This talk from BigOmaha 2011 covers some of my unconventional ideas and approaches to being and becoming an entrepreneur, and why they have proved invaluable to my success.

Don’t listen to your parents

Most people will have the exact same life – financially – as their parents. Why? Because when faced with BIG life decisions, they turn to them for advice. That advice typically guides them to similar outcomes. It’s flawed from the get-go.

Also, your parents have one role in life. To ensure you don’t get “hurt”. When you’re a baby, they create environments to protect you from falling down stairs or electrocuting yourself. As a teenager or adult, their advice is filtered through this same bias. You need to understand this and seed advice from those who aren’t biased, or even better – have achieved the level of success that you’re trying to attain.

Embrace your laziness

Some of my most creative solutions stem from my laziness. Just ask my parents. I’m lazy and proud of it. However, my definition of indolent might be different than yours. What I mean is I don’t like doing anything that someone else can do better so that I can spend time making $$$.

Also, if you’re lazy, then you’ll see opportunities to improve your life or product by feeling the pain in the things that are hard or take a long time to complete. All the companies that I’ve created usually enhance a customer’s productivity or automate something that required work beforehand. That, to me, is the power of embracing your laziness.

Choose your friends carefully

If you’re an Entrepreneur and you still hang out with your party-going-pot-head friends from highschool, then you’re working against yourself. There’s a saying that goes “you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with”. Who are you spending the most time with?

Great entrepreneurs surround themselves with others that push them to think bigger, take more risk and make better decisions. If you feel like your the only one of your friends that is motivated and moving forward in life, then you need to fix this.

This doesn’t mean that you need to call up all your friends and “fire” them. It just means that you should make a conscious decision to find others that inspire you, and keep them in tight orbit.

Hustle to help

One of the beliefs I have is the more I give, the more I get. Or another way of saying it, I get to keep what I give away. I’ve been blessed by amazing people who’ve given me their time over the years to help me with tough decisions and I feel it’s my responsibility to pay it forward.

The way I take this step is to proactively reach out to new entrepreneurs and ask them if I can help, or use my wallet to motivate them. I’m blessed with amazing followers on Twitter and readers to this blog so I’m always surrounded with people who are starting or in a tough spot. Giving them 15 minutes to listen, support them, and just say “congrats, you guys are kicking ass and I believe in you” is all it takes.

Failure is part of the process

You need to expect failure, just make sure you don’t die. There’s a difference. I’m an optimistic guy but what I’ve learned is that more often than not, some aspect of my ideas or execution isn’t going to work and it’s not about it failing, but what I do with that failure.

Coming to terms with that being “normal” is a big part of becoming an Entrepreneur. I can fail on a daily basis, as long as I win twice as much. It’s like two steps forward, one step back. The only difference is I’m taking those steps, not standing on the sidelines watching someone else.

How about you, do you have any unconventional approaches or wisdom from your time in the Entrepreneurial trenches?