Just Start

Paul Brown: Because we were struck by something that was just driving us nuts – how come the number of things that we can't predict seems to be increasing? I can tell you exactly the trigger, it was in 2010 the three of us are together and the lead story on all the business channels is Greece may default on its debt and the world economy is going to go to heck in a hand basket as a result and we said two things. One, Greece, the 27th largest economy in the world? And then we said, but it's just another example, who would have ever thought that Greece could take down the world's financial markets? And that got us into a whole long list of things we couldn't predict and who would have saw this meltdown and this problem over here and we just started asking ourselves, what's going on? And that was the impetus for the book.

Rachel Salaman: So where did it go from there, what research or ideas or experience did you then base the book on?

Paul Brown: Well what's really interesting is Len Schlesinger, who you mentioned is the President of Babson, which in the States is the number one school for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship research and as we got to talking about it, Len said there's this really smart woman at the University of Virginia who has studied serial entrepreneurs, these are people who started two or more successful companies and Schlesinger gave Charlie the paper, Saras Sarasvathy is the woman's name, that Saras had written and said go look at this and it is a really fascinating thing that she did. One of the things that happen if you look at entrepreneurs is you say only Bill Gates could have started Microsoft, only Richard Branson could have started Virgin and what we all do – and I'm as guilty of this as anybody because I've written about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs forever – is we all look at their behavior and we go Branson is nuts therefore you had to be nuts to start Virgin. What Saras did is say, yes, their behavior is idiosyncratic but I wonder, she asked, if they all think the same way? And it turns out in studying serial entrepreneurs, she concluded that they did, they all have the same approach to solving the unknown which is what starting a company is. Charlie, Len and I read this and we said I wonder if what entrepreneurs do will work for the rest of us and it turns out it will.

Rachel Salaman: Now some people at this point might be thinking I'm not an entrepreneur, I never have been, I've never wanted to be, what can you say to convince them that they would be able to adopt or tap into some of these things?

Paul Brown: The first thing I would say is welcome to the club. I couldn't sell my mother boy scout cookies so I'm the last person on the face of the earth who is ever going to be an entrepreneur but you don't have to. What this whole approach is, is how do you deal with the unknown? Well let's do a simple contrast, if you know you want to go from New York to Boston in the States it's pretty easy, you Map Quest it, you call up Google Maps as your route, you follow it and you say I'll drive there, I'll take the train, I'll take a bus, whatever. It's very clear, it's very logical to do and if you get off track you know what to do, you get back on track, you open the map, you tell the bus driver to let you off here and you go someplace else, okay. That's the predictable universe that we all grew up in but suppose I turn you into Harrison Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and you are walking along the street and all of a sudden the ground opens beneath you and you are in this dark space and the only thing you can hear vaguely in the distance is the sound of children. How are you going to get from where you are to where they are which is presumably safe? Well you can't use a map because nobody has ever done this before and you don't have any light so you can't turn on the switch. So in that kind of situation, the first thing you are going to do is you're going to take a small step in the direction you want to go.

Okay, I'm stuck at work, my career isn't going anywhere, I don't know what to do – well I can take a small step, it may be networking, it may be reaching out, it may be I've been an accountant all my life but I wonder what it would be like to be in a jazz band and so you take a small step and this is what serial entrepreneurs do. This is what Harrison Ford would do in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," you pause to see what you would learn from taking that small step. I'm a really lousy piano player, that's not a good idea, okay you build off what you learned, piano playing's out, let me try something else. You take another small step in the new direction, you see what you learn and you build from there. So this is exactly how entrepreneurs build their company but it works if you are trying to get a new career, you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to find out if the cute guy across the hall will ask you out on a date – the same approach works. So what works, in a funny way what works for serial entrepreneurs works for everybody everywhere.

Rachel Salaman: Those ideas you put together in a process in the book called "Creaction."

