How Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison are reimagining payments for the Internet era

When buying online, people were forced to use outside vendors like PayPal to complete a purchase. That gap is where Stripe fits in.

Stripe lets merchants process credit cards directly from their own websites, simply by inserting a few lines of code. While that may seem incredibly minor, transactions experts say it improves the payment experience by keeping customers at merchants' websites, and by reducing the time it takes to pay. That, in turn, increases the likelihood customers will buy, and come back to buy again.

"You don't have that disjointed experience when you go to PayPal, or wherever else, to input your payment information," says Andy Schmidt, research director at CEB TowerGroup, a research firm focused on the financial services industry.

That small change has plenty of evangelists

Mobile Apps: From architecture to employee trust, IT must adjust its thinking.

There isn't any element of what we do in IT today that won't change over the next few years as a result of the "mobile first" world. We will see radical shifts in how we think about enterprise architecture, user experience, technical operations, and organizational governance. Mobility will disrupt much of what we accept as tried-and-true practices in business IT. If you're an IT leader, it's time to accept that many of the things we learned will no longer apply.

Everyone talks about disruptive forces, so why is mobile a true disruption? The test of a disruptive technology is twofold:

First, it changes the way we behave, and that drives the development of new business and user experiences.

Second, it creates massive opportunities for innovation. The PC and the Internet both met these criteria. We've seen mobility meet these criteria already in our personal lives, and now we will see the same in our business lives. However, change is difficult, and taking advantage of these new opportunities requires a fundamental re-imagining of how we do IT. Here are four ways IT leaders must change their thinking.

1. Shift In OS Architecture

The most profound disruption is the shift from the open file system of traditional Windows to the sandboxed architecture of modern operating systems like iOS, Android, and even the new generation of Windows. Modern operating systems use isolated storage and isolated memory for each app, so the data of each app is protected from the actions of other apps on the device. The OS kernel is also protected, resulting in system stability and ease of update.

This model of protected file system and protected kernel avoids the threat of traditional malware. It dramatically reduces the complexity of managing these devices. In the past, your IT department gave you a laptop burned with a system image. All software was pre-installed and several security agents ran on the device, trying to protect the system, but slowing down performance in the process. Now, because security is embedded in the OS, you can choose your own device and select from the services that IT provides you. You update the operating system, not IT.

These new OS architectures allow user choice to replace IT command-and-control without compromising data security.

2. Evolution Of Trust

Trust is a two-way street. In a successful mobile program, IT must trust the employee enough to provide mobile access to a broad base of business services, and the employee must trust IT enough to use those mobile services. IT trust is based on perceived risk of business data loss while employee trust is based on perceived risk of personal data loss. Security and privacy are two sides of the same coin.

In the traditional enterprise world, IT trust is largely based on Active Directory as the source of truth for employee identity. Employees get access (or not) to corporate resources based on who they are. In the mobile world, identity is essential, but trust is also heavily determined by context, such as whether the device is up-to-date on the security software and updates it should have. And because many employee devices are personally owned, they fall in and out of compliance frequently. Trust must be dynamic. It will determine what level of access a particular employee on a specific device in a certain context has to enterprise resources.

Employee trust is based on something much simpler -- confidence that the employer is not misappropriating personal information from the device, such as family photos or your location over the weekend. Mobile devices are highly personal. They capture our lives in a way that no other technology can. Asking employees to decipher complex legal privacy agreements isn't the path to success. The burden is absolutely on IT to be able to set and, most importantly, communicate privacy policies effectively to the broad employee base. Transparency is the only way to build trust. IT should explicitly disclose what it tracks and doesn't track, and why and when it does so.

This new trust model incorporates identity, context, and privacy enforcement to set the appropriate level of access to enterprise data and services.

3. Ascension Of User Experience

We each want great new productivity apps so we can do our work better and more efficiently. But it is user experience, not breadth of functionality that is the litmus test for whether employees adopt mobile apps in the enterprise. Unfortunately, traditional IT organizations are terrible at user experience. In fact, many IT professionals have been explicitly trained that it is okay to compromise user experience in order to get higher security. This was probably the wrong approach even for traditional enterprise computing, but it is certainly the kiss of death for mobile computing.

In the consumer world, if you don't have a great experience, nobody uses your mobile app, no matter what features it provides. The best apps tend to be tightly focused on two to three core tasks. Employees expect this same, focused, consumer-grade experience with mobile business apps.

This is why technologies like virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) fail the individual. Forcing employees to use legacy Windows apps that were built for keyboards and big screens on their beautiful new tablets optimized for touch and mobility will result in poor adoption, user frustration, and minimal business value. A 2015 Ferrari should not have the engine of a 1990 Buick. Employees want modern apps that are optimized for the mobile experience and for the way they want to do their work.

This move to an experience-centric model of apps requires a re-imagining of underlying business processes and a change in the mindset and design methodology of the enterprise developer.

4. From Inside-Out To Outside-In

The mobility disruption for business IT isn't driven by technology, but rather a fundamental flip in the way IT must look at the world. The core infrastructure technologies of the last 20 years -- anti-malware, system management, virtualization, VPN, and remote desktops -- were not driven by the needs of employees, but instead by the need of IT for efficiency and data security. The requirements were developed inside-out: They started with IT and were then deployed to the employee base. Now the requirements are being set outside-in: They start with the employee needs and are then enabled by IT. Employees are demanding that IT respect their preferences for particular operating systems, devices, and apps. IT doesn't have the option to say "no," but must instead accept the challenge of making these services available in a business context without sacrificing enterprise security, user experience, or personal privacy.

