Entrepreneurs must travel back and forth in time

The mindset of an entrepreneur is difficult to describe because it is so different from the average person. The best work on tackling this challenge is a book called, “Who Owns the Ice House?: Eight Life Lessons from an Unlikely Entrepreneur,” by Gary G. Schoeniger and Clifton L. Taulbert.

This work has been captured in a boot camp by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and is taught across Colorado by different groups such as Colorado Lending Source and Pikes Peak Community College.

One of the attributes of an entrepreneur is to be a person with vision — a person who can see the future. This is what an entrepreneur does every day. They get up in the morning, often blessed with one or two ideas that occurred to them while sleeping, and they look into the future. Where is their idea, their project or their business going to end up one, three, five, 10 or 20 years down the road? This vision becomes their goal toward which they plan and develop their strategies.

I see this ability as a form of time travel. Here today. Here tomorrow. The entrepreneur is continually stepping back and forth in time. They are comparing and contrasting their current situation with their future situation and determining what steps must be taken to arrive at that goal. A series of logical steps that achieves a desired outcome is a process and represents the foundation of a business plan.

Time traveling is a useful skill in entering a new market, developing a new product or in raising capital. All of these business activities are aided by a clear sense of outcome, an understanding of what resources are required and an appreciation for the impact or consequences of their actions.

The ability to time travel is not the same for every entrepreneur. Some do it exceedingly well.  They not only travel to the future, but are they also are able to determine how far in the future that they have traveled: a day, a week, months, years or decades. For other entrepreneurs, their sense of time and how far they have traveled is vague. It is common for investors in entrepreneurial ventures to take the entrepreneur’s time projection and to double it or triple it — allowing for this imprecision.

Some entrepreneurs appear to become stuck in the future. They will talk about themselves and their work as though it is already completed, when it is not. They can see the future so clearly in their minds that it has already become a reality — to them.  However, these visions of the future may be dependent upon an act or actions that may never occur. The market may not shift, or a physics theory may not be proven. Simple belief of a future outcome does not provide a measuring stick for the time necessary to reach that outcome.

Time traveling has led to a criticism of entrepreneurs as dreamers. The implication is that their ability to see the future somehow disassociates them from reality. However, the alternative seems far worse. No vision with any ability to travel to the future leaves one with no choice but to accept the status quo and repeat every day like yesterday. The entrepreneur rejects this thinking and always strives to make the world a better place.

Contact Karl Dakin of Dakin Capital Services LLC at 720-296-0372 or kdakin@dakincapital.com.

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