Paul Brown: Yes, we thought we were so clever, we invented a word. Creaction is made up, it's creation or creativity and action and that's really the key to "Just Start" and it's why we called the book "Just Start." The key is you act your way into learning as opposed to thinking some more. An easy analogy, dancers dance, they don't think about dancing – well they do think about dancing but if all they ever did was think about dancing they wouldn't be a dancer, dancers dance. If you are going to do something, I want to find out, I want to get, I think I want to get a new career, I think I want to ask that girl out, whatever – thinking doesn't get you anywhere. You have to take an action and see what happens and so what creaction is, it's our way of saying you want to create something, you have an idea of what you do – sort of, kind of, it doesn't have to be definite but you have to start with an idea and then you act on it and that's where creaction comes from.

Rachel Salaman: And in the book you relate it to the idea of prediction which you've already talked about a little bit and that's the more usual guiding principle in turning ideas into reality. It's interesting that you say both creaction and prediction come naturally to people because prediction is taught early and creaction is innate, so which one do you think comes more naturally to people?

Paul Brown: Well it's funny, it's both and what's weird is we've gotten away from creaction. It's been a long time since my kids have been little but when they were little the way they learned is that they took an action. Oh, there's a cat, I wonder what happens when I pull its tail. Oh, not going to do that again! That's how they learned, they took an action, they cried, my wife and I would rush to pick them up. Okay, they took an action, they cried, something happened, it was good, mom and dad came. What happens is from the time we start going to school is that we learn all this logic based stuff which is really, really good because you don't want to keep inventing the wheel, right. Wheels exist so let's not spend a whole lot of time inventing the tire, tire's exist. So you want to build off what's come before and we get so used to it that we forget about this idea that it's just not going to work when you are facing an unknown situation. If you want to know how many sports cars you can sell during a recession it's pretty easy, we have data on past recessions, we have data on car sales and you go okay, the last time we were in a recession we sold X number of sports cars, that's fine. If you are trying to start something new or you are trying to figure out should I chuck it all and join the Peace Corps, prediction really doesn't help you there because there's no data so you need them both and they do both come naturally. We've sort of lost this idea of acting our way into learning but once you start thinking about it, you can get it back.

Rachel Salaman: Now are you advocating that we should be launching quickly into every project, every idea or are there some that require more long term careful planning?

Paul Brown: Don't you hate answers that begin both? There are clearly some situations where you need half a billion dollars to start your biotech company, you're not going to do that on a whim, that's not a good thing and the people who have half a billion dollars are going to say show us the data, show us the plan, show us the research so there are certain situations where predictive reasoning works better, there are certain situations where creaction or acting your way into a solution works better, so you have to figure out which one you want to use. You can use them both simultaneously – oh gee, this is kind of new, I have never done this before, let me see what happens. Oh I see what happens, it's really similar to what we saw last week so when we do what I did last week, that works. So you can bounce back and forth. So we're not advocating that acting your way into learning is better than studying, we're just saying use the right tool for the job and in some situations predictive reasoning is really helpful and Len has a PhD in Business Administration, Charlie went to MIT, I was trained as a lawyer so we're painfully familiar with logical reasoning but the three of us have concluded that works fine in some situations but in other places it doesn't and when it doesn't, use the right tool for the job.

Rachel Salaman: How easy is it for people to figure out when it will work to just act and learn?

Paul Brown: It's really pretty simple. You're facing a new situation and you go, have I experienced this before? There's this cute girl I want to ask out, well I know "Hey babe, what's your sign" doesn't work so I'll try something else or "Hi, how are you?" seems to work so I'll try that. So if there are situations where your approach has worked in the past, start there but if you are confronting something totally new, you haven't a clue – you've never written a book for and you're not sure if you are going to like it, you're not really sure if you can write, you're not really sure if you can tell a story – well you can sit there and agonize or you can say "Chapter One: it was a dark and stormy night..."' and you go from there. At the end of it you say, oh I'm pretty good at this or God, I'm awful at this, I should do something else.

