To Think Like an Entrepreneur, Stop Thinking and Start Doing

The sheer audacity that I or anybody else can tell you how to think like an entrepreneur is bullshit.

And I apologize for the language, but it's true.

I'm an entrepreneur. I build businesses. I've sold them for millions. I'm doing it again. And I still wake up basically every single day wondering, "What the hell am I doing?"

That doesn't go away.

And the way to become one isn't by thinking. It's by acting, by starting to do the things that entrepreneurs do right now, before you're ready, before you have an idea, because going through those motions will turn you into one.

So today I'm going to break down four shifts you can start applying today to your own life to start thinking and acting more like an entrepreneur.

Shift #1: Stop Planning and Start Acting (Even When It's Terrifying)

We're going to start with one of the more difficult ones, because at the end of the day, if you're not willing to do this, willing to try, then it doesn't matter what else I tell you—you're ultimately not going to succeed.

If you want to become an entrepreneur, then sooner rather than later, you're going to have to stop planning, stop researching, and actually do the things that right now are terrifying you—the things that make you uncomfortable.

When you do them, when you experience the fear, the failure, when you have to fake it and feel like you're an impostor, that's when you build the muscle memory and the recognition that even though those things don't go away, they don't have to be things that stop you.

This is the core of building real entrepreneurial confidence—not eliminating fear, but learning to act despite it.

Becoming an entrepreneur requires you to do things that are really uncomfortable, like self-promotion. I don't like having to mention that I've built a program, but I do it because if I don't, nobody's going to bother to look, to sign up, to be part of whatever it is that I'm trying to build.

The Comedian Analogy

Here's an easy way to think about it: somebody dreams of being a stand-up comedian. What do you think is better? Do you think it's better for them to watch a thousand hours of Netflix specials, seeing what Chappelle, John Mulaney, or Tig Notaro is doing in their latest set? Or do you think it's better for them to go to an amateur night and just get up on stage and try for themselves?

Every one of those comedians started with three minutes. And once they finally had that, they just kept doing it over and over until they were good at it.

The same is true for anybody that wants to be an entrepreneur. You've got to just start doing the activities, learning the skills, learning how to communicate your ideas, because those things are going to keep coming up. And it's so much better to learn it now than when you're also trying to figure out how to run a real business.

Start Where You Are

You don't have to quit your job. You can just volunteer to give the presentation. Maybe your company goes to conferences—you can travel, you can meet the prospects, try to sell.

For a lot of people, it's as simple as just posting their ideas on a platform like LinkedIn. Just start sharing things about yourself, the things you know, trying to help other people out, because you start learning what makes people respond, what makes people want to follow you, ask for your advice.

All of those things are things that an entrepreneur needs to get really good at as quickly as they can.

Shift #2: Stop Looking for Certainty

The next shift you need to make, if you want any chance whatsoever to succeed, if you want to be able to take the actions we just talked about, is to stop looking for certainty.

Certainty is the enemy of an entrepreneur because you're never going to find it. And chasing it is only going to waste time or ultimately set you up for failure.

If you want to get things done, if you want to take a few risks, if you want to put yourself out there, you need to find the inner courage that's going to let you do that.

Courage may sound big. It may sound like a grand thing, but let me tell you: the courage I have comes from surprising places. It comes from delusion. Sometimes it comes from stupidity or arrogance. But the fun thing about courage is, as long as it leads you to take an action, nobody ever checks what's underneath it.

They don't know why I'm so courageous. They just admire it, even though the thing that's driving me might be something that I'm not necessarily proud of.

The MBA vs. The Dialer

I've met people with MBAs, people with ideas that spend months trying to de-risk every single decision they make, but ultimately, they don't do anything with it because they're always trying to solve that one more problem that's going to make it safe for them to get started.

On the other hand, I meet people whose ideas I don't even think are very good, but they have this weird courage that just makes them pick up the phone and start dialing. They'll cold call a thousand people to see if anybody wants to buy their service or to work with them.

Usually, after just a few dozen or a few hundred, they have their first customer, and it blows me away.

The difference between those two people was simply a belief that they would be able to figure something out. They have no idea how they're going to run their business. They don't even really know what their idea is, but because they found the courage to just pick up the phone and try, they are leaps and bounds ahead of somebody who spent that same time trying to find certainty.

This endless search for certainty is often a sophisticated form of analysis paralysis—where research becomes a substitute for action.

And that's why I talk so much about taking action, because courage can also be created through repetition. The more phone calls you make, the more emails you send, the more you realize that even when you get a no, it's not the end of the world.

