In The Entrepreneurial Way, Jacob Busani takes readers on a one-month journey through the world of entrepreneurship. Each chapter is to be read on a different day over the course of thirty days, and each day is devoted to a different topic relevant to being an entrepreneur. The book is intended for the busy person who may only have five or ten minutes a day to read, so each chapter is only a few pages long, but it brings a topic to the forefront of the reader’s mind, offers inspirational quotes to support the topic, and then a series of exercise questions so the reader can take action on that day’s topic.
The book opens with what may be the most important topic of all: Mindset. Busani begins by quoting Henry Ford’s famous saying, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Busani says Ford was absolutely right in this statement. If we wish to be entrepreneurs, we must take control of our minds. We have to believe we can be entrepreneurs and we have to learn to be our own bosses.
Numerous other topics follow. For example, Day 2 is about Vision. In it, Busani describes the importance of communicating to customers why you do what you do so you can bring the best experience to your customers. Day 8: No Guarantees discusses the importance of working because you are passionate about what you do and you believe in your business. Busani reminds entrepreneurs that, especially in the beginning, 80 percent of what they do they will not be paid for, but those who will only do what they get paid for never get rich. If you put in the time to build your business, eventually you will reap the rewards. One of the most important topics is Day 10: Focus. Here, Busani dismisses the myth of multitasking because it destroys focus and also results in tasks taking more time. He instead tells us to focus on one task at a time if we want to make progress on our goals and manage our time properly. Other daily topics include Day 13: Commitment, Day 15: Procrastination, and Day 25: Leadership, where Busani recommends, “Always say, ‘I want my people to win more than I want them to win for me.’ That’s valuable. There’s a lot of ROI (return on investment) in seeing your people succeed. Sometimes, it means having them leave the company to seek their own passions.”
Some statements like that last one may be surprising, but as a former manager of a call center and as an entrepreneur myself for a dozen years, I completely agree with Busani. The more you support your employees, the happier and more prosperous everyone will be. Therefore, I appreciate that throughout these pages, Busani offers practical and honest advice, based on experience, that will definitely benefit anyone who embraces it.
Embracing and applying the material is made easy for readers because each day is followed by a short exercise. The exercises help readers think through what they have learned from that day’s lesson and move forward into taking action to succeed as an entrepreneur. For example Day 20: Finding the Right Mentor asks you to think about in what ways a mentor might help you. Then it asks you to list five mentors in your field and do some research on each of them to see how they might assist you. Day 26: Residual Income asks you to brainstorm ways you could come up with residual income and then outline a plan for doing so. None of the exercises are overly taxing on the brain, but rather, they set the brain to thinking in an entrepreneurial way, and ultimately, the result will be that such thinking will become habitual.
Finally, each chapter ends with several wonderful inspirational quotes. Yes, Busani quotes famous people like Thomas Jefferson, who said, “I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have” and Mark Twain: “Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.” But my two favorite quotes in the book are actually both by Anonymous: “You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum wage work ethic,” and “No matter how busy you are, or how busy you think you are, the work will always be there tomorrow, but your friends might not be.” Yes, work/life balance is also a topic in The Entrepreneurial Way-and one of the most important for entrepreneurs who tend to be workaholics.
I encourage you to take the journey of The Entrepreneurial Way. Because reading this book and applying its concepts will only take you five or ten minutes per day, your investment will be minimal, but the return on that investment will likely be beyond measure.