UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

by M.J. DeMarco

pop-up lightboxes are more effective than any list-building strategy.

there is no exact formula for happiness, but there is one for unhappiness: it’s comparison—the drive for more when more isn’t needed.

Comparison is future-oriented and focused on what is missing, creating anxiety. Gratitude is present-oriented and focused on what you have, creating peace.

For every disciplined effort, there is a multiple reward. ~ Jim Rohn, Author

More money doesn’t solve money problems.

While you’re motivated with great ideas and have all the competencies to be a successful entrepreneur, your mind is your worst enemy. Through its multitude of flawed beliefs, biases, and bullshit, your ideas are quickly dismissed because of internally held untruths. While you possess the proficiency (intelligence and talent) to execute, your self-destructive beliefs stand in the way of results. The likely outcome is a job held for a lifetime, simply because your business ideas and actions never coordinate into an effective process. Or worse, you take an unethical, immoral road where success, money, and entrepreneurship are associated with a negative identity shift, a thought line that in order to succeed, you need to be greedy and/or scammy.

idea guys are committed to the idea of wealth, but not committed to its realistic execution. While they have a strong meaning-and-purpose, it is improperly focused, usually targeted toward idea-hopping, silver-bullets, and shortcuts. As a result, their strong meaning-and-purpose is channeled into endless action-faking; soliciting billionaires for mentorship, reading books, and buying expensive guru courses. Instead of blaming their execution, they blame their ideas—“It isn’t ‘disruptive’ enough” or “Damn, someone else is already doing it.”

Because idea entrepreneurs lack execution, they’re often the “give me all the steps” type, seeking secrets and lists to tell them exactly what, how, and where to execute. In the end, idea entrepreneurs don’t have a problem entering the motivation cycle, they have a problem getting traction and connecting the value loop, the ultimate source of a continuation move.

My preferred financial providers are as follows: Vanguard (vanguard.com) T. Rowe Price (troweprice.com) TD Ameritrade (tdameritrade.com) Charles Schwab (charlesschwab.com) Fidelity (fidelity.com)

Vanguard, by far my favorite, has a wide variety of managed distribution funds with extremely low fees. T. Rowe Price and Fidelity also have a large selection. Keep in mind the 1 percent rule, as well as any “redemption fees”—fees charged for shares sold after a short period of time.