UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

by M.J. DeMarco

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ~ Charles Bukowski, Author

You see, most people are “interested” in entrepreneurship, financial freedom, and success—but most never commit. Why? It just doesn’t hurt bad enough.

The shortcut scam is the idea that extraordinary results can be achieved by uncovering a secret bypass or a miracle weapon, and such can skirt the real hard work that actually creates the extraordinary results.

Real, permanent change does NOT come from event idealism or from shortcuts. It comes from a daily, regimented process woven into the fabric of your life, automatic and nearly instinctual.

if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.

I can attribute my early business failures to these two mantras. I followed my interests and passions while ignoring market needs and marketable value propositions.

Opportunity compression limits your exposure to new opportunities in alternative industries that are ripe for new value offerings. For example, if you’re passionate only about sewing and scuba diving, you will compress your available opportunities to those industries only. If those industries represent only .00002 percent of GDP, you limit yourself to that small pool of opportunity. Don’t microscope yourself into a puddle when you should be surveying the ocean.

Don’t “do what you love,” because even if you are lucky to make a living doing it, you won’t love it for very long. You should love the value you create.

Better career advice may be “do what contributes” -- focus on the beneficial value created for other people vs just one’s own ego.68

“Follow Your Passion” is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get.69

when the world kicks on your feedback loop and says, “This is awesome” or “I like this; here’s my cash,” you too will love what you do.

when others love your creation, you'll also love and be passionate about it. "do what you love" is not GOOD. provide great value to society.

Followed by strong WHYs compelling ACTION, your FEEDBACK LOOP does the heavy lifting, driving passion and, hence, results. Whenever there is silence, or an absent feedback loop, the cycle sputters out into quitting.

Basically, intrinsic improvement and growth (competence), freedom (autonomy), and family (relatedness) are core constituents of happiness.

The Sense of Well-Being in America (recommended read)

If your job fulfills meaning-and-purpose while also providing some autonomy, connectedness, and a feeling of competence, you’ve struck gold.

You have to believe that your purpose is possible by simply choosing. If you feel “out of control,” it’s just another self-induced hyperreality. You are free to pursue a unique path.

Basically, all the things you think you can’t control are webs you have woven, silken imprisonments caged by excuses.

You see, entrepreneurship is a lot like baseball. You take a lot of ugly swings: foul balls and strikeouts. A hall-of-fame baseball player bats .300, which means he only hits 30 percent of the time. You can fail 70 percent of the time and still be considered a legend. Heck, hit one home run at the right time and you can live legendary for life, even if you’re a career 100 hitter. The failure statistic simply means that entrepreneurs, in general, bat 100, or fail 90 percent of the time. Failure is a part of the game, just as whiffing is at baseball.

a productocracy pulls money to the value creators, businesses who grow organically through peer recommendations and repeat customers, compelled by a distinguished product/service not readily offered elsewhere.

If clients are recommending and sharing your products on social media, congratulations, your product is pulling.

if advertising is needed to drive sales, sorry, you’ve got a product problem.

In a product-centered organization, advertising doesn’t float the boat; it steams the boat.

To ensure you’re on the top side of the food chain, the Commandment of Control requires that your entire operation, from product development, to marketing, to distribution, to other operational components, be within your sphere of influence, or diversified from influence.

In fact, you could argue that my books violate control because they are primarily sold on Amazon. This is somewhat true. If Amazon removed my books from their website, my sales would definitely suffer. However, I would not be out of business, and I’d still be able to sell thousands. Why? Because diversification from influence is also a tenet of the Control Commandment. In my case, Amazon is just ONE of many channels I use to sell my books.

If Amazon refused to sell JK Rowling’s latest Potter novel, do you think her sales would go from millions to hundreds? Of course not. She is fully diversified from influence because she controls her brand and her platform with the power of a productocracy: readers are fans, fans are disciples, and disciples are loyal to you, not the channel through which they buy your work.

If you’re taking risks and spending precious time to build a business, for the love of God, make sure your investment goes toward your brand and not someone else’s.

If you think of your UNSCRIPTED journey as the construction of a building, the Commandment of Control represents the land you build upon. Do you own it? Or is it leased or rented from someone else? Can someone misrepresent or ruin it? Change its terms of use? Not renew its terms?

Airbnb owns no real estate; Uber owns no cars; Alibaba owns no inventory—they all control it. As you can see, control does not always equate to ownership.

The Commandment of Entry identifies poor opportunities and crowded markets that should be avoided.

As entry barriers to any business or start-up process weaken or become “easified,” so does the strength or the potential of the opportunity.

Entrepreneurship is about problem-solving, creating convenience, satisfying desires, and becoming valuable.

Again, the difficulty is the opportunity. The magnitude of the problem solved is the magnitude of the money you can make.

In the end, easification flags are liabilities while difficulties are assets. Difficulty reflects the depth of the problem and the value magnitude. But more importantly, difficult entry barriers represent a natural moat which keeps easified entrepreneurs OUT of your space.

Entrification is building a moat erected from difficulty, keeping easified entrepreneurs out of your castle.

The process, from idea to creation to sale, was a marathon of exploration and learning—not a sprint.

You see, the process-principle also holds that if you’re not going to sacrifice to get into the game, you’re going to need to sacrifice to win the game. If there’s a book inside you, by all means, write it. If you want to sit at home and day-trade the stock market, go ahead and do it. However, expect the expected: Any venture crowded with opportunists and easified entrepreneurs will require executional excellence for victory. And that means, prepare to do what others will not.

The Commandment of Need states that if you own a controlled and entry-barred enterprise that provides relative value, satisfying needs or wants, you will win growth, profits, and possibly, passive income for life.

What value are you to me? What can I get from you that I can’t get elsewhere, or am not getting well enough? Why do I need you or your business?

When a business goes from zero to billions in just a few years, you’re witnessing a productocracy powered by a value skew, which goes beyond a good price. Multiple attributes get primped and groomed.

To dominate markets and win sales, engineer a value skew. It starts by identifying the value array and its attributes. Here’s how: First, examine both your product and its industry with the goal to identify every value attribute, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

Is there any one component or ingredient that you can improve?

Each component represents an opportunity to skew value.

If you sell food or a personal product, every ingredient is a value-skewing opportunity. My friend started his personal-grooming company based on this method; he read common ingredient complaints he discovered on a men’s forum.

anything that could make or break a sale is an attribute.

You see, your job is to identify every value attribute in the global pool, with the explicit intent to uncover skewing opportunities. The more attributes skewed without disrupting other skews (say price), the more sales you will win.

Wherever you can skew value within a product’s pool of attributes, you stand out and cast a bigger market tent. The bigger the skew, the more attractive your company becomes to the consumer.

If I offer the lowest price, I will get the sale! When business is isolated by one value attribute, price, it becomes commodified.

“In a commodity market, you can only be as good as your dumbest competitor.”

Customers would buy another similar product from someone just like me and be just as satisfied. Did I provide anything significant that others in the niche did not? The answer was no. I was chasing money, and in the end, it wasn’t worth it.