The Way of the Guerrilla

A mini review of

The Way of the Guerrilla

By Jay Conrad Levinson

I’ve been impressed with Jay over the years. Low cost marketing for small businesses is my main interest. And he just happens to dish that out by the bowlful.

This is I think his latest book. Not quite sure. But seems to be.

It was an easy read and applies to people in almost any line of business or even those of us (gasp) who still have jobs.

I think the best thing this book has to offer is an emphasis on balance for the new entrepreneur.

Working around the clock, day and night, is for turkeys, as Jay puts it.

He emphasizes his 3 day workweek. I like that. He admits he works hard those days. But he has the rest of the week to relax, read, think, and play.

His method for coming to the number 3 was giving himself 1 day off for each 100 years of human progress in the last 300 years and also throwing in Sunday :)

Do I have enough leisure time? Many of you, while comparing your schedules to mine, would laugh, and yet, I know I still have a ways to go.

I know I can easily get myself in a trap where I don’t have enough balance in my life. I just hope I don’t fall prey to working on projects I’m not really passionate about.

I suppose it could be said that my going to listen to a guest lecture by an economist on the social security dilemma could even be considered leisure. Yes, it could. (Laurence Kotlikoff if anyone’s interested, I sure was even though I didn’t know him from Adam before tonight)

Success,

Erik Lukas

P.S. Here’s what I found worth noting:

The real purpose of education is to teach people to love learning.

One of the greatest rewards of being an entrepreneur in the coming century will be the chance for people to recognize the pure nobility of work when it is pursued with joy rather than obligation.

When people have a hard time telling when you are working and when you are having fun, you’re doing something right.

They don’t have a single kind of work that generates income, but rather a portfolio of work. They do, as the London Business School professor Charles Handy says, “Some things for money, some because they interest (them), some out of love or kindness, and some for the sheer hell of it.” They easily integrate these activities into their lives. Who would want to miss travel, discovery, learning, earning, improving, teaching, and giving?

Change is at your fingertips and at your command when you have a selection of work skills, a variety of income sources.

A guerrilla knows that unless balance is part of the overall plan - right from the start - it’s only going to be a work and never a style of living. Balance is very difficult to achieve if it’s something you figure you’ll get down the road.

You’ll find it relatively easy to maintain balance if you begin with it. Start with it no matter what. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you can switch gears later. Many have tried. Most have failed. Guerrillas are so enamored with the idea of balance that they wouldn’t dream of losing sight of their target before they let the arrows fly. They know that once the arrows are in full flight, you can’t say to them, “Okay, hang a left turn now!”

The first factor in measuring the success of your business is to assess your inner satisfaction, to determine whether you are enjoying the process of being in business or even enjoying being alive. The second factor is to ascertain that your business meshes as well with your life as it does with your essence - who you really are. The third factor is to determine whether or not you have balance in your life.

And there’s a fourth measurement of your success - after you’ve arranged to have enough free time, after you’ve found ways to contribute to your planet, after you’ve formed your connections, after your relationships are in order and your health is excellent. This measuring method should be part of your overall plan, or you’ll lose your way.

The yardstick to which I refer is profits, the lifeblood of a business. Guerrillas keep their eyes on that bottom line, but they never lose their awareness of their higher priorities.

Guerrillas have an advanced temperament in matters of money. Their yardsticks are beyond the financial ones.

The guerrilla entrepreneur structures a business around the intensely personal things that make the entrepreneur a unique individual.

Guerrillas are ever alert for ways of creating time.

… failure and embarrassment, stumbling and falling are part of the entrepreneurial deal and some of the reasons that eventual success tastes so sweet.

Marketing, done properly, is the best investment possible in America.

The guys logging really long hours aren’t seen as heroes anymore. They’re seen as turkeys.

P.P.S. Anyone have a problem with my blocks of note quotes from books? If there's some legal beagle out there terribly offended, well, bite away. I apologize. Just trying to share some things to think about with my friends. Not sure about fair use for educational purposes, etc and how that applies. Just know that I find something and think maybe someone else might want to know it, I have a tendency to want to give it away instead of trying to reword the concepts in my own clumsy writing.