Who Wants To Be An Extreme Entrepreneur?

Daily Success Motivation and Positive Thinking

I had the pleasure the other day to read a book by Micheal Simmons who publishes the Young Entrepreneur Journey blog.

His book is entitled The Student Success Manifesto How To Create A Life Of Passion, Purpose and Prosperity.

Michael's book is targeted towards young college age adults but this book is significant for all ages as old and young alike can learn quite a bit from the mind and heart of this young man. As I read the book I was delighted by the wisdom and excellence that pours from young Michael. There also was a lot of things that validated my personal beliefs and values as well.

Extreme Entrepreneur?
What is an extreme entrepreneur? Lest you think that this is some type of radical philosophy let me explain. Michael says:

Put simply, Extreme Entrepreneurship is a framework for maximizing the value you add to yourself and others.

So what's so extreme about that? Well, his definition as a one liner is highly simplified for starters but happily Michael builds upon this concept throughout the remainder of the book.

This book is really about defining your own path and ignoring the conventional norms in order to find your passion, your purpose and your prosperity. Michael challenges you to challenge your context. You are challenged to consider your ideas, your learning, your actions and your personal value.

The driving force and what I think is the real chief cornerstone of The Student Success Manifesto is when Michael states in the preface of the book:

The goal of this book is to help students self-educate and create their own measures of success regardless of the quality of their school system or social background.

Self-Education Success Manifesto
I passionately subscribe to this mindset. Your greatest success is that of your own choosing. The challenge is that we allow other people and other systems do the choosing for us and we just follow a plan automatically. These systems are inherently conventional and seek to conform us to predictable patterns and mediocre outcomes.

I am a student of accelerated learning and self-education as the foundation for personal success. In this day and age, how you learn becomes more important than what you learn because how you learn will last you for a lifetime but what you learn is just for the moment. Knowledge comes and goes. In this modern age you will have to be able learn, unlearn and relearn in order to keep up, stay competitive and stay ahead.

The Extreme Entrepreneur is the realization that conventional education while valuable doesn't account for your unique intrinsic value nor does it consider your personal and innermost passions and talents. You have to take up the responsibility for educating yourself and blazing your own trail to success and life happiness. You can't leave it to others to do that for you or properly equip for success. You have to pursue and design your own learning as you design your own life. They go hand and hand. Learning without a life is stagnation and life without learning is limitation.

More importantly, the Extreme Entrepreneur Journey is about the enlightened mindset that blazing your own trail in pursuit of your purpose inevitably leads you to contributing your highest value to society and it is those moments that you will begin to experience your richest returns of success and prosperity. More than just another success motivation and positive thinking text, Michael and the Student Success Manifesto lays out a blueprint for how to think and act in order to blaze your own trail while providing your greatest value.

Michael doesn't tell you what to think. He gives you the facts and lays out a plan that when followed will release your potential for prosperity and happiness.

Michael considers himself a student entrepreneur and while his book is a call to his peers to think beyond conventional conditioning to create an uniquely extraordinary lifel, you don't get the sense that his book is only for college age young adults.

Michael's tone is mature and that of a seasoned and successful entrepreneur who is teaching what he's lived. The Extreme in Extreme Entrepreneur is necessary because what Michael is asking you to do is choose and change and for most of us that really is an extreme idea.

The idea that you can just simply choose to be different from the next moment and into the rest of your life is a concept that is easy to understand but takes a radical commitment to personal passion, purpose and prosperity if you are to do it successfully.

I think the term (extreme) fits quite nicely. This book is a call to go against your self-limiting beliefs and those behaviors that are currently not producing positive outcomes. Micheal backs up his philosophy with various statistics about real success in the real world. Here are just a few points from his book:

1. Twenty percent of people who did not graduate college earn more than college graduates.
2. Over fifty percent of all CEOs for Fortune 500 companies had C or C- averages in college.
3. Over 50% of millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college.

These are just a few of the facts about creating real success for yourself. Along with the facts, Michael takes you through an examination of the thoughts and actions that hinder us from realizing our value and personal success. He contrasts that information with those thoughts and actions we should choose to acquire in order to live life that it is meant to be lived...by our own dictates and dreams.

Life is a customized experience. You owe it to yourself to break free of limiting systems that prevent you from doing what you desire most to do. We all need an extreme mindset on a regular basis!

Conclusion
The best education is lifelong education and education that delivers to you a life of your own choosing and according to your own happiness. Self-determination is one of your greatest God-given assets. Michael helps us realize that through a blueprint that can be applied to anyone, anywhere, with any life that they seriously want to change.

One of the most powerful things you can possess is the realization that your life has value and that you were put here by design to deliver value to others. You don't have to struggle with what you don't know and what you don't have.

Actually the odds are in your favor whether you believe it or not. By choosing to live on your own terms you have started a journey that most people will never embark on. A journey of self-education, self-actualization and self-directed success.

And that to most people...is pretty Extreme.

Please visit Micheal's blog at Young Entrepreneur Journey blog and pick up a copy of his book The Student Success Manifesto How To Create A Life Of Passion, Purpose and Prosperity.

If you have or know young people of high school and college age, get them a copy of this book. But don't miss out on this one yourself. This is book for all adults no matter your age and your life will be the better for having read it.

© 2005 T. L. Pakii Pierce - Upgrade Your Mind
The Mindset Motivator
"Think Well & Finish Strong!"

March 7, 2005 in Purpose Driven | Permalink

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