I was recently giving a keynote before a room full of entrepreneurs and from the audience a voice yelled, “why are you telling this to us? We’re not the people who need to hear this. This is a waste of time.”

Pin drop…

Beyond the fact that a good percentage of the eyeballs in the rows in front were rolling, it was my first official keynote heckle. I was talking about mindset and entrepreneurship. More specifically, how we need to embrace uncertainty and recognize the creeping emergence of decision-making based not on optimism and opportunity, but on fear and the desire to prevent loss.

My friend in the audience was bothered because he’d assumed that, in a room full of successful entrepreneurs, this simply wasn’t an issue. They all got where they got by taking risks. They were the ones without fear. The idea marauders, innovators and envelope pushers.

And, indeed, when they started, nearly every person there was. But what about now? What about a few years into their ventures?

One of the biggest misses in the entrepreneurial process and mind is the assumption that mindset and willingness to embrace risk and creativity are fixed traits. In fact, the more successful most people become, the more they abandon the very mindset that fueled their success.

I call this the Entrepreneur’s recoil. Here’s how it works…

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At the end of my 2011 Annual Report, I created a simple graphic called -

“10 Commandments of Biz”

The 10 commandements were about doing business a different way. One that was designed to lead to not just a great career that changed lives, but to the ability to love the work you do in the world, the business you aspire to build and the life you want to live.

And, in the context of the Annual Report, it was a bit of a parting bonus gift, a quick little slice of fun to leave you thinking about how you bring yourself to the world.

While the entire Annual Report took off online (more on that soon, still humbled and grateful, btw), the 10 commandments, themselves, got quite a bit of feedback, and I had a bunch of requests to release them as a standalone graphic to share.

So, for those who missed it and those who asked for it, here ya go…

Because…

Business ain’t just about business, it’s about life!

He built the second largest boutique hotel group in the world, Joie de Vivre…then flatlined on stage while giving a keynote before thousands.

Chip Conley survived, but this experience was a bit of a wake-up call. One that set in motion a different path. For years, Conley had been a deep student of human behavior and the psychology of success. That interest, along with two decades building his company, led him to write the New York Times bestseller, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow.

Now, having sold a controlling interest in Joie de Vivre to Hyatt, Conley is back with more thoughts on the human condition, sharing a bit of a radical approach to cultivating the mindset needed to succeed in business and in life. And he’s combining math with emotion in his new book, Emotional Equations.

So I sat down with Chip to find out what this science meets mood approach was all about. Here’s what unfolded…

[FTC Disclosure - You should always assume that pretty much every link on this blog is an affiliate link and that if you click it, find something you like and buy it, I'm gonna make some serious money. Now, understand this, I'm not talking chump change, I'm talking huge windfall in commissions, bling up the wazoo and all sorts of other free stuff. I may even be given a mansion and a yacht, though honestly I'd settle most of the time for some organic dark chocolate and clean socks. Oh, and if I mention a book or some other product, just assume I got a review copy of it gratis and that me getting it has completely biased everything I say. Because, books are like a drug to me, put one in my hand and you own my ass. Ethics be damned! K, you've been warned. Huggies and butterflies. ]

Every December, I reflect upon what went right, what went wrong, what took me by surprise, what I can learn from these awakenings, and how I’ll change what I’m doing next year. I do this by writing an annual review. The process of spinning thoughts into logic and language is incredibly illuminating. It allows me to see and synthesize on a different level than pure contemplation.

Inspired and humbled by the legendary annual reports of Berkshire Hathaway founder, Warren Buffet, I decided to expand my exploration into a full-blown 2011 Annual Report and give it a theme—”Serve, aspire, transcend.”

As you read the Annual Report, I’ll bring you deeper into my life and what I call my “business engines.” I’ll also share something that’s more personal than ever before. Not so much because I want to, but because to omit it would leave a gaping hole in the context around many of my recent business and life decisions. It’ll also provide answers to questions I’ve been asked, yet have never answered publicly.

So, get yourself a latte and some dark chocolate, this craft is taking flight…

Click here to download and read

And if you find it compelling, I’d be grateful if you’d share it around.

P.S. – The report is formatted as a PDF document, and designed to read easily on an iPad or a computer. It’s very visual, so the file a little bigger than a regular document (around 4MB). It’s also 35 pages long, so if you’d like to print it, just remember to check the box when you print to shrink it to fit the page size you are printing on.

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I spend an inordinate amount of time speaking with, interviewing, reading, watching and listening to a cornucopia of leading and emerging voices on entrepreneurship, small-business, marketing and behavioral change.

Every year, some established voices get stronger, others weaken and new ones arrive on the scene. Still, much of the recognition for thought-leadership goes to larger “magazine format” or multi-author blogs and larger online versions of print magazines.

I thought it was time to start honoring the individual, often less filtered voices in a more formal way, collect them into one place and share them with the world by creating the first-annual Business Catalyst Awards (BizCats). Collectively, these people provide not only a rich community and valuable insights, they also deliver an extraordinary, real-world, actionable education.

Here were the criteria:

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• The BizCats honor leading individual voices who regularly share ideas, tools, strategies, insights and processes that serve as catalysts to the success of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the course of the prior year. Because the focus is individuals, larger “magazine” or multi-author format sites have been excluded. We love the big sites and they offer great value, but this is all about recognizing standout solo voices.
• The nominees were all hand-curated via a blend of my own exposure to them, the input of a small, informal committee of small business, entrepreneurship and marketing experts. There was no public nomination or voting, because frankly it’s become so easy to game things like that (think Mechanical Turk, subscriber lists and calling-in lots of favors from friends), they simply have no value any more.

