On my search of useful knowledge I’ve read and watched many biographies and writings of successful people, with the objective of analyzing their success and studying how they achieved their goals.

When I’m studying these role models I try to read between the lines and learn about the environment and circumstances that these people were when doing whatever I see today as achievements. Why? Because this will give me the basis to translate the lessons learned into my world, my circumstances, my life. I don’t really know why, but I’ve noticed that many people don’t do this, and I think doing it is very important.

Before I explain why I think that understanding the influence of the environments is important, let me explain the reasons why I became interested in the topic in the first place.

I was born and raised in The Dominican Republic, a very poor country in The Caribbean that shares an island with an even poorer country named Haiti. If you were born, raised and still live in a developed country you would’t understand or even believe many of the things that happen in these countries, but in summary, most of the things that appear simple in a more advanced place, are very difficult in my country.

I knew this then, and I know it better now that I moved to a developed country and probed my theory.

See all those successful stories you read about? Medical advancements? Incredible innovations in California? There is a whole system behind them that works. There is an infrastructure, working and put in place ever since that person was born, that will somehow influence in the number of possibilities that are going to be available for this individual.

Let me give you one practical example:

In the community where I live today kids are picked up every morning by perfectly working and safe school buses, these kids don’t sweat in the summer because the classroom is correctly acclimated, they also have the appropriate lighting to read, and have access to computers and some other conditions that will facilitate learning.

You may see this as routine, as normal everyday, but I can assure you this is not the case in many places in our planet. In my country kids don’t even have chairs to sit at, not even safe public transportation.

So, where am I going with this? Take two kids, one of each of the environment I described and ask yourself this question: Who will have more chances of succeeding? Please, don’t misunderstand me here? I’m not asking who will succeed, I’m asking who’ll have more chances. To which one is going to be harder? Now, see where I’m going?

Your environment will not determine if you will succeed or not, but it will make it easier or harder, that’s for sure.

Now, based on the 2 important facts that:

1. Our environment influences and facilitates possibilites for our success and…
2. That we don’t choose the environment where we are born and raised

We can arrive to these conclusions:

• This is not an excuse to sit and do nothing. With whatever we have, we must stand and make the best out of it.
• If we are aware of the limitations of our environment we can try to change it, for us or even for our children. In my case, I moved out to a better environment. Left my family and my friends, paid that price with the promise of a better system that will make things easier for me.
• If there is someone you are following and admire, try to study first that person’s environment and circumstances, but not to tell you that you can’t because your situation is worse, but to identify the real challenges and the price you’ll have to pay to achieve the same.

In general terms, every person’s circumstances are different, and every person is different, so to come up with inmutable laws is very difficult if not impossible.

Let’s only understand that we can achieve anything we want in life, as long as we are willing to pay the price to get it, knowing that the price is not universal, maybe higher or lower to different people depending on multiple variables, being “environment” one of them.

I leave you know with a very popular quote from a famous spanish philosopher that summarizes my point very well:

“I am me, and my circumstances” – Jose Ortega y Gasset

As an entrepreneur I am a start-up fan. One big challenge for every start-up is how to come up with innovative services or products, and then more innovative ways to market those.

This video/commercial is the way a start-up called “Dollar Shave Club” is promoting their new service of sending shaving blades to your door, every month, for a low monthly fee.

Is it a good idea? Is it going to work? Who knows, but their commercial is freaking original and even funny. Why do I like it? Well, because originality and innovation are things I admire, even on this simple video.

Take a look and let me know what you think?

The video I’m going to show you is what I call a full course on entrepreneurship. It’s an old TV program called “Entrepreneurs” which had the objective of giving insights on entrepreneurship by doing a kind of a reality TV show featuring successful (at that time) entrepreneurs. One of those chapters was with Steve Jobs.

As you may probably know, Steve Jobs is acclaimed to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all times. I’m actually reading his biography written by Walter Isaacson and having already read 50% of it I can tell you it’s amazing, actually I’m going to post my review about it in the next couple of weeks.

A very short background:

NeXT Logo

Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers in 1976 along with Steve Wozniak and converted it into a millionaire company. Apple products have been revolutionizing the computer industry ever since. In 1985 Steve Jobs left Apple and went to form another company, a company that he named “NeXT”.

Many of the initial meetings, ideas and discussions of NeXT were recorded by this TV Program called “Entrepreneurs”. Today, thanks to YouTube I was able to see that chapter and let me tell you this: I’m fascinated with it.

After repeating it a couple of times I was amazed with the many lessons we can extract from it on entrepreneurship, innovation, people persuasion and even business planning.

If you’re really into these topics I encourage you to watch the video (at least twice).

Let me now list the lessons (share yours on the comments) I got from the video:

• Entrepreneurship has always been the same. Visionary, insistent, leader, and crazy people that make others do whatever necessary to achive something.
• Entrepreneurship is very hard. At first, even though you have to know how to delegate and distribute resources, you end up doing most of the tasks. Building a company is not easy and the will power needed is just provided by a big passion for what you’re after. Passion is the key.
• Funding is very important. Pay attention to how many times Steve makes reference to the available funds, funds that he puts from his own money. Funding was a key back then, imagine now.
• Have a clear Goal. When I see that video, when I transport myself to those meetings and hear and see Steve talking, you can clearly tell that there is one specific goal and deadline. They are just figuring out how to reach it.
• People first reaction to something hard is “no”. Again, see how Steve Jobs is fighting with an audience of Software Engineers, Marketers and other professionals, saying “no” to many of Steve’s ideas. He had to be able to convince these people to do what he thought was the right thing to do, not the “possible” thing to do. As it later turned out, it was not only possible, but right as well.
• Be perfectionists and stick to the best. Pay attention to the process when the designer of the logo brings the designs for the first time to the team, Jobs explains how the designer was one of the best at that time, and how important was every detail. Does that mean we should hire always the best? No, it means we should pay attention to details and make the best of our own possibilities.
• Planning is very important. Deadlines, diagrams, resources, and actions are all coordinated with a white board and multiple meetings. They are planning, and studying their industry. That’s still necessary nowadays more than before.

In general, most of these lessons are in all entrepreneurship books, right? Well, maybe not. But the beauty of this video is that:

1. You are seeing it live, not reading it, you are seeing it in action.
2. It comes from what today is considered one of the top entrepreneurs of all times.
3. It is a reality show, what you see here are the real things that happened and most of the lessons are deducted by transporting yourself into the show, they are not listed, there are interpreted by you, the viewer.

Enjoy the video below, identify the multiple ideas I’ve shared with you here, and comment them or add yours.

See you later.

See video on YouTube.