What makes this challenge so difficult is its pace of change. The technology landscape is more dynamic than at any time in our lives, with the launch of Apple Watch and a new generation of wearable devices; new versions of Android, iOS, and Windows coming out every few months (or weeks); and a stunning rate of innovation across apps. The speed with which IT must race through this gauntlet is daunting. Mobile moves at consumer speed, which is far outside the comfort zone of most IT organizations.

We all have much work to do. Establishing a successful mobile program requires a rethinking of the assumptions that have driven enterprise IT for the last 30 years. But the prize at the end is that mobility can enable employees to do things they could never have imagined before, because data and information become ubiquitous. That's why mobile will be not only the great disruptor of IT, but also the core driver of business transformation in this decade.

Developing the Conviction to Do Meaningful Work as we get older

The time I spend lounging around a swimming pool is rarely productive (I’m no Michael Phelps). Pools make sense to me when I am exhausted and lazy, wishing to do something but not much of anything. In my mind, pool time is simply an aquatic version of a nap.

Not so for Stephanie Pollaro, who discovered her life’s purpose while lounging by her backyard pool in 2003. Flipping through a fashion magazine, the 23-year-old spotted an article about human trafficking. For the first time she realized that, all over the world, young girls are sold by their families or lured away under false pretenses only to find themselves trapped in slavery.

This knowledge rocked her world. The California native with a master’s degree in counseling knew she had to do something. Two weeks later, she signed up for a trip to India, the first of three voyages she would make there. With each visit, Pollaro learned more about what it can be like for women and girls who are trafficked. And with each visit, her determination to do something to help grew.

In 2006, on her third trip to India, she resolved to help survivors gain economic independence. A jewelry maker by avocation, she latched on to the only thing she knew how to do and decided to develop fashionable designs, teach survivors of modern-day slavery how to make jewelry, and market the jewelry in the United States. Upon returning to the U.S., she sold all of her possessions, developed a portfolio of designs, and moved to Mumbai. Her business partner, Wendy Dailey — an American citizen Pollaro met on her second trip to India — remained in the U.S. to establish and oversee the sales and administrative activities. Thus was born International Sanctuary (where I serve on the board).

Fast-forward almost a decade. With the leadership of Pollaro and Dailey, more than 400 women have been gained economic independence through the jobs, education, and counseling provided in loving workplace sanctuaries. The proceeds from the jewelry sales go to paying for medical care and educational programs for these survivors.

All of which makes me a little embarrassed when I reflect back on what I was doing in my early 20s. With a new MBA, I was doing odd jobs as a novice “consultant,” with no greater purpose in mind than dressing for success and hanging out with my boyfriend.

Granted, we aren’t all called to be Stephanie Pollaro. But we can be inspired by her story to write (or rewrite) our own. There are infinite sources of inspiration, including a number of individuals I’ve previously profiled in my blog posts — people who are actively…

·         Raising their children up to be better global citizens

·         Helping their employees realize their potential

·         Fostering a culture of giving, rather than taking

·         Creating good jobs

·         Starting a company that promotes conscious capitalism

·         Applying their for-profit skills to not-for-profit endeavors

The common denominator of those who “do something” is conviction borne of a higher purpose that fuels the courage necessary to act.

Unfortunately, conviction is in relatively short supply. When I ask clients about their values, legacy, motivators, and talents, many lack Pollaro’s level of self-awareness. And even if they have it, the temptation to envision more practical dreams all too often short-circuits conviction. Finally, even when armed with self-awareness and dreams that make the heart go pitter-patter, the daily demands of living complicate the process of creating tomorrow while living today.

In our 20s, if we are free of the responsibilities of mortgages, children, and a fully developed prefrontal cortex, these barriers seem like mere speed bumps. But as we get older, we put more weight on what we could lose than on what we might gain — and developing conviction to pursue our dreams becomes more difficult.

As we get older, developing conviction to pursue our dreams becomes more difficult.

But it’s not impossible. The simplest and safest way to break through these barriers is to follow these easy-to-describe but difficult-to-practice principles:

1. Honor your impulses. It would have been easier, and more comfortable, for Pollaro to leave the pool, dry her tears, bemoan the awfulness of the world, and move on. Fortunately for the world, she honored her feelings and sought not comfort, but resolution.

2. Remain persistent. Pollaro traveled to India three times until she had a clearer idea about her next steps. Resist the temptation to make any dramatic moves before you gain experience by connecting with people wiser than you. Pollaro learned economic independence was the essential component to restoring traumatized lives. She had originally intended to market and sell products that had previously been crafted by the survivors. But the designs didn’t reflect Western tastes, so she decided to establish a workshop-sanctuary where she could teach these women to make things that would have greater appeal for consumers in the U.S.

3. Once you have an educated guess, consider it fact, and start acting accordingly. After Pollaro decided to design, manufacture, and market jewelry handcrafted by survivors of slavery, she fully committed to her course of action.

4. Say yes to opportunities that come your way. Pollaro established local relationships with organizations involved in fighting human trafficking, and accepted any invitation to interact with and teach survivors how to make jewelry. Saying yes is powerful because the offers you receive reflect what others see in you — often beyond or different from how you view yourself — and can open doors that will expand your influence and impact.

Even if you don’t want to rewrite your story, you may want to add a chapter by serving as a volunteer. The success of Pollaro’s organization brings with it the opportunity to expand to help more survivors. It, like many other nonprofits, needs people with the conviction to “do something” to donate their time, even if it is only a few hours a week.

Each of us has the responsibility — and privilege — to channel our inner Stephanie Pollaro by honoring and acting on our conviction to be somebody that does something that matters to the world.

 

Think 10 ideas a day

This is why it’s important to exercise the idea muscle right now. If  your idea muscle atrophies, then even at your lowest point you won’t  have any ideas.

