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10 Challenges to Awaken Your Entrepreneurial Brain, Daniel Priestley

10 Challenges to Awaken Your Entrepreneurial Brain, Daniel Priestley

By Paulina Contreras•
Entrepreneurship

This time instead of doing a book review, I’m sharing the challenge proposed by Daniel Priestley in Entrepreneur Revolution.

I never considered myself an entrepreneur, but life has been leading me down that path. In fact, a few months ago I took a concrete step by formalizing UXR as a consulting company in User Experience, Research, and SEO. In the midst of this, and reading this book, I feel part of the entrepreneurial revolution the author talks about. Perhaps you’re on a similar path, or you want to explore your entrepreneurial mindset. In any case, these challenges can help you unlock limiting beliefs about money, or at least make them conscious.

Cover of the book Entrepreneur Revolution by Daniel Priestley

These are “10 challenges to awaken your entrepreneurial brain.” These challenges are designed to be difficult and push us out of our comfort zone. For most people, one or several of these challenges may be uncomfortable, and then you can ask yourself: Why? Is there some belief underlying that?

A Bit of Context

The book talks about the 3 brains: The reptilian brain (the oldest, responsible for survival), the monkey brain (responsible for emotions and executing automatic tasks), and the entrepreneurial brain (the new brain or prefrontal cortex, responsible for complex decision-making).

The monkey brain does what it knows best. If you operate from the purely functional part of your brain, you’ll live like a monkey. The monkey does all the repetitive tasks, and the reptilian brain provides a variety of intense emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, surprise, sexual excitement, and enthusiasm. If you tell the monkey you earn $000 thousand a year, it believes that’s all there is. The monkey can’t perceive how life could be different from how it is now because no one has told it how. The monkey can only act if shown how to do something and then can repeat it.

All the monkey wants to do is be safe and see what the reptile comes up with for entertainment. If you’ve ever been stuck in repetitive and meaningless endeavors or felt powerless about how to change your life for the better because you don’t know how, you were trapped in monkey mode.

The entrepreneurial brain is rarely in charge. The monkey brain is designed to stay focused on tasks while the reptile entertains it from time to time. From a survival standpoint, it makes sense to do repetitive and familiar tasks that have always paid the bills, fed you, and given you a roof over your head. If you’re surviving, your monkey brain doesn’t want you to rock the boat with a big idea that could destabilize things and make the reptile start attacking everything.

Accessing your inner entrepreneur isn’t as difficult as you might think. First, you need to convince yourself of three things:

  • You don’t need anything – you are complete and whole right now and your survival is not threatened in any way.
  • You are not obligated to perform repetitive and meaningless tasks to survive.
  • You are here to transform the world for the better, serve others, and experience the rewards that come from these acts of service.

(Powerful, right?). The challenge proposal comes from this context.

What’s the Challenge For?

Money is a key component of people’s daily reality. It confronts us with our fears and anxieties about money. It pushes us to increase our confidence in dealing with money-related issues.

The author’s promise: it’s transformative. You have to do them to learn the lesson. Do them, and you’ll open yourself to a world of new opportunities. The magic will happen.

The Ten Challenges Are:

You can download the list of challenges to challenge your entrepreneurial mindset in this Google Doc.

1. Make Three Calls.

It’s about taking action. It forces you to start before you really know what you’re doing by making three phone calls and seeing what happens. You have to choose a bold idea and start making calls, sending emails, and scheduling meetings with people who can help you. Simply start the conversation without knowing where it will lead.

2. Put 10% of Everything You Earn in a Savings Account, and Don’t Touch It.

The second challenge requires you to start building your wealth and get your brain used to taking risks by creating an account to build wealth. The idea is that having money will open your brain to a bigger vision. This is meant to calm the reptilian brain and let the entrepreneurial brain speak.

3. Stop Spending Time with People Who Bring You Down.

Make a list of all the people you spend time with and start curating this list. The third challenge is to make friends and spend time with people who inspire you and less time with those who don’t.

4. Carry 1000 Pounds in Cash (or Equivalent)

It seems like a large amount of money to carry. Like most people, I’ve been going almost cashless in recent years. The goal is to address some mental barriers about money, like dealing with impulsive spending or feeling comfortable charging for your services.

5. Invite Someone New to Lunch Every Week.

The fifth challenge is to invite two new people to lunch every week (at least every month) and pay the bill. Don’t have any agenda; ask interesting people to share a meal and talk about life. These meals shouldn’t have anything to do with work, but they’ll pay for themselves quickly through the opportunities they provide.

6. Disconnect from the News.

The sixth challenge impacts your mental state. Eliminate news as a regular part of your life and only seek out specific stories that relate to your goals.

7. Keep a Journal.

The journal should be used to keep track of high-value tasks, goals, idea diagrams, advertising copy, and future visions. You should always have the journal on hand and use it to record your thoughts and ideas about your business and jot down plans, calculations, and resource requirements as you work on these ideas.

8. Plan Your Vacations First.

Maintain your energy and enthusiasm by planning your vacations at the beginning of the year and then adapting your work around them. You should block off 6-8 weeks for vacation and relaxation. Planning your year this way does two things. First, it allows you to work harder knowing you’ll have a break at the end, and second, it will keep you doing exciting things and make you a more interesting and vibrant person.

9. Get Structured.

Get support to generate appropriate legal and accounting structures to optimize taxes and reduce the risks of your entrepreneurship. Ask them to guide you in the right direction for tax planning, protecting your assets, and attracting investment.

10. Get an Entrepreneurial Team

Get a team of entrepreneurs to help you execute your ideas and achieve their goals. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or already a millionaire – it will be the team you build today that determines the results you get tomorrow.

A video from Daniel Priestley about the challenges.

Thanks for reading 🙂

What did you think? Is there any of the challenges that seems more complex to implement than others?