Obsess Over Solving Problems, Not Making Money

In this episode

Welcome to the second part of In Search of Excellence, featuring an exceptional man and a good friend of mine, David Kidder.

David is a serial entrepreneur, active angel investor, advisor to Fortune 500 companies, sought-after speaker, and author of four books, including two New York Times bestsellers, “The startup playbook” and “The intellectual devotional”.

David has been a co-founder and CEO of three venture-backed startups, including Clickable, SmartRay, and Bionic, where he is currently a CEO.
We are discussing if an entrepreneur is born or made, what is the right motivation to start a business, how to learn from hardships, what is the concept of TOAD, and the concept of Becoming. Tune in to hear more!

00:35 Are you born as an entrepreneur or you can become one?

- Born entrepreneurs are very rare
- Mostly conditioned at home
- Creativeness and problem-solving

09:52 The motivation for starting a business

- Those who earn $100 million are rare
- You can't be a billionaire without being lucky
- Compounding is the secret to long-term wealth

16:51 Extreme preparation and its importance for the success

- Extreme preparation benefits greatly
- For public speaking, David prepares like hell
- Do not love people just to get something from them

23:20 Transition from an entrepreneur to an angle investor

- 70% of all of our returns come from 7% of all capital deployed
- There are two investment signals
- You have to put yourself in a network

27:47 Dealing with difficult people and hardships

- You have to have the ability to say no to people
- Best books about entrepreneurship
- Success is a bad educator
- Growth lives in discomfort

33:34 Three most important things to look for in an entrepreneur

- Why them? What is their secret? What is their proprietary gift?
- Timing, their understanding of the forces within the next 3-5 years
- The ability to solve a problem and create an unfair advantage

35:24 Three worst things that an entrepreneur can do

- Overconfidence
- Ambition, not obsession, as a drive
- Urgency bias

37:14 What motivates David to be self-aware and constantly grow?

- The Becoming Journey
- The second stage is Love Loving point
- Mike Tyson – an incredible human being
- Toad principle

44:28 What is a toad and how it changes people’s lives?

- It's a natural psychedelic that exists in both biological and organic form
- The conscious physical reality that we live in is a part of the larger nature of our creation
- These are not toys, they're not recreational, they're profoundly powerful
- You’d probably want to experience them later in your life, in your 40s and 50s

48:12 Fill in the blank to excellence

- When I started my career I wish I had known
- The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is
- My number one professional goal is
- My biggest regret in life is