Create and Build Something From Nothing But How?
“Entrepreneurship is the ability to create and build something nothing,” says my hero, the late Jeffry Timmons. He was very good guide on how to create and build something from nothing.
He says that, both in the best founders’ reference book, New Venture Creation (‘both epic in scale and exceedingly practical’, says Inc magazine), as well as in his short gem of a book, The Entrepreneurial Mind.
For anyone contemplating a startup, I recommend The Entrepreneurial Mind as an essential read. At under four bucks, a second-hand copy from Betterworldbooks.com might be your very best initial startup investment. The book was published in 1989, and apart from a few dated references, it is equally valid 30 years later.
Timmons Was an Academic, Researcher and Practiced Entrepreneurship
Jeffry was an outstanding academic and teacher of new venture creation, but he knew it from the inside, not just the classroom. He was an early investor and active participant in Venture Founders, Inc, a Boston-based venture capital company—the one whose name my own business now has. I first met him as a participant in a seminar for startup hopefuls in 1981. We worked three long weekends and learned a huge amount about the startup process.
As you sit dreaming and scheming about your amazingly unbeatable business model, there’s a tendency to get caught up in wonders of what you’re going to offer a startled world. Jeffry brings you back to reality and the nitty-gritty of what is really involved from a personal point of view. To create and build something from nothing, infers that it is something that comes from within yourself, not something learned in textbooks or at business school, even if that might help.
He says that one of the principal aims of the book is, “to expose you in depth and in breadth to the nature, peculiarities, and realities of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial role. At a more practical and personal level it is aimed at helping you to evaluate thoroughly your attraction to entrepreneurship and the fit between you and the entrepreneurial role and its characteristics.”
Get this book! You can read it in a couple of sittings. You may also want to look at posts on the Timmons Model of New Venture Creation, and the Non-Entrepreneurial Mind. That will be an excellent start, but be aware that your entrepreneurial adventure will be strewn with potholes, boulders—and naysayers.
Wait—Create and Build Something from Nothing!
If you are frustrated in your entrepreneurial quest, take a step back and follow the advice of Dr Jeff DeGraff, who is a visionary in the field of innovation and creativity. Companies who have sought his advice includes GE, Eaton, Coca Cola, Pfizer and others. His blog might be a good place to spur you on, too. Here’s his advice on how to create and build something from nothing:
- “Look for constraints as opportunities: Next time something feels too limited—too little time, too few resources—pause and ask, What can I do with what I have?
- Create one thing today: It could be a meal, a note, a playlist, or a patch on your old jeans. Anything that didn’t exist before you made it.
- Celebrate others: Notice someone else’s ingenuity and name it out loud. A compliment, in this case, is a kind of fuel.”
The curious thing for me on the bumpy startup road was that I never thought of myself as an “entrepreneur” until some years after startup. I certainly never called myself that and indeed, I don’t think I ever classified myself as anything in particular.