How long does it take this muscle to atrophy?  The same as any other muscle in your body: just two weeks without having  any ideas. Atrophied.

If you lie down in a bed for two weeks and don’t move your legs you will need physical therapy to walk again.

Many people need idea therapy. Not so that they can come up with great  ideas right this second (although maybe you will) but so that people can  come up with ideas when they need them: when their car is stuck, when  their house blows up, when they are fired from their job, when their  spouse betrays them, when they go bankrupt or lose a big customer, or  lose a client, or go out of business, or get sick.

IDEAS ARE  THE CURRENCY OF LIFE. Not money. Money gets depleted until you go broke.  But good ideas buy you good experiences, buy you better ideas, buy you  better experiences, buy you more time, save your life. Financial wealth  is a side effect of the “runner’s high” of your idea muscle.

Whoah! That was a big intro. Depending on where I post this, some people  will write “tl;dr” which I had to look up and it means “too long,  didn’t read.” I encourage those people to stop reading here and save  yourself the trouble. It’s ok. I’m not mad at you. I’ll write smaller  articles also. I’ll even draw cartoons.

I’ve often written  about the idea muscle as part of what I call my “daily practice”. Every  day I have to check the box on physical, emotional, mental, and  spiritual health.

And I get a lot of questions about it so I  will try and answer them here. If you have more questions, ask in the  comments and I will answer.

Sometimes people ask, “did you only start coming up with ideas because you already had it made?”

ANSWER: I was on the floor crying because I was dead broke and dead lonely and had no prospects so that’s why I had to do it.

So now, 1000 words in (“tl;dr”) The Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Becoming an Idea Machine

The below is what I do and what works for me. If you have anything to  add, please add them in the comments, I need all the help I can get.

A) WHAT DO YOU MEAN – “IDEA MACHINE”?

You will be like a superhero. It’s almost a guaranteed membership in the Justice League of America.

Every situation you are in, you will have a ton of ideas. Any question  you are asked, you will know the response. Every meeting you are at, you  will take the meeting so far out of the box you’ll be on another  planet, if you are stuck on a desert highway – you will figure the way  out, if you need to make money you’ll come up with 50 ideas to make  money, and so on.

After I started exercising the idea muscle,  it was like a magic power had unleashed inside of me. It’s ok if you  don’t believe me. Or maybe you think it’s bragging. There are many times  when I don’t have ideas. But that’s when I stop practicing what I am  about to advocate.

Try it for yourself. I’m not selling  anything here. I have no reason for you to try this. I just want to  share my exerience. It’s like part of your brain is opened up and a  constant flow of stuff, both good and bad, gets dropped in there.

From where? I don’t think about it and I don’t care. But I use it.

In early 2009 was one of those times when I desperately needed to do  this. I was fulltime either trying to find a girlfriend or I was trying  to start a business or both. I was also going broke in the stock market  and losing my home  (until I personally saved the entire stock market –  see my book).

Every night, I’d have waffles for dinner and a  bottle of wine and start writing ideas down. This is before I went paleo  (no waffles!) and stopped drinking alcohol (five years sober!) and I  was writing 10-20 of the most ludicrous ideas a day down.

And you know what ? It worked.

B) HOW DO I START EXERCISING THE IDEA MUSCLE?

Take a waiter’s pad. Go to a local cafe. Maybe read an inspirational  book for ten to twenty minutes. Then start writing down ideas. What  ideas? Hold on a second. The key here is, write ten ideas.

C) WHY A WAITER’S PAD?

A waiter’s pad fits in your pocket so you can easily pull it out to jot things down.

A waiter’s pad is too small to write a whole novel or even a paragraph.  In fact, it’s specifically made to make a list. And that’s all you  want, a list of ideas.

A waiter’s pad is a great conversation  starter if you are in a meeting. Someone at the meeting will eventually  say, “I’ll take fries with my burger” and everyone will laugh. You broke  the ice and you stand out.

A waiter’s pad is cheap. You can  get about 100 for $10. This shows you are frugal and don’t need those  fancy moleskin pads to have a good idea.

Oh, and I just found  out another reason for a waiter’s pad while I was writing this. Someone  with alcohol on his breath, a bottle in hand, looking like he could  crush me with one hand, just came up to me in the cafe I’m sitting at  and asked for money. I held up my waiter’s pad and said, “Can I take  your order?” and he said, “OH!” and he walked away.

D) WHY TEN IDEAS?

If I say, “write down ten ideas for books you can write” I bet you can  easily write down four or five. I can write down four or five right now.  But at six it starts to get hard. “Hmmm,” you think, “what else can I  come up with?”

This is when the brain is sweating.

Note that when you exercise in the gym, your muscles don’t start to  build until you break a sweat. Your metabolism doesn’t improve when you  run until you sweat. Your body doesn’t break down the old and build the  new until it is sweating.

The poisons and toxins in your body don’t leave until you sweat.

The same thing happens with the idea muscle. Somewhere around idea  number six, your brain starts to sweat. This means it’s building up.  Break through this. Come up with ten ideas.

E) WHAT IF I JUST CAN’T COME UP WITH TEN IDEAS?

Here’s the magic trick: if you can’t come up with ten ideas, come up with 20 ideas.

F) BUT IF I CAN’T COME UP WITH TEN, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COME UP WITH 20?

For the obvious reason. You are putting too much pressure on yourself.  Perfectionism is the ENEMY of the idea muscle. Perfectionism is your  brain trying to protect you from harm. From coming up with an idea that  is embarassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain.

We like the brain. But you have to shut the brain off to come up with ideas.

The way you shut the brain off is by forcing it to come up with bad ideas.

