10 Entrepreneurial Mindset Notes

Just to let you know, this isn’t my IP but my notes from Dan Vas’ course, which you can find here.

It’s about 11 hours worth of content summarised here. I hope you’ll find some things useful!

Lesson 1 – Success is a Mindset

• Invest in books by successful people (my favorites are Richard Branson’s Losing My Virginity and Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer)
• We’re not good at many things, so identify your strengths and run with it
• To achieve the good life, you have to be in the top 5% of people in the industry
• Have a clear sense of your life purpose

Questions to Reflect

Have I deserved the good life? Am I creating value for the world?

To find your signature strengths, consider this:

• What did I grow up around?
• What do strangers tell me I’m good at?
• What have you been doing for the last ten years?
• What can you talk about endlessly on Friday with your friends (without getting paid)?

Lesson 2 – The Mindset of the Successful

• Wealthy people operate by an internal locus of responsibility – whatever happens in my life, I am solely responsible for it. If there’s anything you want, you just figure out a way to do it. No government, upbringing, or any other limitations can put you down – TO BE SUCCESSFUL, YOU HAVE TO TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF.
• Don’t worry about what you’re meant to do – over-focusing creates stress and worry.
• Ask what you can do for someone, not what they can do for you.
• There’s more than enough to go around for everybody.
• You will have to shift your identity. Don’t worry if your old one wants to pull you back. It will. Notice and move on.

Lesson 3 – The Enemy of Success – Drifting

• A drifter lacks a purpose in life, looks for others to give him something (government, boss, etc.), and chooses the easy short-term thing over the long-term. Easy choices – hard life. Hard choices – easy life.
• Secret by N.Hill: if you know what you want and you’re very clear about it and your intention, you desire and demand it. If you’re ready to pay the price for what you want and refuse any other substitute, you will transmute it into physical reality (this is from both of his books, Think and Grow Rich and Outwitting the Devil).
• Anything that life gives you, smile and say, ‘I can handle this; I’m only a step away from success.
• Success is one step past failure.

Lesson 4 – Creating Your Dream Life

• The cause of failure is not planning your future, not planning to be successful. If you set a target for your life, you WILL achieve it.
• Entrepreneurs are the people that get rewarded by life.
• I can have anything I want in life as long as I consciously plan it and it’s realistic.
• Always keep perspective relative to your goal. Although it might appear that $2 million US by the 29th birthday is a lot, it’s not. We sent the man to the Moon. Is a couple of million really that hard?

EXERCISES

1. Write down your life vision for the next two years. Then the next ten years. And the next ten. And the next. Plan your life.
2. Then each time, go back ten years and see what you need to do as a 10-year younger self to become the person you achieved to be by that age.
3. Write down the person you have to become to achieve that goal/the habits you need (e.g., you need to be a person who reads self-dev books)
4. Now invert – think of a version of you that doesn’t achieve those goals – what do they do? Then you know NOT to do it.

Lesson 5 – Walk Through Your Own Door

• We can only become successful by walking through our own doors, following our own paths, and playing on our unique strengths.
• Doing things that we’re good at and that make us happy and figuring out a way to turn it into entrepreneurship
• Cultivate gratitude towards a life/universe/higher being - whatever works for you.
• The world is an abundant place! Find your door – that’s where abundance is

Questions to Reflect

Ray Dalio says you must know your nature and get to know yourself well. What are your strengths, what environments do you thrive in, what you’re good at, and what do you really want out of life?

• What is my nature?
• What do I want out of life?
• What does success look like to me?
• What do I value?

Say to yourself every day:

I allow myself to experience the riches / I allow myself success / I allow myself the good life / I allow myself to have the wealth / Everything will work out.

Lesson 6 – What You Chase Will Always Run Away

• Just worry about WHAT you want, not HOW you should get it.
• Pursue your goals but don’t attach happiness to them – as in, if it doesn’t work out, your life will still be great, and you’ll be happy regardless. Detachment. Just focus every day on how your life is getting better and better.
• Adopt a mindset that it is going to happen sooner or later; success is inevitable.
• All you need is one win. You literally only need to win once!
• To earn money, search for ways to be valuable to others – how can I help others?
• Money is not the goal. The goal is what you want and your purpose. Just focus on that, and the money will come. Money comes anyway.
• If I have it/get it, it’s awesome. If I don’t, it will come eventually.
• Money and goals are often achieved indirectly – focus on how you can add value to others, and money will come your way.

Lesson 7 – The Law of Three Failures

• In life, always make sure to put all odds in your favor and do the best you can.
• Failure helps you to learn the lessons you need to achieve success.
• The two most important traits of an entrepreneur are courage and persistence.
• 50% of people quit after the 1st failure; 80% after the 2nd failure; 95% after 3rd failure.
• You need to learn to brush failure off as a fly on your shoulder.
• Convince yourself that success is already here. Success is where I’ll end up regardless.
• Failure is just life testing you to see if you’re worthy of success.

The serenity prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change. Courage to change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference

Lesson 8 – Daily Discipline and Practice

• I want success; therefore, I commit to showing up for myself every day. In life, if you’re not consciously going up – it means you’re going down.
• Every wealthy person knows – time is more valuable and important than money.

Daily routine

Goals and visualization

• Start off with a 2-year vision.
• Create a nice vision, and make sure you will enjoy and like to live.
• Write down your goals as if you already have them. Describe each goal with emotion. e.g., I am so happy and grateful now that I run a multi-million US dollar online business that gives me wealth, location independence, fulfillment, and joy and really ‘paint’ the goal, e.g., I am so happy and grateful now that I have an athletic yet gracious physique with fit legs, round booty, beautiful arms
• Describe your goals in vivid detail.
• Attach your goals to positive emotions that you feel as if you already have them.
• In your goals, focus on money, business, relationship, friendships, health & fitness.
• Once you write down your goals – visualize them – really see yourself having them and feeling the feelings of you already having that goal.
• Emotions+vision=manifestation

Also

• Write down the next day, a day before, so you don’t waste time and do important things first.
• Take care of your fitness and health regime
• Daily self-development and self-education
• Commit to reading daily and make notes on anything that stands out to you

Lesson 9 – Which Business Do I Start?

• An entrepreneur is a person who remakes the world in their own image.
• If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you’ll be broke forever – W.Buffet.
• You want to know your signature strengths and build upon it

Consider

• What did I grow up around?
• What do strangers say about me?
• What can you talk about forever without getting paid?
• What I’ve been doing for the last 5-10 years?

Best businesses to start online

• E-commerce
• A skills-based company like learn FB ads and offer marketing to others; DOWNSIDE is that you’re still dependent on a client
• Coaching
• Become an influencer/brand so you can direct your audience to other businesses.

Build real business

• Make sure to offer value first
• Sell real products and services
• Create an automatic system

Success = location independence+scalability+signature strength+commitment to your strength

Lesson 10 – On the Shortness of Life

• By pursuing something, am I creating something of value?
• You should use it to your advantage to motivate you
• The only time we have is actually the present moment, and we can use the present moment to achieve the future that we want
• Consider your perceptions of time
• Invest in today for a better tomorrow – short pain long-term gain
• Every single day commit to putting the odds on your side
• Be impatiently patient-patient to keep going until you achieve success and impatient knowing that every day goes by quickly
• Time is much more valuable than money
• It’s not that we have a shot at life; it’s that we waste so much of it
• We live as if money, belongings, and property are scarce, but time is plentiful. But in reality, it is the opposite – time is scarce, and abundance is plentiful and can always be created.