CHAPTER 2
AWAKEN YOUR ENTREPRENEUR MIND

Your brain controls the way you think and the way you think controls what you do.

What you do largely gives you the results you see in the outside world; including your bank balance, your house, your car, the types of holidays you go on and the difference you make.

So, if you want to consistently make things happen, it's vitally important that we take a look at the brain and how it's wired.

The brain is incredibly complex, and an exciting piece of kit to learn about properly. If you happen to be a brain‐scientist forgive me for oversimplifying things but what I am about to discuss is designed to be useful for entrepreneurs rather than accurate to brain‐scientists.

There are three key parts of your ‘entrepreneur brain’:

1. The Reptile: the survival part of your brain that has you see the world as a dangerous place where most people and most things can't be trusted. Its main purpose is to make sure that you can escape and survive any dangerous or stressful situation.
2. The Autopilot: the functional worker part of your brain that has you see the world as a set of challenges and problems for you to overcome in exchange for rewards.
3. The Entrepreneur: the entrepreneur part of your brain has you see a world full of meaningful problems that can be solved to create value for others.

Don't Let the Reptile Run Your Life

If you operate from the primitive, survival part of your brain, you can expect to live like a reptile. Reptiles fight for survival, they're always ready to scurry away in fright or get into a vicious fight over something small. It's not the way to live.

Operating from the survival brain gives you more scarcity in the times we are living in. This part of the brain has no empathy for others, a skill that is vital in value creation. The reptile isn't able to reason effectively and it has no concept of long‐term thinking. It's not a logical or strategic part of the brain; it is programmed to seek out situations that seem good for immediate survival with as little effort as possible.

The reptile is emotional. It throws tantrums and wants revenge one minute. The next minute it wants food or sex. It lashes out at people who are trying to help. It does reckless things for short‐term gains. It sees the worst in every situation and finds ways to derail progress without thinking.

The reptile is easily fooled in these modern times with vices like gambling, pornography, junk food and get‐rich‐quick scams. It's the part of the brain that will gamble on slot machines for hours on end, trading small coins for the hope of many coins, but it will never compute the folly of this activity.

The reptile believes the only resources that exist are those it can touch right now. If it can't see money, there's no money. If it can't see food, there's no food.

The reptile will destroy everything around itself if it thinks it will bring an immediate benefit to its survival. If you have ever lashed out at someone close to you, if you have ever smashed something valuable or sent a venomous email that later cost you dearly, it was you ‘having a reptile moment’.

The Autopilot Wont Take You to Nice Destinations

The autopilot brain isn't much better than the reptile brain if you want to achieve success as an entrepreneur.

If you operate from the purely functional part of your brain, you will live life on repeat. You will have friends and you will be able to perform repetitive tasks, but most of what you do will not be very meaningful in the long term.

You will do what you need to do to get through the week. You'll watch Netflix, order takeout, turn up to meetings, pay your bills, drop the kids at school and make pleasant conversation with a friend. It will all turn into a blur though – devoid of passion and meaning, you put one foot after the next foot without thinking much about where you're going.

The autopilot part yearns for ‘passive income’. It wants a simple system that brings in money on autopilot. Anything that looks repeatable and easy appeals to this part of the brain. It loves the idea that one day, money will just arrive automatically and permanently so that it can finally relax.

The autopilot believes the only resources it can access are those it's been told it can access. If you tell the autopilot it earns $85,000 a year, it believes that's all there is. If you tell the autopilot it has a credit card limit of $4500, that's it until a letter arrives from the bank saying that it's now $5000.

If you've ever found months pass by and you have nothing much to show for it, you've been ‘on autopilot’. If you have goals, dreams, hopes and wishes that go unfulfilled year after year you're probably stuck in this mode.

The Visionary Entrepreneur Builds An Empire

If you want to build something of real value that expands, you need to access your entrepreneur brain.

If you operate from the entrepreneurial part of your brain you will build a little empire. You will develop a space that is truly your own, people will be honoured to share conversations with you, you will solve big important problems and make a difference to many people.

The entrepreneur part of your brain has great amounts of empathy, logic, reasoning and higher consciousness. These are all great skills for building your empire.

Your expansive entrepreneur brain has a capacity to love the world. It can connect with people and events over vast distances. It can calculate future events, it can draw unique insights from your own past or even the stories of others and naturally devise strategies. It's wise beyond the comprehension of the autopilot or the reptile.

While reptiles believe in resources they can touch and autopilots believe what they are told, the entrepreneur believes that if a resource exists on the planet, it's possible to influence how that resource is used.

An entrepreneur believes that their empire grows when they have greater influence over resources but they care not who technically ‘owns’ the resource. They use other people's money, fame, credibility and time to get things done.

If you have ever had moments of pure inspiration where you feel anything is possible, you want to start a movement and do something meaningful for humanity, you were having a ‘visionary entrepreneur’ moment.

Do Not Stimulate Your Reptile Brain!

If you want to destroy everything you have, stimulate your reptile mind regularly. Engaging in negative self‐talk whereby you tell yourself, over and again, how scarce things are and how tough life is will do it. Telling yourself that you are barely surviving and there are no resources around you gets the reptile riled up rapidly.

If you really want to stimulate the reptile, keep an empty fridge, have no access to cash so your reptile is always on edge. Check your phone all the time and look at the worst things happening in society. Log into porn sites or use social media to follow people who make you feel angry, unhappy and small. Then deny yourself rewards for your efforts so your reptile feels like nothing is working.

All of these things stimulate the reptile brain, which will push you to the brink of reptile behaviour. You will act aggressively to those who are closest to you, you will take stupid, short‐term actions that come back to bite you and you will spiral out of control.

In order to try to stop the spiral you will construct an unattainable fantasy. In your fantasy, you might imagine yourself with passive income, retirement and big winnings.

In these fantasies, you probably don't have to do anything and money keeps rolling in. This fantasy is designed as a safety mechanism to try to stop you completely destroying yourself.

Unfortunately, the fantasy is a juvenile approach to life and it causes you to spend what little money or time you have on quick‐fix solutions that won't work. You might join a multi‐level marketing operation that you won't give any time to, you put money into a high‐risk investment you don't understand, you gamble or you spend money trying to look rich to create the fantasy.

It's easy to spot these reptile fantasies. They are typically presented to you as:

• Passive income. The reptile imagines that money comes from a source that requires no time, energy, effort or focus. The entrepreneur knows that making money and building a successful business will always require energy, time and effort. However, if you are dedicated to a meaningful cause it will be fulfilling, rewarding and ethical.
• Retirement. The reptile wants you to squirrel away money that you believe you will live on after you are too old ‘to hunt or gather’. The entrepreneur never wants to retire, but looks to making a contribution for as many years as possible.
• Multiple streams of income. The reptile enjoys fantasising about money coming from many sources, thus ‘safeguarding your food supply’. The entrepreneur loves to focus on earning money from sources that fit perfectly with your mission and your vision; if it's one source or twenty, the entrepreneur cares not.
• Big wins. The reptile likes...