So let’s say you’ve written 5 ideas for books and they are all pretty  good. And now you are stuck. “How can I top this brilliant list of  five!?”

Well, let’s come up with some bad ideas. Here’s one:  “Dorothy and the Wizard of Wall Street”. Dorothy is in a hurricane in  Kansas and she lands right at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street in  NYC and she has to make her way all the way down Wall Street in order to  find “The Wizard of Wall Street” (Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman  Sachs) in order to get home to Kansas. Instead, he offers her a job to  be a high frequency trader instead.

What a bad idea! Ok, now go  onto the next 15 ideas. (and it anyone wants to buy the movie rights to  “The Wizard of Wall Street” please contact Claudia.)

G) HOW DO I KNOW IF AN IDEA IS A GOOD IDEA?

You won’t. You don’t. You can’t. You shouldn’t.

Let’s say you come up with ten ideas a day. In a year you will have  come up with 3650 ideas (no breaks on weekends by the way if you want to  get good at this). Maybe more if you are trying to do 20 ideas a day.

It’s unlikely that you came up with 3,650 good ideas (after you become  an idea machine your ratio goes up but probably in the beginning your  ratio of bad ideas to good is around 1000:1).

Don’t put  pressure on yourself to come up with good ideas. The key right now is  just to have good ideas. When Tiger Woods is practicing he doesn’t get  disappointed himself if he doesn’t hit a hole in one every shot. You’re  just practicing here.

Practice doesn’t make perfect. But  practice makes permanent. So that later on when you do need good ideas  to save your life, you know you will be a fountain of them.

When there’s a tidal wave of good ideas coming out of you, you only need a cup of water out of that to quench your thirst.

H) HOW DO I EXECUTE ON MY IDEA

Here’s what I do often when I am writing down ideas that I think I might want to act on.

I divide my paper into two columns.

On one column is the list of ideas. On the other column is the list of  “FIRST STEPS”. Remember, only the first step. Because you have no idea  where that first step will take you.

Imagine you are driving  100 miles to your home late at night. You turn on your headlights so you  can see in front of you. All you can see is about 30 feet in front of  you but you know if you have the lights on the entire time, you’ll make  it home safely, 100 miles away.

Activating the idea machine is how you turn the lights on so you can get home. But you don’t need to do any more than that.

One of my favorite examples: Richard Branson didn’t like the service on  some airline he was flying. So he had an idea: I’m going to start a new  airline. How the heck can a magazine publisher start an airline from  scratch with no money?

His first step. He called Boeing to see if they had an airplane he could lease.

No idea is so big you can’t take the first step. If the first step  seems to hard, make it simpler. And don’t worry again if the idea is  bad. This is all practice.

For instance, let’s say one of my  ideas is: “I want to be a brain surgeon”. My first step: I would buy a  bunch of books on how to do brain surgery. I don’t have to plan my whole  way through medical school.

Wait!? Did I just say I would be a  brain surgeon without a medical degree? No. I simply had a bad idea and  the first step I would take if I was going to “execute” on that idea.  And,  yes, I’m absolutely confident I would be able to do successful  brain surgery before someone throws me in jail (hence, the bad idea  aspect of it).

A real life example: In 2006 I had ten ideas for  websites I wanted to build. I knew how to program but didn’t want to.  So my first step was to find a site like Elance and then put the spec up  and find programmers in India who could make the websites for me. One  of them I paid $2000 to develop and sold for $10,000,000 9 months later.  (this is not bragging – I went dead broke about 2 years after that).

Nine of the ten ideas were BAD. But you only need one.

I) BUT IF I’M COMING UP WITH BUSINESS IDEAS, HOW DO I KNOW IF I’M ON THE RIGHT TRACK?

There’s no way to know in advance if a business idea is a good one. For  instance, Google started around 1996 but didn’t make a dime of money  until around 2001.

Here’s my favorite example. A company called  Odeo was a software company to help people set up podcasts. Since I do a  podcast now this seems like a great idea to me. So they raised a ton of  money from professional venture capitalists.

Then one of their  programmers started working on a side project. The side project got a  little traction but not much. But the CEO of Odeo decided to switch  strategies and go full force into the side project without having a clue  if it would work.

He felt bad since this isn’t what the  investors invested in. So he called up all of the investors, some of the  best investors on the planet, and described the side project to them  and all the traction they were getting, etc and then made an offer,  “Since this is a different direction, I’d be willing to buy all of your  shares back so nobody will lose any money.”

100% of his  investors said, “YES! GIVE IT BACK!” and so he bought all of his  investors’ shares back. Now, Ev Williams, the founder of Twitter (which  was the side project), is a billionaire as a result.

Nobody  knew. Nobody knows. You have to try multiple ideas and see which ones  gets the excitement of customers, employees, and you can see that people  are legitimately using it and excited by it.

When I started  Stockpickr someone once wrote me and said, “please block me from the  site. I’m too addicted to it and it’s ruining my life.” That’s when I  had a sense that I had a halfway decent idea. And that was one of ten  ideas I was trying simultaneously. The rest failed.

So don’t be  afraid to test, fail, test, fail, try again, repeat, improve, test,  fail again, and keep improving. The way to keep improving? Keep coming  up with ideas for your business and for other new businesses.

As your idea muscle improves, so will your ability to “fail quickly”.  Failing quickly is a better skill than executing quickly.

J) WHEN DO I SHUT DOWN AN IDEA?

In 2009, I started The Leading Love Site on the Net. It was going to be a dating website  where your twitter feed was your profile. Everyone I spoke to say,  “that’s a great idea!” I had already raised money and was raising more.

