Ten-Minute Lesson on Entrepreneurship

I have a PhD in entrepreneurship (and a PhD in engineering), I owned and operated my own R&D business for over a decade, and I currently teach entrepreneurship at Oklahoma State University.

A while back, I heard a podcast by Scott Adams the creator of Dilbert. The podcast (which is also available in video format) included a 10-minute mini-lesson on how to increase your likelihood of benefitting from ‘luck’. Although Scott Adams’ lesson never mentioned the words entrepreneur or entrepreneurship, it represents one of the best succinct how-to lessons on the topic of entrepreneurship I’ve ever heard.

In this post, I will be providing a quick summary of the lesson.

Entrepreneurship Involves Intentionally Increasing Your Luck

You can increase your ‘luck’ (which I translate to “increase your chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur”) by ...

• Having a positive attitude, expecting luck to happen in your favor.
• Going wherever the energy level is the highest (both in terms of geography and industry).
• Networking – meeting as many people as you can and keeping in touch.
• Continually developing and expanding your skill stack.
• Learning from every failure.
• Being willing to pursue a few ‘long shots’ along the way.

Below are some particularly insightful quotes from the podcast / YouTube video.

Positive Attitude

Dr. Richard Wiseman [found] that people who had a positive attitude and expected luck had a wider field of vision, … they simply noticed opportunities that other people didn’t notice.

So there is something about expecting luck to happen, that can tune your brain to notice things … that you weren’t noticing before.

Energy

go where the energy is

I found the highest energy industry that I could get into in the highest energy place ... and that worked out great.

Follow the energy. … You might have to move. … If you’re somewhere where nothing’s happening, getting lucky … is very unlikely.

you want to go where there’s just more stuff happening so that there’s more chance for things to collide.

Networking

You want to network. … If you are rigorous about meeting people and keeping in touch, then the opportunity for luck to find you happens again.

Skill Stack

Skill stacking, which I talk about all the time, if you … keep layering [skills] on top of each other, the things that you could potentially do, just becomes geometrically larger.

Failure

if you’re trying to get … yourself in a position for luck to find you, … you need to keep trying stuff.

But try things that won’t kill you. … Because then even as you’re failing … it’s like three failures, four failures, five failures -- you get to five failures, and learn something from every one of those failures, the odds of the sixth one failing, start dropping dramatically.

Long Shots

Try some long shots. I always tried some things which could pay the rent. … But I always had some long shots brewing. And I still do that.

I like knowing that there’s something in my world that even though it’s a long shot, man, if this works, if this works, this would be amazing, to change the world.