Shift #3: Stop Glorifying Entrepreneurs

The third shift you need to make—as much as this pains me to say—is you need to stop glorifying entrepreneurs like me.

We are nothing special. We suck at so many things.

In fact, what makes an entrepreneur is simply that they're willing to be bad at something longer than most people are willing to try. That's all there is.

Here's a really easy way to think about it: Think about all the 20-year-olds, all the founders that are now leading some of these massive billion-dollar tech companies. Mark Zuckerberg's a great example.

Do you think he knew anything about payroll and HR when he started Facebook? No, he was a kid. But over time, once he finally started making money, he had people around him that would give him whatever information he needed to make a decision, to be able to support them.

And I'm sure that over the past 20 years, he's gotten better at it, but I bet you he couldn't run payroll himself. As he said, "Nah, I don't really spend a whole lot of my time worrying about that."

At the beginning, it's all about just coming up with an idea, getting comfortable doing those initial steps, and everything else—just trust that you can learn it later on.

When you glamorize the entrepreneur, you think that there's some unattainable skills that they have that you don't. But it's not true. We're all idiots, but we're just idiots that are the last person standing.

This unrealistic comparison often manifests as impostor syndrome, where you feel like you don't deserve to be in the entrepreneurial space because you're not like the polished success stories you see.

Shift #4: Get Out of Your Head and Start Talking to People

The fourth shift you need to make is you need to get out of your head. You need to start talking to people.

It sounds really basic, but it is such a fundamental part of becoming an entrepreneur.

If you're pre-idea, talking to people just means listening to them, hearing what they're struggling with, what they wish someone would solve for them, because that's ultimately where the best ideas are going to come from.

Your Ideas Won't Get Stolen

If you have an idea, I just want to tell you once and for all that just saying it out loud does not mean that somebody's going to steal it.

That's probably the most common question I get every week when I talk to people that are looking to start their business: "What if I say it out loud and someone steals it?"

The reality is, it basically never happens. Your idea is probably not that special, unless you have some incredible formula, unless you're building something for the military.

An idea is just an idea. Even if someone tried to steal it, it's ultimately going to come down to execution, and there's probably room for more than one person or company doing that thing.

So you need to talk about it because that's where your ideas become refined. That's where you get real feedback, where people tell you what's good or bad, what they wish your product would do.

And if you're not talking to people, if you're just living in your head, you have one data point. But no good decisions come from having a singular data point. You need other points of reference to be able to know what to do.

Find Your Community

Beyond just finding your ideas or sharing your ideas, one of the most essential things you need to do is you need to find a way to have a community.

A lot of people come to me, they look for other mentors, and that can be incredibly invaluable. But ultimately, even more valuable than having a mentor is having a peer.

I can tell you that from starting tech companies and incubators, having people literally sit around me that were going through the same thing made everything that I needed to do that much faster. They would introduce me to a new connection. They'd tell me how they set up their company, how they implemented a marketing strategy, and it would save me months every single time I had a conversation.

That's easy when you're a tech founder, when you're in a program like Y Combinator, but if you're starting a laundromat, there's no accelerator for that.

And so what I recommend to you is to just go find one however you can. It may be a local meetup. It may be Reddit. It may be programs that will give you a community of other people who are just starting out.

Those people will become your tribe.

The Real Truth About Entrepreneurial Thinking

Look, I know you probably clicked on this thinking I was going to tell you how to think like an entrepreneur. But hopefully you've seen that thinking like one requires you to act like one, even when that means you're faking it, even when it means that you're bad at it or that you're totally insecure and uncertain of what's going to happen next.

That is what an entrepreneur is. That's how we feel. That's how we think every single day.

If you can do that, if you can start acting like one, then one day you'll wake up and you'll realize, "Okay, I am an entrepreneur. I am doing the things. Things are moving forward for me."

And then the next day, you'll wake up with even more fears and doubts, with bigger problems, and you'll think to yourself, "Fuck, I am an entrepreneur and it's all on me."

But that's part of the excitement of it. It's going to be uncertain, but the highs can be incredibly high. The lows are still low, but you have the potential to create a life that has the type of freedom, the type of autonomy that most people only dream of.

Your Next Step

Stop waiting to feel like an entrepreneur. Stop thinking your way into it. Start acting like one today.

Share an idea on LinkedIn. Make that uncomfortable phone call. Volunteer for the project no one else wants. Talk to people about their problems.

Because that's how you become an entrepreneur—not by thinking like one, but by doing what entrepreneurs do, even when you're scared, even when you feel like a fraud, even when you have no idea what you're doing.

Especially when you have no idea what you're doing.

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