The other week I sat town with a professor at Cal State Pomona and two of his business students and recorded four 15 minute video interviews. Thanks to the black background, it has a Charlie Rose kind of feel. Thanks to my commitment to never brush my hair with a comb, my hair is all over the place.
Files load in Windows Media Player. Below are the topics in each segment.
– business ideas come from experiencing a problem
– overcoming credibility issues when you don’t have a track record
– how I think about mentors
– the tradeoffs inherent in doing a lot of things at once
– staying balanced / focused when there’s outside attention
– networking
– explain "I don’t want to be normal"
– importance of luck
– high level and tactical hacks around staying connected
– life entrepreneurship
– dealing with criticism, putting yourself out there
– balance
– biggest mistake I’ve made
– importance of experimentation and "doing stuff"
– the terribleness of PowerPoints
– scaling an idea and the emotional readiness it requires
– respecting the natural pace of the market
– importance of "good enough"
– collaboration and working with offshore people
– pricing products is hard, since people don’t know what they want and therefore don’t know what they’ll pay
– advisors vs. mentors
– no long term career plan
– consolidation in the tech industry
– business ideas around the travel industry
– why we need to blow up the education system and start over
– are young people going to start companies?
– risk is overrated concept in entrepreneurship
– commoditization of knowledge: free and accessible online
– globalization is a big deal
– importance of writing well
– need to recognize diversity in learning types in our school system
– local government has more impact on people’s lives than federal
– optimistic about young people
“At some point I kind of reflected on the fact that we’re all so insignificant in the map of human history. We’re the smallest of small dots when it comes to our impact. We’re going to come and go and very few people will ever remember us. So I said, anything I can do to make my dot a little bigger, to make my impact a little more meaningful, I want to do that. And usually that means just blazing on a different trail, trying to do something a little differently.”
This quote illustrates the core of what being a life entrepreneur is all about. Cheers to your wonderful insights in these clips.
Alan
This is more complicated than I’d ever have imagined.
Ben, I think it’s great that you’re adding video to your site, but I’d appreciate having it in Flash. Reasons:
1. Clicking on the links to your files is triggering a message from our friends at Microsoft. Seems that they’d like to validate my copy of Windows. I’d really like to play your stuff, but if it involves having to go through a Microsoft scan of my computer, no thanks. (The Windows I’m using was loaded onto my computer when I bought it from Dell. So, it’s not like I’m a pirate.)
2. Windows Media Player seems to work best in Internet Explorer, which is no longer available to Mac users. It also tends not to play nice with Firefox.
3. Flash is installed on something like 98% of all computers in use today.
If anyone knows how to convert Windows Media Player to Flash, I’m game!
It does work with Firefox on a Mac. I use a Mac.
“putting thoughts into words generates new original thoughts.”
Hmmm! I bet writing and organizing everything out would help quite a bit. Thanks great stuff all around!