How to Practice Like an Entrepreneur
This part of the book will focus on putting your ideas to practical use. Now that you have learned how to think like an entrepreneur (chapters 1 through 3) and how to act like an entrepreneur (chapters 4 through 9), it is time to learn how to practice like an entrepreneur and become an entrepreneur (chapters 10 through 14).
For more information regarding the topics covered in Chapter 10 (Start a Business) and Chapter 11 (Manage and Grow Your Business) and a much more comprehensive and detailed account of how to start and manage your own firm, I highly recommend reading my book: Engineer to Entrepreneur: Success Strategies to Manage Your Career and Start Your Own Firm (e2E), starting on Chapter 6 of that book where I detail everything you need to know from: funding your start-up company (Chapter 6), company start-up logistics (Chapter 7), office start-up logistics (Chapter 8), marketing and communications (Chapter 9), and management (Chapter 10). In chapters 10 and 11 of this book, I focus more on the concept and idea of starting your own firm, as opposed to the actual step-by-step procedures, which I have already covered in e2E. In chapters 10 and 11, wherever I feel that you can derive benefit by referencing e2E, in that topic, I will include the note: “See e2E chapter x, page y”. “Excerpts from Engineer to Entrepreneur © 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers used with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.”
When I speak of practicing, I am not speaking of repetition of actions to improve ability. Nor am I trying to invoke thoughts of Allen Iverson “…we talkin’ ‘bout practice??” (For those of you unfamiliar with the reference, Google Allen Iverson and practice). I am speaking of the art of putting what you have learned to good use or “the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it.”
In this part of the book, I will focus on the implementation of the first two parts of the book. How to think and act like and entrepreneur. How to:
1. Start a business (Chapter 10). See also chapters 6 through 8 of e2E.
2. Manage and grow a business (Chapter 11). See also chapters 9 and 10 of e2E.
3. Create and cultivate your brand (Chapter 12).
4. Give back (Chapter 13).