A recent conversation between Seth Godin and Shane Parish went like this:
Shane: “I have a friend who is writing a book, and I said, ‘Who is the book for?’ He said it’s for everybody.”
Seth: (without equivocation or hesitation): “That book is going to fail. I will happily put that in writing this very minute.”
The authors of Entrepreneurs Weekly Nietzsche have not made this mistake. They surely did not write this book for everybody. I’ve known Dave Jilk and Brad Feld, since the mid 90s. I have a deep appreciation and respect for them both. And when I was reading this book, it seemed to me they had written it for me and a few hundred of my friends who are entrepreneurs. If you’re an entrepreneur, when you read it, you’ll understand. I’m pretty sure they wrote it for you, too.
Over the past twenty five years, I’ve started quite a few companies. Throughout my journey, a healthy and sometimes humbling mix of failure and success, I’ve had the benefit of support and counsel from people like Brad and Dave. But I never had Nietzsche. Authors often write a preface to remind the reader that “the failures are mine and mine alone.” Great entrepreneurs have this understanding too (see “Taking Responsibility” in the Leadership section of this book). And while entrepreneurial success requires leadership success often has at least as much to do with the timing or good fortunate and the extraordinary people you’ve been fortunate to work with as co-founders, team members, investors, partners, and customers (see “Gratitude”).
This book includes vignettes from the entrepreneurs who have been living what Nietzsche wrote about. These are brief, relevant, often powerful stories – many from leaders I’ve known for many years, often sharing stories from their own perspectives that are familiar to me because I know the people and the companies involved first-hand. Their journeys are their journeys, not mine, but their stories and their learnings are so familiar to me that they might as well be telling any of my stories. And if you’re an entrepreneur, I’ve no doubt you’ll see yourself in this too.
This stuff is real. And real can sometimes be beautiful, uplifting, and powerful. At other times, real is the pain you’re experiencing or the pain you know others are experiencing. This stuff is hard.
So, is Nietzsche for entrepreneurs, helpful, valuable? Yes! More than you can imagine. And whatever you and I may have imagined, Dave and Brad have imagined still more: in one of several appendices they speculate that at some point in the future Nietzsche’s circle of influence will have extended to “entrepreneurs” with your name listed as the leading example. I hope they're right and I live long enough to see your name in that space.
Here's my own little bit of gratuitous advice. Buy the book, read it, use it. And if you happen to be an entrepreneur starting a new venture, do what Dave and Brad did. Make sure the focus of your next venture is something worth doing, something that isn't likely to be done at all unless you do it.
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Brilliant
This is the best business related book I have read in 15 years.I have read a lot of "business" books in the pursuit of competitive advantage and personal growth. I've read things related to self-actualization, Lean, Agile, meditation, DevOps, emotional IQ, physical activity, KPI, and many other trendy topics.All the aforementioned business book topics trend in the same direction: here is some system, principle, or method to better achieve success. Unfortunately, those approaches usually miss the mark because a business is chaos and constantly changing. Especially a new business.The use of Nietzsche's writings as a catalyst for entrepreneur thinking is brilliant. Nietzsche demands that the reader invest themselves into what is being read. It requires destruction of the ego to engage. This book does a great job capturing the reverberations of that destruction in the triumphs, and the failures of the entrepreneurial existence. There is no answer, no solution, no key to success. It is up to you to figure that out.I wish I had read it 15 years ago.Thanks Dave and Brad for the inspiration. (I needed a good kick in the pants)
Top reviews from other countries
Amazon Customer
Packed with ideas and inspiration . . .
Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2021