Then, on the day I was going to close the fundraising round I woke up  shaking. I had this vision of myself a year from now explaining to all  of the investors why it wasn’t going to work. I returned all the money. I  was out the money I had spent to create the website.

I can  guess why it was a bad idea (people on dating sites want to be  anonymous, for instance) but I didn’t really know. I just knew I had to  return the money.

When your idea muscle is developed and the  other legs of the daily practice are fully developed (Phyiscal,  Emotional, Spiritual) you’ll have a better idea when you should shut  things down. When you are shutting them down for the right reasons. When  you are “failing quickly” as opposed to self-sabotage or fear of  success or you’re just stupid.

That was the last time I tried  to start a business. Since then I’ve done very well by not starting  businesses. Starting businesses is not the only way to make money in  this world. There are many ways.

K) HOW DO YOU KEEP TRACK OF YOUR IDEAS?

I make a list of ideas and then I usually just throw them out.

The whole purpose is to exercise the idea muscle. I know most of the  ideas are bad ideas so I there’s no sense keeping them around.

If one of the ideas is good then I will probably remember it and build  on it for the next day. Sometimes it’s kind of funny when I come across  an old list of ideas to see what I was thinking. Every now and then I  think I find a good idea in my old lists but it’s rare.

And then what do I do with that rare good idea? Probably nothing.

L) ARE ALL OF YOUR IDEAS BUSINESS IDEAS?

No. Almost never. It’s hard to come up with over 3000 business ideas a year. I’m lucky if I come up with a few business ideas.

The key is to have fun with it. Else you don’t do it. People avoid things that are not fun.

Here’s some types of lists I make:

• IDEA SEX. Combine two ideas to come up with a better idea. Don’t  forget that idea evolution works much faster than human evolution. You  will ALWAYS come up with better ideas after generations of idea sex.  This is the DNA of all idea generation.
• OLD TO NEW: 10 old ideas I can make new. (Dorothy, Wall Street, etc). Similar to idea sex.
• 10 ridiculous things I would invent (the smart toilet, etc).
• 10 books I can write (The Choose Yourself Guide to an Alternative Education, etc).

• 10 business ideas for Google / Amazon / Twitter / you
• 10 people I can send ideas to
• 10 podcast ideas I can do. Or videos I can shoot. (“Lunch with  James”, a video podcast where I just have lunch with people over Skype  and we chat).
• 10 industries I can remove the middleman.
• 10 Things I Disagree With that everyone else assumes is religion  (college, home ownership, voting, doctors). Or, for any one of those  ideas. 10 ideas why!
• 10 ways to make old posts of mine and make books out of them
• 10 ways I can surprise Claudia. (Actually, more like 100 ways. That’s hard work!)
• 10 items I can put on my “10 list ideas I usually write” list
• 10 people I want to be friends with and I figure out what the next  steps are to contact them (Azaelia Banks, I’m coming after you! Larry  Page better watch out also.)
• 10 things I learned yesterday.
• 10 things I can do differently today. Right down my entire routine  from beginning to end as detailed as possible and change one thing and  make it better.
• 10 chapters for my next book
• 10  ways I can save time. For instance, don’t watch TV, drink, have stupid  business calls, don’t play chess during the day, don’t have dinner (I  definitely will not starve), don’t go into the city to meet one person  for coffee,  don’t waste time being angry at that person who did X, Y,  and Z to you, and so on.
• 10 Things I Learned from X. Where X  is someone I’ve spoke to recently or read a book by recently. I’ve  written posts on this about the Beatles, Mick Jagger, Steve Jobs,  Bukowski, the Dalai Lama, Superman, Freakonomics, etc.
• Random: 10 Things Women Totally Don’t Know About Men. (that turned into a  list of 100 and Claudia said to me, “uhhh, I don’t think you should  publish this”).
• Today’s list: 10 More Alternative to College I can Add to my book: “40 Alternatives to College”.
• 10 Things I’m Interested in Getting Better At (and then 10 ways I can get better at each one).
• 10 things I was interested in as a kid that might be fun to explore  now. (Like, maybe I can write that “Son of Dr. Strange” comic I’ve  always been planning. And now I need 10 plot ideas).
• A  problem I have and ten ways I might try and solve it. This has saved me  with the IRS countless times. Unfortunately, the Department of Motor  Vehicles is impervious to my super powers.

This is just a  sample. Every day, 10 ideas. The other day, “10 ways I can release more  endorphins into my body”. Today is, “10 ways I can help people build  their idea machine”. Tomorrow is “10 Ways I can turn my next book into a  webinar for Oprah.” The day after that: “10 things I can talk about in  my next talk on May 3″ (which means, developing an entire standup comedy  act from scratch since I have a rule, “if it’s not funny, then a tree  fell in the forest and it didn’t make a sound.”)

M) IS THE IDEA MUSCLE THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF WHAT YOU CALL “THE DAILY PRACTICE”?

No! They are all EQUAL.

Imagine you’re sitting on a stool. By the way, I only see stools in  bars because you have to be drunk to sit on a stool. It’s so  uncomfortable. And then invariably, someone falls off a stool and then  half the people laugh and half the people say “is he ok?” but everyone  crowds around because we smell blood.

So, now you’re on a stool  with four legs. If someone pulls away one of the legs you might still  balance and the stool stays up but it’s tricky. If someone pulls two  legs off, you’re down for the count.

The Daily Practice is to be: Physically, Emotionally, Mentally (the idea muscle), and Spiritually healthy.

If you aren’t physically healthy you won’t come up with ideas. You’ll be coughing and vomiting.

If you are around people who hate you, you won’t come up with ideas.  Because they will be yelling at you while you are trying to think.

