- Horrible tasting prenatal vitamins the size of horse pills that pregnant women hate to take.
- A clothing industry that ignores the needs of women who struggle to dress themselves because of chronic pain and disability.
- Rampant and systemic sexism and misogyny.
- $408 billion in perfectly good food going to waste in the US every year.
- Hatred and suspicion in Israel and Palestine.
- Poverty and illiteracy in Zimbabwe.
- A predatory elder care system.
What do all these problems have in common?
- They piss people off.
- They affect lots of people.
- They're persistent, and unlikely to fix themselves.
- Someone, without special abilities or extensive resources, applied today's guest's Entrepreneurial Process to create a breakthrough success. (Except for the predatory elder care system — that one's still up for grabs.)
Danny Warshay is Executive Director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship and Professor of the Practice at Brown University. He's a serial entrepreneur, co-founding and selling companies to organizations like Apple, Medline, Time, and several others.
He teaches the most popular course at Brown, titled The Entrepreneurial Process.
He's taught entrepreneurship around the world, including in China, Egypt, Portugal, Bahrain, Slovenia, South Africa, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, the UK, and Jamaica.
That's all great, but the important thing is, Danny is a mensch.
That's a Yiddish word that beggars translation, although Merriam and Webster (bless their hearts) do a pretty good job with “a person of integrity and honor.”
Danny is one of my closest friends. We were roommates on the Mount Scopus, Jerusalem campus of Hebrew University in 1985, and therefore know more about each other than is comfortable or frankly, prudent.
Three future Plant Yourself guests and me sharing a meal and a beer in Jerusalem, July 1985: (from left) Rabbi Hillel Norry, Doctor Michael Rothberg, Danny Warshay, and me (shirtless).
But although most of his secrets are safe with me, I can share that Danny has a truly gigantic heart, and earnestly strives to make the world a better place for everyone.
And through his entrepreneurship, consulting, and teaching, I've seen him bring light to dark places for the past almost-40 years.
So it's a real thrill to present his FFB (first book), titled See, Solve, Scale. (I didn't like the title, which pretty much assures that it's going to be a bestseller. When T. Colin Campbell told me in 2011 that some guy wanted to make a movie about his life called Forks Over Knives, I told him that the title was stupid and the project was probably stupid and it wasn't going to go anywhere. Luckily he ignored my advice.)
I won't say much about the book except that you should absolutely buy it and read it cover to cover — and maybe also get the audiobook that Danny narrates (he has a lovely Cleveland accent, resonant and tinged with the perennial grief of routing for the Browns and the Indi – er, Guardians).
The subtitle of the book, “How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success,” is a big promise, and as you'll hear in our conversation, the key word for Danny is “Anyone.”
As a teacher of entrepreneurship at a University that lacks a business school, Danny has had to bust the myth of the “natural entrepreneur” and the “born entrepreneur” and the “entrepreneurial spirit.”
To Danny, entrepreneurship is simply using a structured process to solve problems without regard to the resources you currently control.
Which means that, when you look at the unsolved, awful, maddening, unjust, scary, and fucked-up things in your world that you wish were different, you may just start seeing opportunities to flex your entrepreneurial muscles.
Opportunities to engage others to address those problems.
Opportunities to learn from those most deeply affected.
Opportunities to take small and survivable risks, learn from failure, stay humble, get inspired by others, and make an outsized contribution.
And, if you so choose, to get rewarded financially for your efforts.
But this isn't a book specifically about how to become wealthy, unless you define wealth as a life of abundant passion, spirit, compassion, connection, and impact.
It will show you, however, how to create a sustainable (“scaled”) enterprise that doesn't require you to fund it from your third job and 401k.
In our conversation, we cover the 3 Steps of See, Solve, and Scale, and go over why each is important, and why their order is non-negotiable.
We talk about the myths of entrepreneurship, including the myths of scarce and abundant resources, the myth of homogeneous teams, and the 11 cognitive biases that can derail entrepreneurial success.
