5k Pajama Jog!, a photo by CooperTeaMaster on Flickr.

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Rob Carefull’s wonderfully sculpted bronze bust, a photo by CooperTeaMaster on Flickr.

Here I am with the artist, creator & visionary behind the bronze which so stunningly sits next to me.

A schoolboy friend, and by that I mean someone that I went to school with when I was 9 years old in Kenya, has taken up sculpting in his retirement.  Talents he certainly never showed at school have emerged!  A group of old school friends got together through the miracle of the web and over the past few years we have made sure that we meet up regularly.

This year Rob came to the Masters Golf tournament along with “the gang” and asked if he could do a bust in bronze of me.  I accepted!  (I mean how often does one get an offer like that?)  Much debate was then entered into among my friends as to whether the bronze should include my hat!  At first Rob was against the idea but he finally agreed that it probably was part of my persona.  Sculpting a hat in bronze is an art in itself it turns out.  The result of Robs labors were unveiled this week while Sandy and I were in England. 

The likeness is startling to me.  Rob has captured me in my opinion..and you can judge for yourself in these pictures….in the long and winding road that is one’s life, you just never know what the next corner will bring.  Thank you Rob, my heirs will know me, a rare gift to be able to pass on to generations yet unborn……..

They must manage risk to the best of their ‘educated’ ability, but I think the resilience towards risk lives beyond the office.

Risk is an idea - similar in operation to fear, and to those who follow their passion they do not get held back by mere ideas.

Exemplified by the amount of categories in the E&Y Judging Criteria, Entrepreneurs must manage so much risk that to be kept up at night may prove fatal to the business.

Some have a vision of the future.
Entrepreneurs turn it into reality.

Do you sleep well at night?

Do any fears hold you back?

Would you rather be lucky or good?

It is of my opinion the above three questions guide entrepreneurs to successes of varying degrees.  In my following story I illustrate how.

In 2009 I won the  Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Rocky Mountain region. 

It was my third appearance and I guess the third time is lucky!  I went on to the national finals and lost out to the foreign language self taught program, Rosetta Stone.  Not to worry, he was a worthy winner.  And this year I was asked to be a judge for the Rocky Mountain region, which has now been expanded to include a few  more western states.  I accepted the honor but little did I know how much work was going to be involved…

The first thing I received was a HUGE book containing all the background information of the contenders; newspaper, magazine & blog articles as well as company financial information!  And what a bunch they were…brilliant in their various endeavors and concepts, some large, some small companies - but all of them innovative, creative and “out there” in the world of risk.  Fascinating reading but time consuming and tiring holding onto the book that weighed about 8 lbs….Then  I was given a web site to view all the financial information which I then had to correlate with the various companies.  That involved a lot of back and forth and I began to feel like a new MBA who has been given the task of analyzing 60 or so companies for acquisition!  I could only  handle 6 or 7 at a time as after a while the numbers and the companies just started to meld together and become a jumble of facts.  So I broke up the work with days off in-between.

What became apparent as I read through all of these documents was the commonality of risk taking.

I suppose it is one of the basic premises of being an entrepreneur .  So I began to develop a series of questions for the actual interviews I was obliged to conduct, and my first question was :

WHAT KEEPS YOU UP AT NIGHT?  I was not expecting indigestion to be an answer and nor was it .  It seemed that not much kept entrepreneurs up at night at all — unless it was an all night party.  Almost every answer to this question was greeted by a wry smile and a response along the lines of “NOT MUCH”…it seems that perennial risk takers sleep easy at night…and if you don’t then you will be unable to cope with the pressure that each morning brings - as you head back to your start up….

The next question  I chose to use was ‘WOULD YOU RATHER BE LUCKY OR GOOD?” because it is my experience that LUCK has a HUGE amount of impact on success or failure.  Its all timing and invention and concept but there has to be that moment of “good fortune” attached to it.  At least that has been my experience and I even have a mantra that goes along the lines of “ I would rather be lucky than good”.

So I was surprised when the majority of those I spoke to said that they would rather be good.  The only response I could have to that desire is “Good Luck!”

Then I looked at each company founder and executive that I had to, developed a series of independent questions related directly to their company - and without any reservation each individual knew his business.  Inside and Out!

So at the end of this entire process what did I learn?  I found that entrepreneurs come in different shapes and sizes and ages but ALL are passionate about their idea and what they do.  They were all are true believers and their tolerance for risk is off the charts.  To them risk is just as irrelevant as fear.  Show me fear..let me touch it.  You cant!!  Fear is inside  your head…it is not tangible…it is there - OK, but to an entrepreneur with a dream it is irrelevant.  They sleep well at night and some of them choose to be lucky.  The truth is in my opinion that they are all good at what they do…so choosing to be lucky as well is a “no brainer”….and finally, it is NOT about the money.  Money appears to be a way of “keeping score”  - it’s about taking your idea and making it a success in the market place…the rewards that come from that may include money (lots of it in fact) but to the entrepreneur that is not the most important feature.  To the Venture Capitalist its all about the money…but that’s another story.

So endeth this blog!