Baby Step External Deliverables, My Padawan Prepreneur

“Sooner or later we all have to quit making money from playing a children’s game” – anonymous pro athlete.

Athletes are in a tremendous position to excel at entrepreneurship because training for athletics is a process that requires discipline, adherence to monotonous work, adaptation to failures and set backs and doing ‘mentor mentions per press interview’ (MMPPI). MMPPI directly translates into entrepreneurship success because succeeding at entrepreneurship is more likely if you have an expert mentoring you and your mini company concept.

Here are 10 Entrepreneurial New Year’s Resolutions for Ex-Athletes

-1- Cite, source and blog your current sports mentors.

Documenting who helped us excel at athletics is a springboard for entrepreneurship success as well. Mentors and potential mentors are like moths to a flame when it comes to public recogntion. I would blog using the #MVBP method. Minimum Viable Blog Post is 12 sentences, 2 pictures and one focus. You should be able to bang out a wordpress blog post like this even if you are sidelined for a concussion because it is 12 super simple sentences.

This technique is used by Stanford engineer undergrads that aren’t going to win a Pulitzer prize with their blog articles, but do an awesome job recognizing previous teachers and woo future business mentors.

-2- Get an Entrepreneur Moleskin Notebook

Pat Riley keeps a notebook on all his players using the 1% improvement goal. Riley has the goal to get his 15 guys to all get 1% better each month.  If you were as bad as I was improving more than 1% was easy. I heard via the entrepreneur of Los Angeles, Shaquille O’Neal, that Phil Jackson assigned readings and made each player keep a notebook. I did not ever play for Phil Jackson so I will have to take Shaq’s word on this.

DISCLOSURE: I ran Shaqtacular’s volunteer staff and built networking equity by wrangling pro athletes and celebrities for Shaquille O’Neal and Athletes and Entertainers for Kids (AEFK).

Your entrepreneurship moleskin is a little black notebook that tracks your 1% improvement.

-3- Get a Thunder Buddy.

In the movie Ted, Markie Mark had a stuffed bear that was his “thunder buddy”. In entrepreneurship, there will be stormy weather. So, get an entrepreneur thunder buddy NOW before you need one.

-4- Crash a Business School Class on Entrepreneurship

There are two seasons when you’re a pro athlete. Regular seasons and off-season where you train. Well, while you are training during the off-season, crash a class at a business school on entrepreneurship. Mark Madsen is at Stanford Business School right now so reach out to him via email where it is last name, period first name @gsb.stanford.edu. It is not like the NFL owner’s email that is first name, no space, last name at AOL.com.

Also, Stanford GSB has an open Entrepreneur Week that is Feb 7 to March 7. I know, it is a month but it’s really good and really free. There is even a entrepreneurship conference that is hosted at 655 Knight– it is the GSB business school campus.

Disclosure: I am the chairperson of Entrepreneur Week at Stanford. I financially benefit if you attend the free events that are free to the public.

-5- Read the Yahoo Article on Franchising

In the same way that pattern recognizing game film is complex and baseball statistics require a PhD in engineering to understand, business franchising has changed entry-level entrepreneurship. There is a Yahoo article about this concept of a living, breathing franchise that I wrote. Basically, it says don’t buy a franchise but start one that is a sequel to a business that you didn’t start.

For example, my presentation at NFL Rookie Camp on “What a Supermodel Can Teach an NFL Athlete About FICO Scores” was not copyright protected so you can make money doing a concept either like that or as a sequel progression from that. Yes, athletes have horrible FICO credit scores.

I will post resolutions five to one in my follow up article because I am at my word limit