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- Jul 28, 2013
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Its about creating space in your mind to believe in your own justifications. Most people will say with a wagging finger "don't you dare assert your opinion, don't you dare have an opinion" and you might shy away and be like "okay then" and try to make a business work in between those extremely confined lines. Only problem is, the moment you give up your own autonomy, you forfeit your own personal capacity to look at a situation and say "aha! I know this!". And what eventually happens if you do that is you become prone to flights of fancy rather than grounding yourself in something real.
The idea of Cents/CENTS is to ground a person by first telling them to engage some of their instinct in pursuit of their own purpose and to then ground it in reality.
Ascertain what a Need is
Look at how it can be entered into
Assure that control is part of your framework
Set it up to run at scale
Set it up to run with time in mind
Or in other words, be sure to understand that what you are doing is serious enough that you properly consider the ramifications of going through with the process, and don't half do it by giving up control, making up excuses about how you can skirt around an entry condition, pretending you have limitless energy, playing only in your sandbox, and without ever rigorously testing to see if their would be or could be demand or if its just silly.
All those markers are just ways of checking to make sure you are serious and or giving the task the time of day or correct consideration. You need to consider those points or SIMILAR poinnts in order to really ask yourself "hey what does doing this really mean, and do I have the guts to go through with this?". If you really want to do something, you can't just hyper attentively joust with the problem, you really ought to do quite a bit more than that, such as question the applicability of every action and make sure it is realistically doable for a person without hyper/jumpy/super-duper focus.
In some sense, I feel you must first ask yourself the question, "who am I going to rely on?" and if your answer is anything other than "oh, right... I can't", such as "fate", "my mentor", "the charity of others", then you are kind of cushioning yourself from the opportune moment you have to say "I'm going to have to". That might sound crude or distasteful... Souless even. But the point isn't to be souless, the point is to kneel down next to the little budding stem of a plant, and come to terms with the fact that only you can protect it. And if you make a promise to protect something, you can't just later make apologies and excuses for your mistakes. If people lose their jobs, get sick because you were incompetant with handling food or correctly sourcing material for your product and it winds up with lead in it, then you can't just press the rewind button. The same is true for betrayl of self, if you set up all of your business on shoddy foundations, maybe it takes a tumble? Maybe someone shoves you off the edge of a cliff you were careless enough to set up shop on. You can't just then be like "oh its fine, I like eating dirt anyway", no you have to admit that you were impetuous and you didn't take the task on with a proper seriousness of consideration in your mind.
Also, as a person starting a business you ought to ask yourself the question "do I have the ability to think for myself?" because as long as the answer to that is "of course, I always do" you aren't really looking yourself straight in the eye and telling the truth. You don't want to wear a mask of false promises and whispered dreams, because if you wear that mask, the successess you make will feel hollow because you know within yourself you got by on luck, not on knowledge. And lots of business guys feel that way, and it is a shame because you don't have to, you just need to develop a little personal foresight and intuition into your own affairs.
This all said, I don't believe CENTS/cents is the be all and end all of things like some might get wrapped up in. What matters is that you understand the point it makes, the statement of autonomy and that you aren't skipping your processes. There are other things I have come to consider...
Loyalty - who can trust my word (workers, customers, peers, friends, society)
Credibility - where do I stand regarding these issues
Fortune - why has a persons or company's fortunes travelled down a certain path
It is important you do not over emphasize the importance of CENTS/cents if it will somehow damage your ability to address everything you possibly can. And with that point I want to mention that CENTS is a reminder, a jolt, not just to do those things, but to search for other things like them that likewise expand your capacity to think critically and ascertain the components of a good and well thought out response to your aim/desire to create a business.
The idea of Cents/CENTS is to ground a person by first telling them to engage some of their instinct in pursuit of their own purpose and to then ground it in reality.
Ascertain what a Need is
Look at how it can be entered into
Assure that control is part of your framework
Set it up to run at scale
Set it up to run with time in mind
Or in other words, be sure to understand that what you are doing is serious enough that you properly consider the ramifications of going through with the process, and don't half do it by giving up control, making up excuses about how you can skirt around an entry condition, pretending you have limitless energy, playing only in your sandbox, and without ever rigorously testing to see if their would be or could be demand or if its just silly.
All those markers are just ways of checking to make sure you are serious and or giving the task the time of day or correct consideration. You need to consider those points or SIMILAR poinnts in order to really ask yourself "hey what does doing this really mean, and do I have the guts to go through with this?". If you really want to do something, you can't just hyper attentively joust with the problem, you really ought to do quite a bit more than that, such as question the applicability of every action and make sure it is realistically doable for a person without hyper/jumpy/super-duper focus.
In some sense, I feel you must first ask yourself the question, "who am I going to rely on?" and if your answer is anything other than "oh, right... I can't", such as "fate", "my mentor", "the charity of others", then you are kind of cushioning yourself from the opportune moment you have to say "I'm going to have to". That might sound crude or distasteful... Souless even. But the point isn't to be souless, the point is to kneel down next to the little budding stem of a plant, and come to terms with the fact that only you can protect it. And if you make a promise to protect something, you can't just later make apologies and excuses for your mistakes. If people lose their jobs, get sick because you were incompetant with handling food or correctly sourcing material for your product and it winds up with lead in it, then you can't just press the rewind button. The same is true for betrayl of self, if you set up all of your business on shoddy foundations, maybe it takes a tumble? Maybe someone shoves you off the edge of a cliff you were careless enough to set up shop on. You can't just then be like "oh its fine, I like eating dirt anyway", no you have to admit that you were impetuous and you didn't take the task on with a proper seriousness of consideration in your mind.
Also, as a person starting a business you ought to ask yourself the question "do I have the ability to think for myself?" because as long as the answer to that is "of course, I always do" you aren't really looking yourself straight in the eye and telling the truth. You don't want to wear a mask of false promises and whispered dreams, because if you wear that mask, the successess you make will feel hollow because you know within yourself you got by on luck, not on knowledge. And lots of business guys feel that way, and it is a shame because you don't have to, you just need to develop a little personal foresight and intuition into your own affairs.
This all said, I don't believe CENTS/cents is the be all and end all of things like some might get wrapped up in. What matters is that you understand the point it makes, the statement of autonomy and that you aren't skipping your processes. There are other things I have come to consider...
Loyalty - who can trust my word (workers, customers, peers, friends, society)
Credibility - where do I stand regarding these issues
Fortune - why has a persons or company's fortunes travelled down a certain path
It is important you do not over emphasize the importance of CENTS/cents if it will somehow damage your ability to address everything you possibly can. And with that point I want to mention that CENTS is a reminder, a jolt, not just to do those things, but to search for other things like them that likewise expand your capacity to think critically and ascertain the components of a good and well thought out response to your aim/desire to create a business.
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