Find a quiet, comfortable place where I can avoid interruption for an hour or so.
Begin to form a picture in my mind of what I want to be doing six months from now, a year from now, five years from now—and where I want to be doing it.
Allow my mind to wander without limits and to consider all the possibilities for how I can attain the vision of my future—especially the ones that seem most nearly impossible to attain, but with the greatest potential rewards.
Choose the one path to the future that gets me most excited and motivated, and turn it into an aspirational goal.
Set smaller, readily attainable goals that define the exact path I will follow along the way to achieving my aspirational goal. It’s not these smaller goals that keep me motivated, however, but more the process of setting the lofty, aspirational goal and then coming as close as I possibly can to achieving it.
I’ve been responsible for my actions—both the successes and the mistakes—since I was a teenager. I juggled school and a modeling career, achieved grades that made my parents proud, and pulled down the kind of summer income from my lemonade stand that most children only dream of. I learned to negotiate for myself, first as a model negotiating with my agent, and ultimately with clients. I next developed an interest in investing in real estate, so I learned how to create plans to turn properties that were depressed into lucrative assets.
Lauren on … Taking Risks
When pursuing an opportunity, ask yourself, “Will it have been worth it even if I fail?” Once that answer is clearly a resounding “yes,” the potential risks morph into rewards, such as acceleration and expansion of business experience.
I know no other way than to thrive under pressure, but I always have a plan about what my end goal is. The plan to get there may not always be as methodical, but the purpose in my journey is clear and my contingency plan if all else fails is even clearer.
I have lost count of the number of times I’ve talked to someone in the corporate world who’s thinking of starting his or her own business. In almost every case, the person thinks that starting a business is going to be easy—come up with a great idea for a new product or service, throw together a website, and wait for those orders to roll in, right? Wrong. The dream is often not as great as the promise. You’ve got to have the right idea and the right mind-set—you’ve got to think like an entrepreneur. And you’ve got to have a plan.
When I talk about having a plan, I don’t mean that you’ve got to devote a year of your life creating a 359-page document that details every single action that you’re going to do to build your business and make it run. That’s not necessary. When I talk about having a plan, I mean that you’ve got to have a clear vision of what your business is going to be, and then a simple schedule of milestones and benchmarks that you create, even if you’re only creating them for yourself.
Having a plan also means that you know and are very clear and comfortable with your personal goals and your non-negotiables, and that any opportunity you accept aligns with those values and furthers your personal goals. My most prominent non-negotiables are
anything that compromises my integrity;
not having the level of autonomy that allows me to control the majority of how I schedule my time;
inflexibility for an indefinite period of time;
lack of complete transparency in a partnership; and
unclear benchmarks and milestones by which to measure expectations and gauge success.
Don’t constantly recalibrate your barometer for success, despite all temptations. If you attempt to recalibrate your goals after each accomplishment, your benchmarks will get thrown out of whack and you will never feel proud of the progress you have made and all of the efforts you put forth to make it happen. You’ll lose sight of your ultimate goal because your target will keep moving; it will quickly turn into mental warfare and you’ll feel like a hamster on a treadmill. You will slowly but surely frustrate yourself and doubt if the progress you’ve made is good enough.
You must know when to hold out for the right opportunity. Think of your life as an ecosystem—each part has to work to the benefit and betterment of the other.
Identifying and Establishing Your Non-Negotiables
Non-negotiables are the theoretical underpinning of what enables us to accept responsibility and accountability with ease and joy. You should establish this set of rules, both professionally and personally, to help you maintain your inner compass. These guidelines should motivate you toward bigger and better things, and they should help you achieve happiness and preserve your sanity despite difficult situations. It’s important to take the time to establish your list of non-negotiables so you are prepared and resolute when the time comes.
My non-negotiables are the foundations and moral basis for my decisions and they determine if and how I am incentivized. My non-negotiables are the rules I am not willing to break. They help me to maintain the level and type of autonomy that I know I need to make me happy and thrive under the most pressured circumstances.
Everyone’s non-negotiables are different. What are yours?
To me, the best entrepreneurs know how to spot an opportunity and they understand the value of seizing the moment; the advantages of being the first to make a move or get in on the deal early; and they understand the importance of adaptability, which is always necessary along the way. Again, this doesn’t mean that you don’t need a plan. Opportunities rarely come out of nowhere. It can take many years of hard work, planning, and preparation to be in the right place at the right time so that when that opportunity comes down the road you’ll be able to act on it.
In his book Outliers: The Story of Success (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), Malcolm Gladwell presented the idea that to get to the top in your chosen field, you’ve got to devote at least ten thousand hours of your life to that pursuit. Ten thousand hours works out to about five years of full-time practice, laser-focused on a particular skill or area of expertise—or, that works out to 2.75 years if you’re a real go-getter working fifteen-hour days, five days a week, and taking two to three weeks of vacation each year. When you put it in these terms, imagine how many industries you could be an expert in within a single lifetime, excluding, of course, mastering love, parenthood, and the greatest joys of your personal life.
Being prepared to act on an opportunity has nothing to do with luck, but it has everything to do with having the wherewithal—mental, financial, or whatever—to be ready, willing, and able to act on that opportunity.
No matter how successful you may think you are, the fact is you’re always adapting. In his book, The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (Crown Publishing Group, 2012), LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman discusses the concept of permanent beta. According to Hoffman, the best entrepreneurial career strategy is one that emphasizes being adaptable and light on your feet while also planning smart. The idea is to pick a market or industry that accounts for your existing competitive assets, aspirations, and market needs; launch a thought-out Plan A on a leap of faith; and then systematically experiment and adapt as you accumulate lessons, pivoting to a Plan B as necessary. Entrepreneurs are always a work in progress; they are in permanent beta.
I never know what’s going to happen on the other end of a phone call or an e-mail. I always have to be prepared. For years I’d been thinking about starting a business in the beauty industry, but I hadn’t found the right opportunity.
What I’ve learned about business from my colleagues…
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, is one of the most humble geniuses I know. He has a clear vision and no one can derail his focus. I admire his dedication to creating a business with longevity