The book, “The Start-up of You,” attempts to reframe the thinking of society that an entrepreneur is only about starting a business. The book’s focus is to get the reader to think that being an entrepreneur is about looking at the world differently, seeing obstacles as opportunities, and being in “permanent beta” and taking risks, when the majority of people want to hide. At the same time, the book breaks down these concepts so that the reader can see that entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily about starting a big company. It is about taking control of your own life, networking in small ways and always trying to grow intellectually.
At first, when I read this book, I thought, “Here is another self-help-business-book that I should read. However, as I got into the book, I found a lot of what was being discussed really did pertain to me. Some of it is about people growing multi-million international companies, like Twitter, PayPal and of course, LinkedIn. But what I liked was that if I thought about what was being said, and really tried to apply it to me, it wasn’t very hard to find points that I could not only agree with, but incorporate into my personal and professional lives.
The ongoing discussion throughout the book on personal networking and the limitations I found to be very interesting. The authors talked about three types of people within a network: Allies, Weak Connections and those in between. Allies are the people we know well, see them often, work often with and bounce ideas off of. Allies defend and promote one another and do not keep score, but invest in the alliance. Weak connections are typically people who you get along with, know you generally and you know them, however you only see them a few times a year, likely at a conference. What was interesting is that most people can only maintain 8-12 active “allies” and several hundred to a thousand “weak connections.”
What I found most interesting is that “Allies” are not the people you will get a brand new job offer from. Allies will be aware of your strengths and weaknesses and might prejudge an opportunity before they tell you about it. Weak connections will let you know about an opportunity by not being as familiar with you, they will not know of any weaknesses that might prevent an ally from recommending it.
Another concept covered in the book, is the need to be doing Plan A, B and Z. Most people usually plan out A and B. However, plan Z is the retreat plan. If everything goes bad and plan A and B flop before anything can be done, plan Z is the backup to get on your feet. Plan Z is usually enacted when an unexpected event occurs, it hits and your job as well as your back up plan that was related to your job, disappears. Plan Z is the plan to keep your family afloat.
Another point that