Rachel Salaman: Now you talked a bit earlier about just taking the first step in the right direction and in the book you talk about smart steps so can you just tell us a little bit more about what makes these first steps smart?

Paul Brown: Yes, what you don't want to do is go plunge off a cliff so one thing that makes a smart step a smart step is it's small. I'm not going to give up what I do for a living and say, you know honey, I've decided I'm chucking it all and I'm going to medical school. There are a whole lot of problems with that starting with the fact that I'm not crazy about the sight of blood so the first thing you want to do is as I say, you want to take a small step, a bite-sized thing. You want to lose 50 pounds, well good for you but you're not going to lose 50 pounds a week from Thursday but you might lose half a pound this week. Okay, that's a small step so you try that for a week, you lost half a pound, hey that was pretty good. You try it again next week, look at this, two weeks later I'm down a pound, at the end of the month I'm down two pounds and into the year I'm down 25 pounds, this is pretty good. So it's small steps.

Paul Brown: Another thing that makes the steps smart is you never want to risk what you're comfortable losing. Now for everybody this is different and it may be zero, it may be zero. If you are thinking about do I need a new job, then I don't want to hire a coach because that costs money and I don't want to spend money on reaching out to people and how to network, so okay, that's fine, you know that your acceptable loss or affordable loss for you is zero so what can you do to learn about how to get a new job that won't cost any money? Well you talk to your friends all the time, you can mention you are looking for a new job, that's a start. Do they know people who they can refer you to who you can talk to? That doesn't cost any money either and you're on your way. So you take small steps and the steps should never cost you more than you can afford to take and you just keep moving along like that.

Rachel Salaman: Well on that point about never risking more than you can afford to lose, in the book you talk about assessing what that level might be, assessing your acceptable loss, as you call it. Have you got any tips on how people can assess it, how they can actually pinpoint what they can afford to lose if they are setting out on something like this?

Paul Brown: You can take my wife's approach, my wife is a management consultant, she is the most organized human being on the face of the earth and she calculates everything to the step, to the penny, it doesn't really matter so in her case it could be okay, we're going to start this new business venture, we made X amount of pounds last year and I'm willing to risk one twentieth of what we made on the new venture, it could be that methodical. You could take my approach which is yeah, I think I might want to write a book about X, I can invest two or three days doing some research, seeing what's out there, going down to the library, going online so I can put in two or three days to make a decision on this. There are other people who say well, I want to start this new company, I think I can fund it by the money that's coming in so I'll just do it out of cash flow, I've got an extra £20 this week, let me use that money. So it's all what you're comfortable with. The moment you go, oh my gosh, I can't pay the bills, you've gone too far.

Rachel Salaman: And you point out in the book that a lot of these decisions or judgments are down to self-awareness and you actually have some tips on how people can develop their self-awareness so that they do make those decisions in the right direction, can you take us through a few of those?

Paul Brown: Sure, so again the great thing about entrepreneurs, especially successful entrepreneurs, is the cartoon image of them swinging through the fences, they bet it all on one roll of the dice, put your favorite cliche here. But in reality they take very small measured steps and they never like to risk money at all and if they do it's the absolute minimum so what you and I can do is say okay, what resources do we have? We don't have to necessarily talk about money, we can talk about who do we know, what do we know, how we can build on those things to leverage that. Well the only thing I can do is read and write – okay, what can I do with that? Well maybe I can start analyzing stuff for people so I could get a job doing some kind of data analysis, I know lots of people with a math background, maybe they can steer me in the right direction. So your first place to look is the resources at hand, who do you know, what do you know and where can that take you? So I think the inclination is for people to say, well I only have X amount of dollars, okay, that's not the place I would start. I would start with the resources literally at hand and at hand includes inside your head.

You're listening to Expert Interview, from Mind Tools.

Rachel Salaman: One of the chapters in the book is called "The Overwhelming Desire" and it's interesting that you actually distinguish that from passion which is a rather over used word sometimes. In your mind, what is the difference between desire and passion and why does it matter in this context?

