Book Club June 8 Noon PDT Moltz’s You Need To Be A Little Crazy

SKMurphy’s  Book Club For Business Impact covers Barry Moltz’s “You Need To Be a Little Crazy” in a webinar Wednesday June-8-2011 Noon PDT.

I read this book one night between about 11pm and 2am. We had traveled on business and I had brought it with me just in case. I was still restless at 11pm and started reading the first chapter and could not put it down. Moltz writes directly and candidly about entrepreneurship as I know it and have heard others describe it around the Bootstrappers Breakfast table: entrepreneurs are motivated much more by a desire for autonomy and achievement than wealth. Many start businesses because they have no choice, they have to try their hand at forging their own path or solving a problem that has become very important to them. And that is the case with the three founders who are joining me:

• Miles Kehoe, Co-founder and President of New Idea Engineering, Inc.
  • Focus: Making Enterprise Search Work
• Massimo Paolini, Founder MPThree Consulting
  • Focus: Monetization Analyst / Revenue Performance Management
• Dorai Thodla, Founder iMorph, Inc.
  • Focus: Mining information on the web; tools for tracking emerging technology trends.

We are going to discuss some of the key points Moltz raises and draw lessons from our own entrepreneurial experience.

• “I have never been much of a follower although I like to learn.”
• “It is easier and in the long run more profitable to get a job than to start your own business. If you want to have your own business for the money, then forget it: go get a job. That motivation will never sustain you through the ups and downs of starting and building your own business.”
• “Entrepreneurs start businesses because they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad ones.”
• “Only Experience Teaches You: You can’t learn skiing by watching videos. They might help but you still need to find a place with snow, put your skis on, and thrust yourself down the mountain.”
• “It does take courage, but it actually takes being a lunatic to start a company against such great odds. Simply stated you must be crazy.”

Moltz offers some great quotes from other entrepreneurs that we will also unpack the implications of

“The simple truth is that once I get a big, potent idea, it moves me to distraction. I fell compelled to move others with me…Perhaps there is something seductive about traveling into the unknown. The journey itself thrills me, and I don’t think I’d ever feel altogether happy if I didn’t know there was risk involved.”
Kay Koplovitz

“It’s in your blood. That is just who you are. When you are an entrepreneur you are the puzzle. It is hard to just use a portion of what you have.”
Suzi Bank

“Truthfully, most people can make a lot more money just being a successful freelancer or a successful sole proprietorship than working for somebody else.  To build a business means you have to sacrifice a great deal of that for a long period of time, because what you are trying to do is build a business that is not dependent on you. You are developing equity value in it.”
Mike Duda