• Street smarts & practice, where you’ve learned it “in the real world” and know how to apply it. Only learned by doing it.
• Theoretical, abstract knowledge you get from books and school that doesn’t have a tie to your experience and the real world. Harder to apply.

Impact requires venturing into the unknown (whose risk most people avoid) and leadership (which acts as a multiplier of impact).

Four steps:

• Get financial stability: Get rid of debts, and have some savings.
• Create room for experimentation: Figure out a job schedule which allows for experimentation
• Begin experimentation: Use money from step 1 to experiment around (while keeping the source of money around)
• Strike out on your own: Either as a part of the current organization or on your own, follow the direction set by a successful experiment from step 3

Two powerful questions for making connections and providing value to people:

• What’s most exciting for you right now in your life/ business?
• What’s challenging for you in your life/ business right now?

Great networking is not about the back-and-forth, it’s about giving with no expectation of anything in return.

There are two basic ways to find great connections

• Find people with great future potential and help them in reaching their goal
• Add some value to the life of someone who is already established (common areas being personal finance, relationships, health, hobbies, and causes or a specialized skill which could be of use to the receiver) or connect them to someone where a connection could create a win-win potential for both parties

The general perception of marketing is that it’s sleazy and manipulative, the reality is that good marketing is making your potential customers know about you (or your company).

A lot of businesses fail because they are not able to reach out to the right customers.

• One can get better at a particular craft but being able to sell oneself is equally important (successful people in a craft are not always the best individuals of that craft).
• Success is a skill – it consists of the skill of marketing, the skill of sales and skill of leadership.
• Sales are about knowing what customer needs and if you have a good solution/product, offering it.
• Leadership is about being able to influence (not manipulate) people not control them.

Learning as an adult: Adults need a reason to learn something, they are involved in planning as well as evaluation, more interested in subjects having immediate relevance, more interest in problem-oriented (as oppose to content-oriented), and prefer more self-directed education (as oppose to taught).

Your brand is what people think about when they hear your name.

One should have a website under his/her name to establish the brand.

Robert Scoble started blogging when there were ~200 blogs in the world. Worked in NEC sales dept, eventually hired by Microsoft and that did not go well. Currently, working as the public face of Rackspace. His biggest credential being able to build his professional presence at the right time.

• An entrepreneurial mindset focuses on contribution, outcome and moves towards big decisions even without authority.
• The employee mindset, on the other hand, focuses on entitlement, output, and turns away even from small decisions.
• Entrepreneurs see current circumstances as temporary, but employees seem them as permanent.

Entrepreneurial mindset people carve out their path as oppose to working on the path carved out by someone else.

Caesar Ritz started as a waiter, but he looked at himself in a waiter role, as a transitional point, to hotel manager one day.

Louis Marx fought hard with his employer (Ferdinand Strauss) to shut down the retail business and focus solely on toy manufacturing. He failed, so, he left and started his own company (Louis Marx and Company) which became the largest toy manufacturer in 1920s.