Why You Must Be a YAY-SAYER to Succeed in Entrepreneurship and Life

Dear friend,

In a world with so many nay-sayers, negative people and pessimistic people, we should GO OPPOSITE and be the change we wish to see in the world and become YAY SAYERS!

Anything is possible!

To become a YAY SAYER, here are my suggestions:

Whenever a friend or family member pitches a crazy idea they have, encourage them! I think most of us will unconsciously be nay-sayers by telling them why their idea is bad or flawed. But to be honest, life is too damn short. Encourage them to experiment and try out their crazy idea/pursue their dream. Better to encourage them to attempt something epic, awesome, and audacious in life rather than take the safe route.
In your personal life, think and dream big, and don’t take the safe route. Experiment with your own crazy ideas, and don’t ask others for their feedback or suggestions before you attempt something. Just do it by yourself, then measure your own self-assessment of your “success” in your own eyes, and figure out if and how you need to change course.
Have entrepreneurial heroes to look up to: For myself, I find inspiration and motivation to do epic shit by studying the life and actions of my personal heroes who include Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Kanye West, JAY Z, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Gandhi, and many others. These individuals were crazy enough to try to change the world, and they did. And they’re normal human beings like you and me. The only difference is that they work harder than us, hustle harder, take bigger risks, and are a little crazier than we are. They see more potentiality in life, rather than restrictions.

It doesn’t matter if you “fail”; what is the worst-case scenario?

SUIT with phone in London

Realize that as an entrepreneur, you can be the smartest, most hard-working and talented person, but still “fail” in modern capitalist society.

To me, success is a combination of hard work, ingenuity, and timing/opportunity. You can control how hard you work and you can control your ingenuity/ideas, but timing/opportunity is not in your control (a stoic way of thinking about Entrepreneurship/business).

For example, Mark Zuckerberg is obviously a smart dude who worked hard, but if he wasn’t born in today’s digital world, and didn’t start Facebook at the time he did, he wouldn’t have been successful. Same goes for Bill Gates: he is also obviously smart, talented, and hard-working, but if he didn’t get “lucky” licensing DOS to IBM, he wouldn’t have become the billionaire we know him today for.

Never talk down to others, and never talk down to yourself!

Cindy's mom and my mom, enjoying Portuguese Egg Tarts in Lisbon, a photo that puts a smile on my face :) — Cindy’s mom and my mom, enjoying Portuguese Egg Tarts in Lisbon, a photo that puts a smile on my face :)

So friend, in our lives, let us try an experiment: Don’t nay-say for a month, or maybe a whole year. If someone pitches you an idea, give them constructive ideas and constructive criticism to help them succeed and achieve their dreams, rather than telling them why their idea is dumb or why they will fail.

Most importantly, don’t nay-say yourself. Don’t self-sabotage yourself, by setting yourself up to fail. Don’t be “realistic” or prudent in your life. Be more reckless and bold. Try out things you don’t think you’re capable of. My friend Chris Dillow taught me, in order to achieve anything or do anything, assume you can do it yourself. Assume you’re smart enough, and talented enough. To give you personal advice, I would encourage you to be a little big-headed and assume you’re smarter, more talented, and more intelligent/hard working than you think you are.

Your life is short. Why waste this precious gift of life living a boring existence? Let’s do cool shit, move fast, break stuff, build cool stuff and help empower ourselves and all of humanity for the greater good!

BE BOLD,
ERIC