Paul Brown: A passion can be downright scary, people do really scary things – "I loved her so much and she said no and that's of course why I cut off my ear, to show he..." Well I really don't think that's the best course of action here, so I think the problem with passion is its desire on steroids and the problem with steroids is that they can take you in a bad direction. Desire is a better word, we can go with love but that instantly makes everybody scared and it is very, very squishy so let's not do that, but desire is, is it something you want to do? That really, really, really is pivotal because if you don't want to do it, you're not going to give it your best efforts, the first time you run into an obstacle you're going to say to heck with it, you can get distracted easily so whatever you're thinking about doing, you are going to act your way into doing it and see if you like it, but before you take that first smart step that we talked about, figure out is this something that I really want to do? If it's not, then rethink if you want to do it. You don't have to love it, people start companies all the time that they end up loving but what got them going was a desire – I really want to help people or I want to make a lot of money, it's a perfectly legitimate desire, or I wonder what would happen if I solved this problem, that's a legitimate desire too. But if you don't have that desire, if there's not something that's making you go in this direction, it's not going to go as well as it could.

Rachel Salaman: In the book you defend a well-known cliche which is "there are no such things as problems, just opportunities" which we've all heard before. Do you really believe that?

Paul Brown: Yes, I do and here's the reason why. I'm not a Pollyanna person and there are a lot of people that would say I'm downright dour but the thing about problems, let's call them obstacles to get away from the cliche, the thing about an obstacle, if you run into it other people are going to run into it too and so if you can solve it then you are way ahead of them. Let's use a business example, make it really simple, so you've decided you want to start a public relations firm and you think it's a really good idea, you've got these skills, you're outgoing, you're friendly and all this good stuff and okay, so we would advocate instead of quitting your day job and renting office space and spending a lot of money, we'd say take a small smart step. Well a smart step in this case might be to call somebody who could be a potential client who you know and say hey, I'm thinking of starting this PR firm, what do you think? You find out there's this huge problem, there's huge obstacle to which the person says, not only do I have a PR firm that I'm really happy with but do you know, there are four million PR firms in the city of London. And you go, oh that's a problem isn't it? And you so you talk some more and you realize – and you're talking to your friend who says yes, that's a real problem but when you were working on that project for us last time the thing that I was really impressed with, your friend says, is how good you were in explaining to our employees why we needed to do this PR effort and that if we explained to our customers why we do staff, our customers will like us more, they'll be happier, they'll spend more money with us and at the end of the time we spent with us all the senior managers really understood the value of PR.

Okay, so your friend has told you there are too many PR firms, he's not going to hire you but what he's also told you is that you are really good at internal communications and so instead of doing a PR firm that deals with the outside world, maybe the way to resolve the obstacle is to change your focus and concentrate on internal communications, helping companies communicate better with their clients. Okay, you never would have gotten to that point without the obstacle so that's why we like that because you're now ahead of the game, you are going to concentrate on forming an internal communications firm where I haven't gone down this road, I'm going to start a PR firm, I can't, I'm stuck, woe is me. So that's why we think obstacles are actually a good thing.

Rachel Salaman: Although there are obviously some problems that are just problems aren't there, like not having enough money?

Paul Brown: Okay, right, but that in and of itself is a good thing, right? You really want to solve XYZ disease but you have no access to the money, you have no access to this, you have no access to that. It's a really good thing to know, well no, you're not going to be the person to spearhead that initiative because you don't have the skills to know how to do it but that could take you in a different direction. Okay, it may mean starting my own company, I may become a researcher for a drug company, I may go into fundraising, maybe I go someplace else. So yes, if the problem is unsolvable to you we would also say that's good news because you're not going to beat your head against the wall, you're going to do something else and if somebody else solves it, that's okay.

Rachel Salaman: Now one of the cornerstones of the creaction process is bringing other people along which you've touched on a little bit. What other people specifically need to be brought along in this process?

