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Top 5 Things Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Albert "Bad Boy" Einstein

It seems like every field/occupation on the face of the planet has a resident "bad boy".

It doesn't matter if the occupation is figure skating, physics or problogging, there is always someone who doesn't quite fit in, who does things their own way, who likes to give the finger to "the man", and who everyone else likes to whisper about and secretly admire.

Well, Albert Einstein was the "bad boy" of the science world. Oh yeah, he was an outsider in his younger years, a misunderstood genius who couldn't even get an academic job (how's that for a slap in the face!), much less a doctorate in his field of expertise (ouch!).

My point is, I see in Einstein a lot of the same qualities that I see in the best internet visionaries of today.

You're out there on your own, following your own instincts, creating sites, products and services that are brand new to the world. Sometimes you'll get lucky and folks will hop on your bandwagon immediately, but most trailblazers walk the path of Einstein.

It can be mighty lonely at the cutting edge. It takes a strong person to lead and not be discouraged by opposition, and sometimes it's helpful to look at figures from the past to draw strength from their experience and courage.

Enter Albert "Bad Boy" Einstein...

Here are some Einstein-isms that I think have particular meaning for the internet visionaries and web workers of today:

1) "Imagination is more important than knowledge." So true, it's one thing to know the technical aspects of how to do something, but when you work in a creative field, imagination trumps knowledge every single time. After all, if you need more know-how in order to execute an idea, you can always learn on the fly or out-source the technical work.

2) "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." When you're creating something out of the blue, it's going to take lots-o-tweaking before you get it just right, and you have to get comfortable with not knowing the end result. Sometimes ideas take off and become extremely profitable. Other times they just flop. It's just hard to tell what's going to work and what doesn't, so you need to always expect that something will work, but not be too upset when it doesn't.

3) "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." I think that when you look at opposition (folks who make fun of you or people who just don't "get" you) in the right light, it can be a major motivator. You want to show them your vision, show them that you know what you're doing. The trick is to turn negativity into positive momentum. Opposition makes victory taste sweeter. :-)

4) "The only real valuable thing is intuition." You need to develop a "gut feel" that will help you detect if a person, idea or situation is healthy for you. Those who have the best intuition have the greatest success.

5) "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Einstein's creativity was heavily influenced by a thinking techinque he called "thought experiments", which was actually just plain old fashioned daydreaming  . This just goes to show that imagination, play, and a willingness to try new things is the key to being a visionary.

Somewhat related post:

• Albert Einstein: Creativity Trumps Brains

(Sidenote--the "bad boy" of figure skating currently is, I believe, Johnny Weir. It used to be Elvis Stojko. I also think there's a French guy who always skates shirtless, which lands him in the "bad boy" category. Each country may have their own figure skating bad boy, so if you know of others please chime in.)

Does anyone do "working vacations"?

  This is Work 
  Originally uploaded by waepoint.

When I first started falling in love with the idea of working virtually, I had this romantic idea of myself travelling all over the world, spending  a couple months at the beach, a couple months in the mountains, then just living in places that I had always wanted to experience but didn't want to stay long term.

The phrase that was going through my mind was "Have laptop, will travel", but now I'm a couple years into working virtually, and I'm noticing that I only work from the cafe if it's an absolute emergency, and other than that the most "exotic" location that I've taken my laptop is my own back yard.

I know--What a free-spirited jet-setter I am! (not )

I don't know why I hesitate to take work on the road--I guess I'm just super-conscientious about getting work done consistently every day, and I'm afraid to rent a cottage on the beach for a month because what if the internet connection isn't reliable, or what if something happens to my laptop in transit (dropping, sand, water, natural disasters).

I guess it's just a comfort zone thing, but I was wondering, do any of you web workers actually take advantage of the "virtual-ness" of your work by working in various locales, or do you find yourself mostly just working from home?

Freak Filtering

"There are some really crazy people in this world. And sometimes I think they all have my email address." --Andy Wibbels

I think all internet biz owners can relate to Andy's well-spoken sentiments.

We are a fabulous melting pot of psychological diversity (this is putting it nicely ), and while this may be endlessly interesting in some ways, when you're trying to conduct business via the internet, you really need to come up with a way to control who you let into your life and who gets a piece of your time.

Some folks call this the "Ideal Client Profile", but I get a kick out of Andy's terminology for it cuz he tells it like it is.

It's a "freak filter", pure and simple, and as small biz owners we are in charge of creating an early warning detection system that will save us time, money, frustration, and a gazillion bottles of Tylenol.

Freak identification marks

It's true that on many levels freakiness is purely subjective. One man's freak is another man's ideal client, but in general, I think most small biz owners will agree that a freak has the following attributes:

1) Wants our help really, really badly, yet has no money to pay us with

2) Needs an awful lot of work to be completed in a ridiculously short amount of time at a moment's notice

3) Is looking for a miracle--let me site the guy with the poorly written e-book who wanted me to help him get on Oprah (Oy!)

4) Only wants to communicate in-person or over the phone and does not like to use email and IM.

5) Anyone who says they need to meet me in person to verify that I'm "real".

These are just a few off the top of my head--please feel free to share some of your own "freak identification marks" in the comments if any come to mind.

Crafting the filter

A more positive way of looking at the freak filter would be, instead of weeding people out, what you can actually do is filter in the types of people who you want to work with (this is what I do).

In order to do this, you need to have a very good image in your mind of who you want to work with.

Here are the criteria I use:

Personality--this is the most important element for me. Even if all other criteria are thumbs up, if we don't click personality wise, then it's no-go.

Niche/Target Market--If you have a tight niche/target market, this does a lot of the screening for you. 

Retainer hours--This is just me, but I like to work with just a few clients and that means I work with them on a daily basis, which in turn means I have set retainer hours that will allow me to support clients in this way. Having set retainer hours helps me weed out folks who don't want daily, long-term support.

Fee--The higher the fee you have, the more folks you will filter out (this is a good thing).

These are just a few of the criteria I use, but basically what I do is formulate in my mind the type of person I'd like to work with, and I use the above filters to help keep me focussed on the prize.

So, I don't focus so much on weeding out; I focus on weeding in, or I guess a better way of saying it would be to say that I focus on "attracting" a very specific type of person with a very specific type of business.

It's sort of like when you set up filters for email, and you take a few minutes one day to set them up, and then every day after that all you have to do is click a button and sit back and watch the filters do the sorting work for you.

I find that the same is true for the client filter--if you make your decisions on the front end about who you want to work with and what kind of work you want to do, then all you have to do is follow the filters, and making client decisions is pretty painless. Having the filters in place also frees you up to focus on what you do want, instead of fending off what you don't want.

Does anyone have any "freak filtering" ID marks, techiniques, or special approaches for attracting a certain type of client? Please share!

(Stunning Donald Sutherland image created by Andy Wibbels.)