And if you aren’t feeling grateful and calm in your life on a regular  basis, then you will be anxious and it will be harder to come up with  ideas.

So all four parts of the Daily Practice work together to come up with great ideas.

N) DO I REALLY DO THIS EVERY DAY?

Let’s say you get tired for a day of writing ideas. Try something  different. The key is to keep activating parts of your brain that have  atrophied.

Sometimes if I don’t feel like writing down a list of ten ideas I’ll do something else.

Like I’ll draw ten eyes.

Or I’ll make a collage.

Or I’ll take photographs of the ten most beautiful women I see today.  Or the ten ugliest men (if I take picture of the ten most handsome men  then I might get jealous and that’s a whole other thing I’d have to deal  with).

Or I might come make ten prank calls (well, when I was a kid I did that. I never do that now! Maybe).

O) IS IT IMPORTANT TO READ BEFORE WRITING?

I don’t know. But I do. Here’s what I do:

At any given point I have about 10-20 books on my “to go” list. Books that I can just pop in and continue reading.

Every day I read at least 10% of a non-fiction book that gives me tons  of new ideas, an inspirational book, a fiction book of high-quality  writing, and maybe a book on games (lately I’ve been solving chess  puzzles). And then I start writing.

Right now the inspirational  book is “The Untethered Soul”. The non-fiction book is “Antifragile”.  The fiction book is “Blind Date” (Kosinski) and the games book is  actually my chess app (“Shreder”) which has non-stop puzzles. But this  list changes almost every day.

P) HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

It takes at least six months of coming up with ideas every day before you are an “idea machine”.

Then your life will change every six months. I’ve said this before but  my life is completely different than it was six months ago, and six  months before that, and so on. So different there is no way I could’ve  predicted the differences.

Six months ago I had no podcast. Now  it’s a big part of my day. Six months before that, “Choose Yourself”  had not come out. Six months before that, several I had not yet gone on  several board seats that have done well for me. And so on.

Q) DO I GIVE MY IDEAS AWAY FOR FREE?

When you come up with ideas for someone else, always give ALL the ideas  away for free if you think they are good ideas (remember: six months).

I read recently one person said to give HALF of your ideas away for free and make them pay for the other half.

This is very bad. This guarantees you will only come up with bad ideas.  Because you will hoard your ideas. You will develop a SCARCITY COMPLEX  around your ideas.

Ideas are infinite. But once you define your  capacity of good ideas (“half”) then they instantly become finite for  you. Not for anyone else. But just for you, your ideas will be finite.

If you stick to an abundance mentality, and be grateful for the ideas  that are flowing through you, then they will be infinite. Where they  come from, nobody knows. But they will be infinite and lucrative for  you.

So give ideas for free, and then when you meet, give more  ideas. And if someone wants to pay you and your gut feels this is a good  fit, then give even more ideas.

R) I KEEP COMING UP WITH IDEAS AND THEY KEEP FAILING. WHAT DO I DO?

There’s this “cult of failure” that has popped up recently. That you need to fail to succeed.

This is not true. Failure really sucks. You don’t want to fail. There  is an easy way to solve this. Take the word “fail” out of your  vocabulary.

Everything we do in life is a success. We breathe,  we love, we practice kindness, we deal with other human beings. We  improve. We have experiences. This is magnificent and abundant success.  Just even being able to try new things is something to celebrate every  day. To smile at another person. To play.

Most things I try to  do don’t work out as I planned. But who am I to predict the outcomes of  my preparation. My only job is to prepare.

Everybody,  EVERYBODY, is a poor predictor of outcomes. From the weatherman, to the  stock analyst. But we can all be good at preparation.

And once  I prepare, I show up at the starting line. Then the whistle blows, the  race begins, I try my hardest with the most amount of integrity, and the  results are not up to me.

Then I go back and learn from the  race, I prepare more, I love more, I celebrate more, and I shop up for  the next race. The whistle blows, and eventually good things happen.  Preparation leads to Faith in yourself.

I used to think good  things never happen. I saw my father die without anything good happening  to him. I thought my fate was going to parallel his. But every moment,  this moment while you are reading this, you get to choose abundance,  gratitude, kindness, integrity, “goodness”. Only you get to choose what  is in your universe.

When you don’t choose, you excuse.

S) IS IT REALLY WORTH IT TO BECOME AN IDEA MACHINE?

Every day I come up with ideas. I haven’t had a business since 2009. And it failed, as mentioned above.

Since then I’ve made more money than I know what to do with because I  come up with ideas for people, for companies, for me, for people who  have no idea who I am, for random anonymous things.

I then get  invited to share my ideas. Sometimes I get paid for them. Sometimes I  give them for free. Sometimes I get more introductions to people and  sometimes I get a chance to advise companies that do well and make me  money. And sometimes I write books.

When you’re an idea  machine, everything you look at breaks down into a collection of ideas,  just like physical objects ultimately breakdown into collections of  particles if your eyes were subatomic microscopes. Your eyes and brains  become sub-idea microscopes that see the ideas that become the building  blocks for everything in society.

See them, build them, change  them, seed them, birth them, love them, live them. Ideas are the dark  matter of the universe. We know it’s there but only those “in the know”  can see them.

– – –

What do you do once you become an idea machine?

This is what I don’t know the answer to because you are the master of your life.

Now you have super powers. Now you’re ready to take your unique place  in the world. You will know how to get to the Justice League satellite  that orbits the Earth and solves problems at a moment’s notice.

You will know what to do. I don’t know. Nobody else knows. You’ll do it and the world won’t be the same.

An Ethos of Action

Start doing.