Paul Brown: Well it depends on you. There are some people who totally or to the best of their ability would rather work on their own. I'm actually one of these people, I don't particularly work and play well with others, I have learnt this lesson the hard way so I'm better off doing stuff on my own to the extent possible but if you want to build a company, if you want to build something that is substantially greater than yourself, then you do indeed have to bring other people along so what you want to do is you want to start with, and again it goes to the small step, who do I know who might be interested in what I want to do? And it's simply a matter of finding that person and saying, hey, I've got this idea, let me tell you why it's really important to me because if you're not enthused about the idea you are not going to get anybody else to come along. If he doesn't care about it, why should I? Let me tell you why it's important to me, let me tell you where I'd like this idea to go, tell me if you're interested, tell me if you want to be a part of it.

It's really interesting, you're not trying to sell somebody on your idea, you need sales, you need to sell the product, you need to sell the service but in this case you're not trying to sell someone to join you, you're trying to get them to enroll. When you're selling something, in that sense you are trying to get somebody else to do what you want them to do. Now the best salesmen will solve a problem for the customer but still the sales person is trying to make the sale because it's in the sales person's best interests. Here, when you're trying to get people to come along, you want them to enroll, you want them to come along with you because they want to do it, not because you sold them on the idea.

Rachel Salaman: And the reason why that is important is because it's more sustainable, because they are more likely to stick with it, is that right?

Paul Brown: Absolutely, because your idea becomes their idea, they are a part of it, helping to shape it, they are emotionally and maybe even financially invested as opposed to you sold them and they go, "I thought it was a good idea yesterday, not so much today, see ya!"

Rachel Salaman: And on a related point, in the book you discuss ways in which managers can foster the creaction process in their teams, so what are some of your ideas here?

Paul Brown: Here it gets really tricky because one of the implicit premises of everything we've been talking about is you are going off into the unknown, you are going to try some stuff and by definition some stuff isn't going to work. Companies don't like that, companies like if I give you a budget of X you'll return it to me with a 10 percent or 20 percent return on the investment. So the first thing a manager can do is say failures are okay. Now we're not talking huge failures, we're not talking failures that'll take the company down, remember we talked about small steps but the best thing a manager can do is say look, we're going to try a lot of stuff, we're not going to do anything stupid, we're not taking large steps, we're not talking large sums of money but even so, we know some of these things aren't going to work, that's okay. So that's probably the biggest message a manager can do which has two parts: one, I'd like you to try some new stuff; two, not only are you not going to get penalized if it doesn't work but we might actually give you a raise. Hey, that was a really good idea, Brown, it didn't work but I liked your thinking on that and it sort of took us in a different direction, here's a raise. If companies did that you'd be amazed how innovative their employees could be.

Rachel Salaman: So with all this in mind, what advice do you have for people who want to know when to "Just Start," because now isn't always the right answer, is it?

Paul Brown: Well it depends. If you flip the question, is you keep saying, well, I'm going to do it when the kids are older, I'm going to do it when the mortgage is paid off, I'm going to do it when my mom is feeling better – the problem with all those things is that all those concerns are legitimate, right. The kids have to go to school, you have to pay for them, your mom is sick, that's a legitimate thing too, the mortgage has to get paid but if that's your starting point, it becomes really, really hard to do anything so I would flip your question a little bit and say okay, I can't do much now towards my goal of starting my own company, there are the 2.3 kids and the mortgage payments and everything we just talked about but do you know what, nights and weekends I can do some research, I can talk to people, I can sort of scope out some potential ideas. So again we're not going to spend a whole lot of money and it's not going to be a huge investment of time but the key thing is to start moving and I would argue, start moving today. It can be a tiny, tiny, tiny step but even taking that small step will put you ahead of somebody who doesn't.

Rachel Salaman: Paul Brown, thank you very much for joining us.

Paul Brown: Oh this was fun, thanks.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Paul's book again is "Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future" and it is co-written with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Keifer. You can find out more about it at www.juststartthebook.com. I'll be back in a few weeks with another expert interview, until then goodbye.