martin zeman's blog

When I was going to Czech Republic couple of weeks ago to (among other things) tell my family and friends about my plan to throw away security of a full time employment and join David in building Elexu. I was a bit worried. I have read several blog posts by entrepreneurs who said that their friends and families were often quite unsupportive of their enterpreneurial activities.

Not because they wouldn’t want the best for them but exactly because they wanted the best for them. What they don’t realise is that for an entrepreneurial soul a safe 9-5 job is much worse than bankruptcy. Discouragement is the last thing a starting entrepreneur needs. A role of a friend or a family member is to support and encourage.

But who will prepare a safety net in case it won’t work out? In the first place it should be the entrepreneur herself. But if they don’t do it – you can help and in a very supportive way – by asking the entrepreneur about the business, trying to come up with other ideas how to increase the chances of success, asking them to show you their business plan and questioning too optimistic figures and suggesting backup measures. All this will actually help the entrepreneur in building a strong business and you will see that your own worries about it will disappear.

My safety net, or a defense if you will, is simple. Instead of dedicating all my time to the startup I will increase my working week to 6 days and spend four days on Elexu and two days working somewhere else as a contractor (as a business analyst or a consultant). This solution brings great benefits.

The obvious one is the money – by having a solid income I am able to commit myself to the startup for a long term – even if it is not an immediate money machine it’s not a big problem. Plus we don’t have to waste precious startup capital on my salary and we can invest it into the company instead which is invaluable at the early stage.

But there are other benefits as well. Networking at the contracting company for example. Or, and I really like this one, being distracted from constant thinking about the startup. Sometimes I think about a problem really hard but no matter how long I do I can’t figure it out. Then I get to think about something else and subconciously find a solution for the first thing. It’s amazing. Obviously the same thing works both ways so while I will be contracting for only two days a week I will actually be subconciously thinking about the work for four more days. I think in this case 2 + 4 is not equal 6.

Anyway what I wanted to say was that I was absolutely overwhelmed even humbled by the support I have received from my dearest and I am very thankful for that. It even strengthened my motivation to make Elexu a huge success in order to prove you right.

Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are. (Czech proverb)

Read what I read and we will understand each other better. (Martin Zeman)

Books have an amazing power to shape people’s opinions and change their points of view. Unlike TVs books give people time to think about ideas they carry. This is absolutely crucial for people to be able to appreciate all aspects of an idea. In TV there is not enough time for that as there is always something else coming up – next TV show, news at 12:30 or block of adverts. That’s why in mass media all things look black and white. But the real world is full of colours.

Another popular way of spreading ideas is sharing them in person. But if you’ve ever tried to convince someone to see the world through your eyes while their view had been different you know that it’s very difficult and often painful. Such a try usually ends up in a heated argument without winners. On the other hand, it’s extremely difficult to argue with a book, isn’t it? Plus the book won’t give you an affirmation that your opinion is right (which is what people really seek in arguments) – not unless your view is the same as the one in the book.

I am currently working on a new start-up with my friend David. We have agreed that we will be managing a reading list for each other – I will tell David what I would like him to read and he will tell me what I should read – it’s a powerful way how to align our thinking and speed up the process of our cooperation and it’s a lot of fun too. It’s not so simple to decide which book will bring the biggest benefit to our start-up at its current stage. The first book I’ve chosen for David is Built to Last by James Collins and Jerry Porras, David has picked Do it yourself – A handbook for changing our world edited by Trapese Collective.

The idea of reading same books is not unique – for example at Zappos, one of the most admired companies today they have a library of selected books and employees are encouraged to read them – some of the books are even mandatory for new starters (you can read more in Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh). Anyway the fact that the idea is not unique doesn’t make it any less brilliant. It is still a perfect way for aligning people’s way of thinking and their values.

We will probably share our ‘library-list’ in the future but if you know a great book for start-up entrepreneurs please let us know in comments.

Yesterday I attended an event organised by Entrepreneurial Club. It was a moderated networking session where hosts asked us several interesting questions about our personal goals, opinions and fears and let us discuss them in small groups. Simple and powerful. I can’t imagine a better way of knowing new people than sharing inner thoughts with them. Having attended several networking events this is a format that works best for me – thumbs up.

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