Page 98 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

Founder Readiness 77

your best.” Those words shifted me from anxiety to positive antici-
pation. I felt that if I put my best foot forward and had a good time,
everything would turn out well. My father had put a useful frame
around the energy I had inside, and that made all the difference.

As you chase your big idea, here are three strategies for putting a
useful frame around your passion and energy:

1. Clarify your reasons and goals. Get clear on why you want to
start a business and how these motivations will influence your
startup plan and approach.

2. Distinguish the fire in your belly from the weight on your
shoulders. The first feeling comes from true passion, a can’t-
wait-to-get-out-of-bed feeling, while the second is one of ob-
ligation and compliance. You will feel some of each as an
entrepreneur. Look for roles that maximize the fire and min-
imize the weight.

3. Understand what you bring to the table. Acknowledge and ac-
cept your personality, skills, and motivations, all of the di-
mensions of founder readiness outlined earlier in this
chapter. This self-awareness will drive your healthy and skill-
ful use of entrepreneurial passion.

CONNECT YOUR PASSION

Business is personal. We all want to personally connect to the work
we do. Many of our strongest drives—to create, to achieve, to relate,
to make a difference—play out in the arena of work. The fact that
business is personal is the very reason many of us choose to become
entrepreneurs in the first place. It’s the reason employees leave large,
impersonal companies to join new ventures. It allows us to connect
our startup passion with people who share it or support it. Ap-
proaches for connecting your passion are:

9 Personalize business. In building D1, J.C. Faulkner used ritu-
als and practices to create a workplace that valued and high-
lighted the personal nature of work. As an example, he paid
for professionally photographed portraits of all headquarters

American Management Association • www.amanet.org