Brewed From Within

Head Start

The entrepreneurial lifestyle resists definition.

Business owners paint with strokes of curiosity, determination, and innovation. When people build with creative ambition, experience is valuable, but the symphony of desire and attitude plays an equally important role. It takes heart to start and resilience to execute early moves, manage focus, build teams, maintain sales, and provide lasting customer service to maintain momentum.

The best part about an entrepreneurial lifestyle is that it’s accessible to everyone. This can be seen as students explore projects that transcend the classroom. It’s intrapreneurs fueling positive change in existing companies. It’s startup founders achieving product-market fit with new ideas and others who acquire an established business.

EXTRA SHOT

This contribution was written by Sheldon Ohringer. Along with helping us buy a business, Sheldon is an investor and board member who led large sales teams, developed acquisition programs, and as CEO took a technology company public.

Starting a brand new business is one way to explore the entrepreneurial lifestyle, but buying an existing business is also an interesting way to write your own story.

While there may be a higher cost for the head start, acquiring an existing business presents an interesting side door to the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

Organic growth is important, but there are added benefits in augmenting internal development with external acquisitions as well. As you consider a business to buy, avoid future headaches by understanding industry requirements, such as licenses, permits, zoning, and environmental requirements. As you work with existing ownership to determine a purchase price, a valuation based on capitalized earnings, excess earnings, cash flow, and tangible assets are all methods to guide fair negotiations. In the end, the right price is one that delights the seller and excites the buyer.

As details come together, partner with legal and accounting experts who focus on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to document the transaction. A letter of intent, confidentiality agreement, contracts, leasing documents, financial statements, tax returns, and sales agreements are all important documents to talk with your M&A team about. Many transactions include a vesting schedule as well, so stay in tune with these details to avoid unwanted surprises.

There are a variety of strategic ways to acquire a business, but once the transition takes place, new owners are given keys to a kingdom that hails an established team, customer base, and operating procedures. As we see in the Exit section of the Results chapter in YDNTB, there will be challenges during these transitory times, but in the end, virtuous leaders listen to keep the culture balanced.

All the good that comes with a business is important to maintain, but an audit of negative aspects is important too. This focus on areas that need improvement is stressful, and concerned employees may exaggerate issues to make their own contribution seem important. To stay proportionate, talk with everyone for context, invite resolutions that may solve issues, get hands-on, and stay optimistic to keep your assessment honest and weighted against the big picture.

Searching and finding undervalued, cash-flow businesses may take time, but it serves as a viable alternative to growing a business from scratch. Intentional candor with areas to improve allows new owners to build on past success while charting a renewed vision for lasting prosperity.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Waiting Rooms

The waiting room is that season where you’re not where you used to be, but you’re not yet where you want to go. It’s the in-between. The pause before your name gets called. The place where you’re preparing for what’s next, whether you think you know what’s next or not.

If we can move our egos out of the way long enough, we’d see the beauty here. The waiting room is where character develops. Where preparation happens. Where we create, reflect, and release what no longer serves us.

But we want to bypass it. We grow impatient and intolerant. We think our will—our force—can push us through faster. It doesn’t work like that. You’ll only exhaust and burn yourself out.It’s easy to watch others get called before you. The mental chatter starts: “When will it be my turn?” “Will I ever be ready?” “Why them and not me?”

The problem with watching others is that you have no idea where they are in their journeys. You don’t know where they’re being called to next—or what’s waiting for them when they get there. Their timeline is not a reflection of yours. It never was.

Everyone gets called at exactly the right time for their highest good. Not a moment sooner. Not because the universe is withholding opportunity, but because love doesn’t set us up to fail. The waiting room keeps us from walking through a doorway we’re not ready for. It’s protective. We wouldn’t hand a six-year-old the car keys just because they felt ready to drive. Your higher wisdom knows better. That child stays in the waiting room until they’re actually equipped for what’s next.

EXTRA SHOT

Watch Vanessa narrate this riff on-stage!

No one wants to be in the waiting room. But everyone has to pass through it. These built-in pause points aren’t punishments—they’re where we catch our breath, integrate what we’ve learned, and prepare for what’s coming.

We take the wait personally. Like it’s evidence we’re not good enough, not ready enough, not deserving enough. We get frustrated. Resentful. Sometimes we give up right here.

But your job is to learn to sit in the tension of not being where you want to be without making it mean something’s wrong with you. When we are able to loosen the grip, the pause can be strategic. You can recalibrate here. Gain mastery here. Rest here. The waiting room is the bulb that leads to the flower—fertilized by your patience and who you choose to become while you wait.

EXTRA SHOT

This contribution was written by Vanessa McNeal. Vanessa is a social architect and keynote speaker who transforms the nervous system to lead through love.

Life is full of waiting rooms. When the time comes, we move forward and eventually, we find ourselves in another waiting room. We create suffering if we believe we’ll arrive one day at a place with no more growth, no more waiting.

That’s not how it works. What would we learn by skipping the journey to reach the destination? How would we develop patience, self-trust, or resilience?

Right now is transitory, but micro-moments add up and coalesce into the story of our comprehensive progress. Waiting rooms are where we become the person who’s ready and open to what comes next.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Diplomacy Disrupted

The world stands at a crossroads where traditional diplomacy has ceded ground to a more dynamic force.

Entrepreneurs have emerged as the new diplomats of our era, boldly leading where established institutions falter and distrust prevails. For centuries, diplomacy belonged exclusively to statesmen and ambassadors, their negotiations cloaked in formality and protocol. Today, that order is being profoundly reshaped by visionaries who reach across divides, not through treaties but through the universal language of solving, building, creating, and sharing.

