiency.
My point? 
Find the environment that gives you your best workout.
Not just with
fitness, but with life. Find that city, country, church, coffee shop, or band of new
friends that supports and inspires you.
If 
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peers are holding you back and trolling your dreams, find new
peers. Ditch them, or at best, keep them a few zip codes away. An optimum
environment isn’t one that nags and naysays! You know your optimum
environment. If pizza and a Planet Fitness filled with undedicated part-timers
gives you a better workout, go. You are free to choose—not choosing makes you
a victim to circumstance.
#5) GATEKEEPERS ARE DYING; DON’T ASK FOR PERMISSION

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Five-time Grammy Award winner Hillary Scott of Lady Antebellum
auditioned for American Idol, not once but twice, and never made it past the
preliminary rounds. As she told 
Entertainment Tonight
, “I literally performed for
the production assistants and the interns, and I just didn’t make it.”
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Thankfully, she didn’t let a few greenhorns roadblock her success. Instead of
choking on a gatekeeper’s verdict, she persevered and became part of one of
country music’s hottest bands. A music productocracy did the rest.
We live in an amazing time. The ivory towers, which once courted the
esteemed grantors of permission, are crumbling. If you have the talent and the
desire, approval is no longer needed. Permission, not required. The keys to the
dream palace await in open pastures: YouTube, Instagram, Amazon, and any
other medium with an audience.
Years ago, publishing a book meant begging a publisher or a literary agent
with a cute cover letter and a manuscript. You sent dozens, perhaps hundreds, of
these cute little hope packages. And then you waited weeks. Seasons. Years.
Hoping and praying that someone, somewhere, would take a few hours to read
your dream and give you permission to live it. And if someone did respond?
Hope you’re ready to sell your dream cheap. You’ll pack the negotiating power of
a fire ant underneath a seven-year-old’s shoe.
But not today. If you have the initiative and determination to throw yourself
overboard into the marketmind, you can bypass the gatekeepers. Let the market
decide if you are worthy. If you’re practiced and talented, you can’t be ignored.
Gatekeepers can suppress talent like a cork in a bottle, but talent pressurizes in
the marketmind, eventually bursting.
Perhaps my favorite story of marketmind’s exposing talent is the once
homeless drug abuser, Arnel Pineda. If you haven’t heard of Arnel, he is the lead
singer of the legendary rock band Journey. After the original lead singer departed
the band, a replacement was sought. After seeing Arnel’s YouTube videos
singing Journey tributes, band member Neal Schon contacted Pineda for an
audition with the real band. After a long flight and a few days of auditions,
Pineda was named the new lead singer. Since, he’s gone on world tours,
including a Super Bowl performance, and even had a documentary produced,
chronicling the tale.
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Ever hear of Ted Williams? He was another homeless man whose dazzling
voice was discovered on YouTube. How about Justin Bieber? I’m not a fan of his
music, but I am of his story. Discovered on YouTube after singing Usher
tributes, he’s gone on to become fabulously rich as well as fabulously annoying.

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Lindsey Stirling tried out for 
America’s Got Talent
and was told by Piers
Morgan, “You’re not good enough…to get away with flying through the air and
trying to play the violin at the same time.” Sharon Osbourne piled on: “What
you’re doing is not enough to fill a theater in Vegas.”
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 LOL. Stirling went on to
sell and make millions by simply hearing the marketmind, and not the
gatekeepers.
My story also gives the gatekeeper the bird: Had I waited for an agent or a
publisher to give me permission to publish my book, it would have never made it
to market. I didn’t let a stranger perched in a Manhattan skyscraper stop me.
You see, fear—not gatekeepers—is the only thing that conceals talent. If you
sing, sing to the marketmind and see if it swoons. If you tell jokes, tell jokes and
see if the marketmind laughs. To steal Nike’s slogan, “Just do it.”
#6) BUILD A BRAND LIKENED TO A PERSONALITY
Productocracies go hand in hand with a powerful brand image. Behind every
disciple, a clear brand identity reinforces loyalty. If you want a business that
grows and sticks, brand strategy needs to be a primary consideration.
Branding, however, is a tricky business—so tricky that people make careers
of it. For amateurs, branding means a slick logo, a pithy slogan, and some gold-
foil stationery. For experts, branding is more: 
it is the art of personifying a
business with human qualities and characteristics so that it reflects or affirms your
own customer’s identity.
Think about that for a moment. A well-executed brand identity affirms your
customer’s identity and, as a result, becomes a core decision metric in the buy
decision.
Consider the brand Harley-Davidson. How would you describe their core
group of customers? Risk-takers or conservative “play-it-safe” types? If you live
YOLO and carefree, would buying a Harley enhance your identity or damage it?
How about Nike? As a highly recruited athlete, would spending a fortune on
Nike clothing affirm your identity or weaken it? How about the person aspiring
to get fit? The Nike brand becomes an extension of identity, either existing or
desired.
The strongest brands link into the identities of their target customer. Think
about how these brands weave into identity: Louis Vuitton, Apple, Wrangler,
Ferrari, Volvo.
In fact, an interesting story of brand and identity happened in my life
recently. A few years ago, I sold my Lamborghini because it no longer matched