An easy thing to say, not as easy to do. There exists a feeling that if we talk about ideas and goals before we start them, that we have accomplished something. If we say, “I have this really great book idea” and talk about the plot and characters, that we have, essentially, written the book. “I’m going to start a blog and write about helping people,” “I just bought this great new fitness program and in eight weeks I’m going to be able to do…”. These are examples of plans in thought, not action.

If this serious black and white picture of an outline doesn't make you want to start doing something, then I don't know what will.

While saying these things out loud to another individual may be merely relaying the information, it’s likely that this is a way for us to feel accomplishment without really accomplishing anything.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself about your goal or idea: if I don’t tell anyone about my plan does it affect my ability to execute it? If not, then talking about it prior to doing it for praise and validation on a job not started, and that is a dangerous space to occupy (especially for a procrastinator like me).

For years, I would tell everyone my plans

“I’m gonna write a book” (I haven’t written a book.)

“Yea, I’m going to sign up for ju-jitsu because it’s a great workout and practical” (Only classes I ever took were from a friend.)

“I’m going to learn French. It’s easy, and I can’t wait to speak a different language” (Did it for a week, Je Suis Joe is all I know.)

There are scores of other examples throughout my life that are signposts of incomplete action. This thinking gives us a false start. It’s not visualizing the goal; it’s visualizing the reward. The premature celebration saps the motivation to act.

Realizing that this is common and difficult to change, what can you do to help fan the flames of action?

I have put together a list of 10 practical things that help me create an Ethos of Action:

• Don’t broadcast your intent. Nike has the perfect slogan for this, Just Do It. Seriously, if it’s meaningful and you have the drive to do it, then get something done. Then, show the thing you did to the person you are excited to talk to about it. But talk about it after you actually have something to show them, not merely at thing fantasize about with them.

• Know your “why”. I won’t go into too much detail on this as I wrote a whole post on this one subject.But know the reason you want to do what you are doing. Use this as your North Star for when you get off course due to distractions and poor decisions.

• Start. This one is self-explanatory, but I need reminding every once in a while. My blog and acting were started by a first step. I started writing; I took an acting class, I auditioned, and I put together a website. Once you start moving towards your goal outwardly, you start to habituate action internally. Think of action like driving a car. Once you are driving, it’s becomes mostly a decision to brake or press on the gas, however, before those choices are even an option, you need to turn the engine over and start the car.

• Let the new idea/goal breathe for a day. Sometimes I get so excited about something shiny and wonderful that I immediately attempt, sign up, agree, or attend whatever that thing is. Take a day, do some exercise, eat some tasty meals, shower, and sleep on it. I don’t care what anyone tells you; an extra day won’t make or break your desire; it will only sharpen it or prove it’s unrealistic.

• Write down ten ideas a day. Ok, this is one I read from James Altucher, and I absolutely love it. The technique is to write down ten ideas every day on a disposable piece of paper (he uses a waiter’s pad, cheap and disposable). James says it strengthens your “idea muscle” to the point that creativity, ideas, and solutions come quicker, easier, and are a better quality. The ideas can be about anything, and they don’t have to be good. It’s brainstorming for creativity and solutions. Personally, I enjoy saving my ideas, not because they are good, but because it’s fun to reread them.

• Keep track of your time for a month. Start a spreadsheet that outlines your day. Including work, breaks, hobbies, family time, and your new plan. It’s frustrating, and sometimes a little overkill but it will show you how much time you truly have in order to do things. Like a finance budget but for your time (which is way more valuable than money).

• Read a piece of fiction everyday. At some point –I usually do so before bed- read something that activates the non-analytical/problem-solving part of your brain. It’s great for decompressing and rebooting your mind without shutting it down. It will help with problem-solving by not having you burnout on solving problems.  Plus, there’s no downside to reading more.

• Don’t beat yourself up. I should get this tattooed on my forehead. So that every time I look in the mirror I remind myself that I feel like a failure for stumbling, it’s normal. You may forget to do what you wanted or needed to do for the day, it happens. But realizing it and adjusting is the important part. There are a few posts that I was too tired or lazy to finish when I wanted to but I didn’t stop trying and take down my site. If we stopped getting up and moving forward every time we stumbled the world would be full of adults crawling to work.

• Write down three things that must be accomplished the next day. Write your list of three things with this statement in mind: If I can only do these three things all day then my day is successful. I usually write these down before bed, it gives me the full experience of the day to plan for the next. Making this list will help get your mind and body in harmony with doing things and feeling accomplishment, which you can then apply to other endeavors.

• Persevere. Again, I wrote a full post on this one point, so I won’t go into much detail here. But keep moving towards your goal. Not just moving for the sake of moving, but any movement that gets you closer to your North Star isn’t wasted motion. Starting and stopping breeds complacency and wasted movement breed apathy.

Now, this list may seem daunting, but so does every uphill climb until you are looking back from where you are to where you started.

Action is the only thing that makes a difference. Ideas and dreams are for an audience of one, but action brings them to the world.

Start doing something today. It can be the yard work you didn’t feel like doing, starting the blog you always wanted to write or taking the trip you have been dreaming about taking.

Whatever the thing is in your life that you want to do, just start doing. (Yeah, Nike’s is catchier).

How Entrepreneurs Identify New Business Opportunities

There are many sources for new venture opportunities for individuals. Clearly, when you see inefficiency in the market, and you have an idea of how to correct that inefficiency, and you have the resources and capability — or at least the ability to bring together the resources and capability needed to correct that inefficiency — that could be a very interesting business idea. In addition, if you see a product or service that is being consumed in one market, that product is not available in your market, you could perhaps import that product or service, and start that business in your home country.