In a fractious world marked by de-globalization and nationalism, entrepreneurship has become the great common denominator—a calling that transcends borders and unites disparate communities around shared purpose.​

EXTRA SHOT

This contribution was written by Jonathan Ortmans. Jonathan has visited 150+ countries around the world and leads the Global Entrepreneurship Network.

National boundaries, once formidable barriers to commerce and culture, have become remarkably porous to innovation and startup culture. The seamless flow of talent, capital, and ideas continues to define entrepreneurial ecosystems that connect and outperform those that isolate. This porosity represents more than economic opportunity; it embodies a fundamental shift in how value is created and distributed across the globe. Entrepreneurs operate comfortably in this fluid environment, recognizing that the greatest innovations emerge when diverse perspectives collide and collaborate. From rural villages to capital cities, startup culture spreads with viral intensity, carried by digital platforms and sustained by communities that refuse to accept geographic limitations on their ambitions.​

Yet disruption—the defining characteristic of our age—carries a paradox that demands understanding. Disruption is not destruction; rather, it is alchemy that turns uncertainty into opportunity. This transformation requires both courage and vision, qualities entrepreneurs possess in abundance. They are bold, thriving precisely where others see only chaos, spotting cracks where new possibilities emerge as governments and societies shift the rules.

Just as storms clear the air, refresh the water, and renew the land, moments of disruption force examination of old assumptions. These breakthroughs release complacency to push the boundaries of what is possible. The danger lies not in disruption itself, but in our response to it—whether we view upheaval as an ending or a beginning.​

Entrepreneurs understand that constructive rebellion is not just healthy; it is essential to keeping ecosystems vibrant and societies progressing. Without creative rebellion, without founders willing to risk failure for solutions that choose forward over left or right, stagnation becomes inevitable.

This willingness to occasionally stir up turbulence reflects an entrepreneurial mindset that questions the status quo, challenges outdated models, and refuses to accept that the way things have always been is the way they must remain.

Bold global leadership—rooted in vision, grit, and collaboration—transforms chaos into progress. Rebels who lead this progress for good deserve celebration, for in entrepreneurship as in diplomacy, the bold change our world.

Brewed From Within
#33 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Landing

The energy of anything new is easy to like. Along the way, while momentum creates ease, attention can slip.

Arriving at our destination took work, but the task is not complete until we stick the landing. To see this in nature, watch how birds take off quickly and fly around with ease. As they land, a final moment of attention is required. Another example is how climbers most often get injured on the way down a mountain. Fatigue and reduced focus make an impact, but beyond physical factors, accomplishments invite complacency. Whether it’s a tiny task or epic exit, a strong finish may take more than everything leading to it.

Extra Shot

Every moment is the end of something.

When it’s time to finish, make no assumptions. Stay detail-oriented to complete the sequence. Once the landing is executed, let the experience inspire renewed vitality as we shift gears and remain open to next.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Momentum Mountain

From the moment we decide, a force is required—action geared to find and then maintain momentum.

Extra Shot

Everyone has a creative spirit. When an appetite for (calculated) risk is applied, the entrepreneurial spirit emboldens.

Meaningful momentum is awakened in endless ways. Early propulsion can mean showing up at an event for the first time, researching the competitive landscape, testing an early hypothesis, leaning into customer discovery, considering potential co-founders, building product, and eventually activating a launch sequence.

Once a project is launched, the need for momentum gets stronger. There are a world of examples, but growing the business, achieving milestones, and celebrating progress are all forms of momentum.

Even in later stages of a company, momentum drives activities like succession planning, navigating exit paths, and considering how your human, financial, cultural, intellectual, and network capital can be recycled back into the startup community.

If momentum is maintained long enough, the result can be a flywheel effect that feeds on itself. Most things you want to grow require attention, but with less friction, momentum delivers bonus time and valuable understanding. Space for new activity emerges and that keeps things interesting.

The tough reality is that if momentum is melting, it’s difficult to recapture. Once something melts, it’s never quite the same. These dips are moments to consider when and what to quit. If there’s enough energy to keep going, there may be a way to keep building.

The longer stagnancy lingers, the further you get from momentum. Tactics to maintain kamiwaza, even when momentum is melting, start with communication.

Honest communication spells out the pace. Reducing the weird by exposing the why also keeps different stakeholders on the same page. By reducing the tension that quietly brews in silence, teams can run at lower speeds, even during lethargic times. If left unattended, however, this can devolve into a lack of urgency that brings another set of challenges.

At lower speeds, perhaps less movement is needed to regain the sense of shared momentum? That’s true, but also lame. When it’s time to thrive, here are climbing tactics to awaken the mountains of momentum:

  • Say yes to unlock adventure.
  • Say no to create space.
  • Travel to expand the mind.
  • Share premium human time.
  • Revisit customer discovery.
  • Experiment with new ideas.
  • Onboard new customers.
  • Build a fresh feature.
  • Add to the team.
  • Consider a pivot.
  • Alter your routine.
  • Embrace continual learning.
  • Expand your engaged network.
  • Attend a new startup community event.
  • Revisit an activity you once enjoyed.
  • Stay centered on any descent.

    Momentum is crucial to playing long-term games with long-term counterparts. Find the proper pace by recognizing the momentum you’ll need to move through different stages of the quest. This awareness helps us quit chasing momentum and frees us to forge better art at a sustainable speed. Continue to multiply mass and velocity, which equates to momentum when, where, and how it’s needed to stay wild.

    Brewed From Within
    📖 Entrepreneurship

    By Ben McDougal, ago