We discuss systemic barriers to opportunity, and how part of the mission of all who call ourselves entrepreneurs is to level the playing field and break down those barriers.
We talk about why “thinking big” is actually safer than thinking small, and why Facebook and LinkedIn are terrible tools for building an entrepreneurial network.
And why the words “could be” are magical.
Enjoy! And get the fucking book!
Links
See, Solve, Scale, by Danny Warshay
DannyWarshay.com
Linda Hill TEDx talk on Innovation and “Creative Abrasion”
Anne Morriss and Frances Frei on Inclusion – interview with Dorie Clark
Plant Yourself interview with Ben Chesler
Plant Yourself interview with Micah Hendler
Dr Howie Jacobson
This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).
My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.
Here are three gigs that I do:
1. Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation
I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.
At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.
My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.
2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance
I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.
We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.
The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.
3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams
I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.
So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.
You CAN Change Other People!
Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.
What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.
Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.
Music
The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.
It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.
You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.
Gratitudes
Thanks to Plant Yourself podcast patrons – Kim Harrison – Lynn McLellan – Brittany Porter – Dominic Marro – Barbara Whitney – Tammy Black – Amy Good – Amanda Hatherly – Mary Jane Wheeler – Ellen Kennelly – Melissa Cobb – Rachel Behrens – Tina Scharf – Tina Ahern – Jen Vilkinofsky – David Byczek – Michele X – Elspeth Feldman – Leah Stolar – Allan Kristensen – Colleen Peck – Michele Landry – Jozina – Sara Durkacs – Kelly Cameron – Janet Selby – Claire Adams – Tom Fronczak – Jeannette Benham – Gila Lacerte – David Donohue – Blair Seibert – Doron Avizov – Gio and Carolyn Argentati – Jodi Friesner – Mischa Rosen – Michael Worobiec – AvIvA Lael – Alicia Lemus – Val Linnemann – Nick Harper – Bandana Chawla – Molly Levine – The Inscrutable Harry R – Susan Laverty the Panda Vegan – Craig Covic – Adam Scharf – Karen Bury – Heather Morgan – Nigel Davies – Marian Blum – Teresa Kopel – Julian Watkins – Brid O'Connell – Shannon Herschman – Linda Ayotte – Holm Hedegaard – Isa Tousignant – Connie Haneline – Erin Greer – Alicia Davis – Heather O'Connor – Carollynne Jensen – Sheri Orlekoski of Plant Powered for Health – Karen Smith – Scott Mirani – Karen and Joe Crabtree – Kirby Burton – Theresa Carrell – Kevin Macaulay – Elizabeth Rothschild – Ann Jesse – Sheryl Dwyer – Jenny Hazelton – Peter W Evans – Dennis Bird – Darby Kelly – Lori Fanney – Linnea Lundquist – Emily Iaconelli – Levi Wallach – Rosamonde McAtee – Dan Pokorney – Stephen Leinin – Patty DeMartino – Mike and Donna Kartz – Deanne Bishop – Bilberry Elf – Marjorie Lewis – Tricia Adams – Nancy Sheldon – Lindsey Bashore – Gunn Marit Hagen – Tracey Gulledge – Lara Hedin – Meg from Mamasezz – Stacey Stokes – Ben Savage – Michael K – David Hughes -Coni Rodgers – Claire England – Sally Robertson – Parham Ganchi – Amy Dailey – Brian Tourville – Mark Jeffrey Johnson – Josie Dempsey – Caryn Schmitt – Pamela Hayden – Emily Perryman – Allison Corbett – Richard Stone – Lauren Vaught of Edible Musings – Erin Hastey – Sean Owens – Sagar Naik – Erika Piedra – Danielle Roberts – Michael Leuchten – Sarah Johnson – Katharine Floyd – Meryl Fury – for your generous support of the podcast.
Disclosure
This post may contain amazon affiliate links. I may receive compensation from your actions on such links. It don't cost you a dime, tho.
Thank you for this inspirational interview. I can’t wait to read Danny’s book!