Many sources of ideas come from existing businesses, such as franchises. You could license the right to provide a business idea. You could work on a concept with an employer who, for some reason, has no interest in developing that business. You could have an arrangement with that employer to leave the company and start that business. You can tap numerous sources for new ideas for businesses. Perhaps the most promising source of ideas for new business comes from customers — listening to customers. That is something we ought to do continuously, in order to understand what customers want, where they want it, how they want a product or service supplied, when they want it supplied, and at what price.

Obviously, if you work in a large company, employees might come up with ideas. Indeed, you might want to listen to what they have to say. You could pursue these ideas by asking yourself some key questions such as, “Is the market real? Is the product or service real? Can I win? What are the risks? And is it worth it?”

You could go back to the beginning of E-Bay, where they saw an opportunity to connect people through launching a virtual flea market. It offered a platform that connected buyers and sellers directly.Other companies have found similar models. For instance, take PayPal, a company whose co-founder [Elon Musk] was a Penn and Wharton graduate. The company provided people the opportunity to pay online. Flycast is another company started by a former Wharton MBA student, [Rick Thompson]. It addressed issues of advertising on-line. All of these companies have one thing in common. They addressed an unmet need in the marketplace.

There is no substitute for understanding the unmet needs of customers. That will allow you to discover whether you are able to supply those needs, at the price customers want to pay, and if you can still make a profit.

The first step that everyone should go through is to ask the question, is the market real? In order to do so, the first thing you want to do is conduct what we call a customer analysis. You can do that perhaps in a very technical way, by conducting surveys. Or perhaps, in a less technical way, you can attempt to answer the question, “Who is my customer?” What does the customer want to buy? When does the customer want to buy? What price is the customer willing to pay? So, asking the “W questions” — who, where, what, when — is the first step. At the end of the day, the one thing every entrepreneur is looking for is revenue, and the revenue will come from customers. That is why you need to ask yourself, is there a market here?

The second thing you want to ask yourself is, who else is supplying that particular market? That is what we call competitor analysis. Ask yourself who else is in this market, and what are they doing for the customers. Are they supplying a similar substitute product or service as you have in mind? That is the second thing you have to establish, and by doing that, you can understand better what need is not met at the moment. That will also give you the opportunity to zero in on the price points and feature points of where you can differentiate yourself from existing players in the market.

You also need to conduct a broader industry analysis to understand the attractiveness of the industry you’re going to enter. Is the industry growing or shrinking? What power do the suppliers have in this industry? How many buyers are there? Are there substitute products? Are there any barriers to entry? If so, what are they? That is very important for you to understand, because it will help you realize whether the industry you’re thinking of entering is attractive.

In addition, you may want to look at regulations that affect that industry. Are there any regulations that you would be subject to? This especially applies in the life sciences sector, where there are strict regulations that control the supply of products into the market. In the United States, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, is a significant regulator. Every country around the world has a regulator in the life science sector. So, these are the high level questions that you may want to ask yourself.

Once you answer these questions, and you identify the need, given the competition and all the regulatory constraints that exist in that market, that will provide you with the opportunity to tailor your service or product — or combination of the service and product — to that marketplace. The logic we are suggesting here is to understand the need, and tailor the product and/or service to that need, as opposed to saying, “Well, I have an idea. And now let me think how I can shove it down the distribution channel.” More often than not, the latter doesn’t work. More often than not, the former approach works. This is the approach where you identify the need, do a rigorous analysis of understanding who else is out there, and what constraints exist, and how you could differentiate yourself in a meaningful way. When you approach a new opportunity this way, when you introduce your product and/or service, you can expect to have substantial sales and growth for your company.

When starting a business, there are many risks that need to be considered. One way to think about the various risks an entrepreneur is faced with — or, for that matter, an investor in an entrepreneurial venture is faced with — is to break them down into several buckets. Let’s start with the first bucket, the company bucket. Well, here, the biggest sources of risk are the founders. Do they have the wherewithal not just to start the company, but also grow the company? Experience has shown that the prevalence of individuals such as Bill Gates or Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, that can not only start companies, but also manage its growth — the prevalence of such individuals is relatively limited.

A second source of risk is technology risk. To the extent that your company employs technology, there are obviously issues of, how long will this technology be the leading edge? Secondly, are there any intellectual property issues that need to be addressed? Lastly, there exists the product risk. If you haven’t developed a product yet, can you manufacture it? Will it work? All these issues are under the bucket of company risk.

A second bucket for the sources of risk is the market for the product. You need to be aware of two big uncertainties. First, what is the customer’s willingness to buy? And second, what is the pace, if you’re successful, at which competitors will be able to imitate you? One of the things you have to think about when you enter that market is how you can create barriers to imitation, so that if you’re successful, the competition won’t be able to imitate you very quickly.

A third bucket consists of risks associated with the industry. Are there any factors in that industry that relate to availability of supply? In some cases, you need to have certain raw materials that are in limited supply, and that some suppliers might be able to take advantage of that. Barriers to entry might change. Regulations might change, and adversely or positively affect your business.

Lastly, there are financial risks. And here, the question is, will you be able to raise the money early on? At what valuation will you be able to do it? Will you be able to raise follow-up money? And then, from the investor’s standpoint, obviously there’s a risk that if the company is very successful — and I can tell you that most early stage companies don’t work out, but for the few that do, when it is time for, say, a public offering, will the public market be open? We have just gone through a substantial period of almost two years where IPOs were few and far between. At the time you make the investment, you don’t know what the state of the capital market will be in five to seven years from the date you make the investment. That’s a big risk the investor is assuming. Obviously, it’s a big risk for the entrepreneur to be able to have some liquidity, and perhaps realize the fruits of her investment, of her time, talent, and in some cases some of the money she puts into that venture.