Page 96 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

Founder Readiness 75

In 2001, I began to share with clients a Harvard Business Review ar-
ticle, written by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, titled “The Making
of a Corporate Athlete.”13 The authors had successfully distilled a set
of principles governing the sustained high performance of world-class
athletes (Olympic champions, PGA golfers, and professional tennis
players, for example) and applied these principles to challenges ex-
perienced by business leaders. Their fundamental premise, later cap-
tured in their best-selling book, The Power of Full Engagement, is that
bringing your best self, your “A game,” to any endeavor over a sus-
tained period of time requires the systematic building of personal
strength, stamina, and capacity on four basic levels: physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual (see the resources list in Appendix B for more
detailed information and references about this model).14 I found these
concepts to be consistently helpful to clients and to myself and have
further found that these ideas are wholly useful for new entrepreneurs,
who are always seeking more energy, more time, greater focus, etc.

To maximize your impact as a founder, become a student of your
own effectiveness and performance. How do you manage and recover en-
ergy? Through what practices and activities do you refill your gas tank? How
do you keep your mind sharp and uncluttered? Although these questions
may seem obvious, I rarely encounter a new founder who couldn’t el-
evate his or her personal impact and performance by improving per-
sonal “care and feeding.” In addition to boosting your venture’s odds
of success, these steps will add to your quality of life and work. Simply
put, you’ll get more enjoyment out of your startup ride.

TRANSITION – What aspects of your prior identity or role will serve you well
in your new venture? What aspects do you want to leave behind or will hinder
you in some way? What unfinished business do you need to wrap up in order
to fully focus on your new venture, without distraction or doubt?

You can’t live your former life and move in a new direction at the
same time. Your former life includes obligations, affiliations, contracts,
responsibilities, and personal habits. Of course, some of these will re-
main unchanged, but it is impossible to bring your full energy to a
new venture until you make a clean break from prior roles and obli-
gations that don’t align with your entrepreneurial goals. This usually

American Management Association • www.amanet.org