Obsidian Launch | Bounce!

Bounce! – A Must Read

“If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging” – Will Rogers

There are hundreds of great entrepreneurial books out there. The problem is they are buried under millions of others.

Quite frankly, many books can be boiled down to a couple content rich pages. Very few are good enough to merit a page by page read. And even fewer are perfectly timed for the events of today. I recently came across one of those exceptional books that is content rich and perfectly timed. It’s called Bounce! by Barry J. Moltz.

Let’s agree on one thing first: the economy sucks right now. I am hearing of layoff after layoff. I have seen people lose their homes after twenty years of living there. I have friends who are struggling to get started again. Moltz’s book opened my eyes to the natural cycle of the entrepreneur’s AND the employee’s business ups and downs. The key is to bounce back from the down times by recognizing when you are in that part of the cycle, appreciating you’re there, and moving forward. In this book, I learned techniques on how to do all three. I learned how to bounce.

I’m not here to blog about a summary, you can get all that stuff at the Amazon listing. Instead I want to share the pages I found most valuable (just in case you want to condense your read – but I suggest you don’t):

Page 29-30 – The Roulette Wheel of Success – Too many of us (I’m guilty) feel that life is like a roulette wheel. Even though we may hit the same color a few times in a row, the odds of having a new number come up on the next spin is equally as great. The odds are 50-50 (minus the intentional house odds of the two green). This analogy is accurate for gambling, but is NOT right for our careers. The fact is that every failure and every success in life changes our course, so that odds on the next event is never 50-50.
Page 46-49 – Laws Affecting Business Reflect Cultural DNA – If you are an American reading this, it opens your eyes to how much US bankruptcy laws favor entrepreneurs. If you are in another country, this is your opportunity to encourage law change. Otherwise, move to America.
Page 93 – Skip the Logo Design, Take a Step - Too many people wait for the right time to get started on a new course. Nothing will ever be perfect and you will never be fully prepared. The only thing assured is that if you don’t take action, you will not move.
Page 172-175 – Patient Dreams – This is a hard lesson to learn, and unfortunately many of us never do. Sometimes an overnight success takes 20 years. Sometimes it takes a lifetime. Unfortunately, today’s electronic society is all about now. To properly bounce, you need to know that now may not actually happen until later.
Page 198 – Small Is The New Big Success Story – All you need to do it read the title of this section and believe it. If you have a small business, how can you make it a huge success at its current size? A big business that’s losing money is not a bounce forward, it’s just digging the hole deeper. Be a big success, as the small guy.

Be sure to also check out the biographies of the business people in the back. It isn’t your typical list of big names and archetypes. Instead it is a list of the real people that you don’t hear about, but all, in their own way, have bounced. Plus there are little tidbits hidden in there. Make sure you check out the line about ensuring your product line was… “all dressed in the same room.” [Hint: it’s under Rick Mazurksy’s section]. Enough reading. Go bounce!

Posted by Mike Michalowicz

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Posts: 5

I think so
Reply #5 on : Mon December 07, 2009, 01:59:21

Plato was one of the earliest philosophers to provide a detailed discussion of ideas. He considered the concept of idea in the realm of metaphysics and its implications for epistemology. He asserted that there is realm of Forms or Ideas, which exist independently of anyone who may have thought of these ideas. Material things are then imperfect and transient reflections or instantiations of the perfect and unchanging ideas. From this it follows that these Ideas are the principal reality (see also idealism). In contrast to the individual objects of sense experience, which undergo constant change and flux, Plato held that ideas are perfect, eternal, and immutable. Consequently, Plato considered that knowledge of material things is not really knowledge; real knowledge can only be had of unchanging ideas.

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Yeh it is
Reply #4 on : Mon December 07, 2009, 01:58:17

One view on the nature of ideas is that there exist some ideas (called innate ideas) which are so general and abstract, that they could not have arisen as a representation of any object of our perception, but rather were, in some sense, always in the mind before we could learn them. These are distinguished from adventitious ideas which are images or concepts which are accompanied by the judgment that they are caused by some object outside of the mind

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New
Reply #3 on : Mon December 07, 2009, 01:56:57

In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images.

Mike Michalowicz
Posts: 5

Kudos to All Entrepreneurs
Reply #2 on : Sat June 14, 2008, 16:31:27

I don't believe the opportuntities for funding only exists for twentysomethings. Obsidian, itself does not provide funding, instead we pay for infrastructure. Alas, we work only with young entrepreneurs.

Our focus, is simply because that is where our talents lie. I applaud all entrepreneurs and encourage entrepreneurs of all age to launch a business. But at the same time, I believe funding should only be considered once the entrepreneur has proven financial discipline, and will leverage the money to grow.

Don't give up until you achieve what you want. Everyone knows the story of Walt Disney. It would have been a shame if he stopped calling on banks after the 341st.

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