An entrepreneur believes they can turn scrap into “gold.” They believe they can build their own confidence. They believe no object is truly worthless. They believe they can turn a bad situation into a better one. They believe a heavy workload can become manageable. They believe they'll get a great result.
All of that spirit ties back to Mindset, Attitude, Skill, and Knowledge (MASK).
Everything starts with our mindset. Our way of thinking. How we think. How we see and judge things. To turn something worthless into “gold,” our mindset can't stay ordinary. We have to completely overhaul how we look at a problem. And all of this starts in the mind. We have to start changing our thinking from “life should have no challenges” to “life should be full of challenges.” There has to be a demanding task or a heavy piece of work.
The measure of a challenging, demanding piece of work is that we have to think hard to get it done. So that once we've finished it, we can “celebrate” it with GREAT WORK. That's what Steve Jobs said.
Being willing to take small hits over and over builds the strength we need to take a hard hit and stay standing. We might all know how to throw a proper punch. But that still doesn't make us a boxer.
A boxer is someone who steps into the ring, and who never gives up no matter how much it hurts or how hard it gets. This is what we call a spirit that starts in the mind. Never giving up starts in the mind. All about Mind Set.
So how should we carry ourselves? Thomas Edison, a businessman and inventor, said: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
This is the Attitude of an Entrepreneur.
Never giving up.
Kept trying with whatever time and energy he had. There's one important thing worth knowing: he most certainly kept neat, careful records of everything he did. That's how Edison was able to tell us exactly which methods worked and which ones would only lead us to failure.
He wasn't a preacher without practice. He was a doer. Anyone who doesn't know Edison could go turn off the lights right now, because he's the one who invented the light bulb. And, worth remembering, he failed thousands of times trying to make it work. But did he stop? NO. Because if he'd stopped, we might still be lighting our homes with kerosene today. Never give up, not in attitude and not in action. Never show an attitude of giving up or turning away. Stay spirited, stand firm, and face every challenge and every big task head-on. That's the Attitude of someone with an Entrepreneurial Spirit.
Next, how do we take on heavy work and turn it into the best possible result? The answer is absolute: SKILL. Ability. This is where we prove that we don't just stop at thinking and trying. We also learn to sharpen our ability from every failure we run into. This is non-negotiable. It absolutely has to be done: having ability, and honing it.
What's the best skill? According to Peter Drucker: the ability to use existing resources in a new way to produce the best possible work. That's skill. If we keep doing the same thing, time after time, year after year, in the same way, it means we aren't tracking our progress or sharpening our ability. Forget about becoming an entrepreneur or an innovator if we aren't willing to try doing our work in a new way, starting now.
Change where you sit, change your tools, change how you store your data. Change it. And learn how to. There are plenty of books in the library. There are plenty of experts you can ask. Change!
And the last one is Knowledge. We need knowledge. With knowledge, we can measure risk and know how to deal with it. Taking on a challenge, never giving up, and having skill, but without accounting for risk, that isn't brave. That's just reckless.
At the very least, the knowledge we have, even if it didn't come from a formal educational institution, is the result of the notes and records we've kept. Never going back over everything we've done before is foolish. It's what leaves us without any real knowledge at all.
But don't jump straight to Knowledge. Because knowledge without mindset, without attitude, and without skill will only make us monotonous. Boring.
To start and grow the business or the work we're currently doing, use MASK: Mindset, Attitude, Skill, and Knowledge, so that we truly deserve to be called an Entrepreneur. (Ali Mulyagusdin)
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