I recently cancelled an online service. It was a monthly subscription model. A solid service. It’s just that my needs had changed and I no longer needed it. I might have in the future, though, and figured I’d go back to it “if and when.”

After checking the box that cancelled the service, I was pushed to a page that made me a “one-time” offer.

Re-activate my subscription immediately and I could lock in a monthly price that was 20% less than what I’d been paying. The same screen also told me this was a one time offer that would go away and never come back once I clicked away from the screen.

Can we all say “ick” together?!

I was annoyed. Why would this solid company with a good product treat a departing customer better than a loyal user?

This left a really bad taste in my mouth. So bad that, if and when I need a similar service, I’ll now spend more time exploring this company’s competition. And every time someone asks me about the service, I’ll tell them the service was good, but also add in this story. Even though I have friends in the company (who are about to get an email from me, btw).

The same tactics used to be used by phone service and credit-card companies. You’d call up to cancel and they’d say, “oh wait a minute, will you stay if we lower your rate?” The tactic was so well known that many people would call automatically after a few months of usage and claim they were going to cancel simply as a vehicle to ensure they were getting the best rates available.

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A few years back, Lori Deschene started posting snippets of Buddhist thought on twitter under the name Tiny Buddha. And it didn’t take long for people to notice. Her following exploded.

As I write this, the TinyBuddha account on twitter is closing in on 240,000 followers and it’s adding some 230 new followers…a day!

The rapid uptake on twitter led Lori to launch a wildly popular communal blog, TinyBuddha.com, a Facebook page with 70,000 likes and now a hot-off-the-presses Tiny Buddha book.

I was fortunate enough to get a review copy and really enjoyed it. But I was also curious about the progression of the Tiny Buddha brand, what led Lori to make to leap into booklandia and what’s driving her these days.

So I did what I normally do. I asked her. And here’s what unfolded…

1. You’ve been building a tremendous community on twitter and your blog, and at a pace that pretty damn stunning. Why a book? And why now?

I knew from the beginning I would eventually write a book, and things fell into place nicely when publishers started contacting me to review some of their other titles.

I wanted to write this book specifically because it touches upon almost all of the themes that writers (and I) explore on the site.

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Last week, I shared how inviting judgment can and should be a critical part of any creation endeavor; how judgment is really just data plus emotion. And we shouldn’t reject the data simply because we’re not equipped to process the emotion in a constructive way.

Now, a word of caution…

Being open to outside opinions and data does not mean “surrendering” your intuition.

It’s important to invite feedback, but it’s also mission critical to maintain enough of a strong sense of independent vision and leadership to know when the whole damn world has got it wrong and you’re the only sane person in the room…even if that means you’re viewed, for the moment, as the bastion of lunacy.

Every new paradigm breaks an old one.

And the people who create, push, massage and shape these new constructs are inevitably viewed as nut-jobs, at least in the beginning. In part, because new paradigms necessarily unseat long-held “comforting” beliefs, and along with them the long-seated creators of the last big paradigm. And often, entire institutions, bodies of work and worlds.

Disruption is the seed of evolution. And innovation its spawn.

This causes pain both to those who find solace in the way things are and those whose reputations and often livelihoods are based on preserving the status quo. So, feedback in the guise of pure opinion is often unwittingly (or quite intentionally) motivated by the desire to avoid the discomfort of disruption.

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Earlier this year, New York Times bestselling author, Julien Smith, and I had an interesting moment.

It happened during a skype interview about swearing on blogs and in business. The whole conversation was fantastic and generated a lot of conversation and just a wee bit of controversy. But, what I didn’t know was this one moment would leave Julien spinning about something that would, over the course of the year, evolve into a book called The Flinch that’s being released today by Seth Godin’s The Domino Project.

So I circled back to Julien for round two.

In this new video interview, he shares what really happened in that pivotal moment earlier this year. We get into what led him on a quest that ended in him writing The Flinch, what it’s all about, why he did it with Seth Godin and The Domino Project and why it’s only on kindle and it’s being released at the price of…nothing.

But, as often happens when you get Julien and me talking, that conversation somehow led down the publishing industry rabbit hole, and we go off on a whole new tangent about the future of publishing for authors and publishers and how authors can leverage what’s nothing less than mass disruption for serious gain.

The Flinch is published today, it’s available only on kindle and it doesn’t cost a dime. You don’t actually need a kindle to read it, you just need the kindle app and you can read it pretty much anywhere with that. So, go download it now.

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Exposure to judgment and uncertainty aren’t going away. Nor, as a creator, do you want them to. Judgment, delivered constructively, provides the information needed to create at higher and higher levels. And uncertainty is a signpost of novelty and innovation, telling you that what you’re creating is really worth creating.

For most other endeavors, once that energy cedes to the more long-term, “get it done” nature of any meaningful creative endeavor, the discomfort and anxiety that ride along become a stronger and stronger force.

All too often, one of two things happens. The fear and anxiety lure you into wanting to move too quickly from freedom to constraint. They make you want to close off options, create rules, systems, and processes, stop exploring, adapting, testing, permuting, experimenting, and evolving. Not because it’s the right time, not because you’ve finally reached a point at which you’ve accomplished what you’re truly capable of, but because the uncertainty, the anxiety, the suffering that come from not being “there” yet or from fear of being criticized for taking a risk and getting it wrong is killing you. And you just want it to end.

Or the opposite happens. Your inability to wrangle the fear and uncertainty stops you from ever starting or makes you so freaked out about making the wrong decisions that you endlessly debate every step along the way, lose your ability to make decisions and take action, and end up stalled.

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