The food: Alphabet Soup
Where to find it: Most Grocery Stores, United States of America
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Welcome to another edition of #FoodEntrepreneur Friday, where I serve up an order of international food with a side of insight for entrepreneurs.
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Last #FoodEntrepreneur Friday I emphasized the importance of eating breakfast to jumpstart your entrepreneurial day. It can give you the energy and the mental frame of mind to accomplish anything. Your emails to angel investors will be easy money once you’ve got your banana and bagel backing you. At the bottom of last week’s post I featured a picture of a cereal box I stare at each morning. Taped to the side of this cereal box are a smattering of phrases that I read each morning to get me into the entrepreneurial frame of mind. They’re my daily pledge of allegiance—my credo to creativity and innovation.
Without further ado here’s the list (in no particular order):
- “Never miss an opportunity to be ASTONISHING”
- “Chance favors the prepared”
- “Empower others”
- “Give yourself permission”
- “Fail & fail again until you succeed”
- “Always choose to work with QUALITY people”
- “Embrace Uncertainty”
- “Done is better than perfect”
- “Most things in life, especially our failures, aren’t as important as we think they are”
- “Keep experimenting”
- “Break things (rules) -> learn”
- “Entrepreneurial mindset = solving problems”
- “Create an environment of opportunity”
- “Rejection is ok -> Get to ‘no’ sooner rather than later”
- “Have a healthy disregard for the impossible”
- “Clearly define the problem, then the solution will present itself”
- “Opportunities are abundant”
- “Limitations (like money and budget restraints) are only perceived limitations”
- “Take the unconventional route; it’s faster and more fun”
- “Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what clearly lies at hand”
- “Creativity results from action, rather than inaction, more than anything else”
- “Aim to make meaning”
- “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul”
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Kevin Longa’s morning ritual cereal box
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After reading this list in the morning, I feel supercharged to take on the day with the right mental attitude.
I must note though, this list of phrases changes from time to time as my entrepreneurial career advances. And my list isn’t for every entrepreneur. There is no cookie-cutter entrepreneurial style; thus, there’s no cookie-cutter list of phrases that will set every entrepreneur in the right frame of mind. For example, I’m currently challenging myself to get over “the artists’ sickness” of needing everything to be ‘perfect’. Hence I read the “Done is better than perfect” phrase each morning. But I know plenty of (aspiring) entrepreneurs who have no problem with shipping an imperfect product in order to get it out there and in the hands of customers.
If you’d like to wake up to your own box of startup cereal, then I recommend jotting down any inspiring (startup) phrase you hear, read or see on a piece of paper, cut it out and tape it up to your own cereal box. If phrases from the above list jive with you, then take them and go forth. If they don’t then still go forth, and find phrases that kick my phrases’ butt. My friend Julian has some great phrases (and photography). Take from this what you like, discard the rest and create something even more awesome on your own. Isn’t that what entrepreneurship and innovation is all about?
Happy #FoodEntrepreneur Friday, friends.