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my identity. At first, the Lambo brand resonated with my 
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,
Fastlane
identity—there’s nothing like driving a car that 99 percent of the
population can’t drive. It’s different, radical, and skewers mediocrity.
Unfortunately, it also boldly screams for attention. For me, grabbing unwanted
attention and being “off the radar” outweighed my desire to be noticed with 550
horsepower. The brand identity of Lamborghini didn’t change—mine did.
#7) CONSISTENCY BUILDS BRANDS
“Thank you for holding; your call is important to us…”
Really? I doubt it. If my call was really important, I wouldn’t be twiddling my
thumbs for the last seventeen minutes while listening to funeral music. My guess
is nine of ten brands are 
brand fakers
. Brand fakery is words over actions. You
say one thing, “Customer satisfaction is our top priority”—and yet your
corporate actions reflect the opposite.
Customer disservice
is the leading culprit of brand fakery.
Remember the cute Microsoft paper-clip “help” character, which appeared in
its programs? It would interrupt your book report and say, “What can I help you
with?” Besides annoying the hell out of you, the paper clip further irritated you
by being absolutely worthless. Ask it a question and its answer was some link to
the Microsoft website, which was another jargon-filled heap of so-called help.
The Microsoft paper clip is indicative of how most companies feign customer
service. “Smoke and mirrors” is the service du jour. Ever notice how most
websites fail to post a phone number? And those that do bury it in some hard-to-
find back page?
Customer disservice.
And ever notice how difficult it is to talk to a human being about something,
and only after you’ve pressed 1, *, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, and 0?
Customer disservice.
The point is, brands aren’t created by website words or walled mission
statements—
a brand is earned
. It is a reputation arising from consistent action,
much like an individual earns a reputation. You can repeat the same shit over
and over again, but if you (and your employees) aren’t doing it in the public eye,
it’s a brand fake. If your actions are consistently inconsistent and bordering on
the devilish, no saintly statement engraved on a plaque changes the reputation.
Brand building starts with identifying how you want your company to be
perceived.

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If it was a person, who would be its friend? What does it stand for, and how
will it conduct itself to reflect that persona? Don’t confuse a brand with your
USP, or unique selling proposition. Being the cheapest or the service with the
most features isn’t a brand. A USP is a part of the brand build like ties are to
suits, but underneath the image there must be something more. 
Your customer
must feel you are different.
After you identify your brand persona, identify the specific initiatives that
would make it happen. Is it a no-time-limit, no-questions-asked, money-back
guarantee? Is it the ability to talk to a human being without having to press a
gazillion buttons? Is it eco-friendly with a portion of profits going to a nonprofit
environmental organization? Consistency of brand action must always be
congruent with operations, from you to your employees. If you want to be
known as the “witty” company, but your company blog posts wouldn’t inspire a
match in a pail of newspapers, you fail the brand game and hinder the
productocracy.
#8) SELL OR BE SOLD
Execution is the “act, assess, adjust” trio, but it also has another three-headed
pilot: selling, marketing, and communication. If you’re idea-empty while saddled
to the couch, here’s what you can do in the meantime: 
learn how to sell.
Selling and all of its cousins (marketing, copywriting, negotiation) are the
most important skills, no matter what your business is. These skills can be
banked for life.
Remember the cancer corollary. Having the best product in the world is
worthless if you can’t initiate sales. If you can’t persuade the marketmind to buy
in your seed stage, the productocracy’s grass roots never happen.
The urgency of selling is everywhere. At every point in the execution process,
there are potential stakeholders to be sold: investors, employees, suppliers,