He Monk and the Riddle the Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

Volume Clarification

"What would you lot be willing to do for the balance of your life…? It'due south a question near of u.s. consider only hypothetically-opting instead to "practice what we have to do" to earn a living. But in the critically acclaimed bestseller "The Monk and the Riddle", entrepreneurial sage Randy Komisar asks us to reply it for real. The book's timeless advice – to brand work pay not merely in cash, but in feel, satisfaction, and joy – will be embraced past anyone who wants success to come not just from what they do, but from who they are.At one time a fictional tale of Komisar's encounters with a would-be entrepreneur and a personal account of how Komisar found meaning not in work'south rewards but in work itself, the book illustrates what's incorrect with the mainstream thinking that we should cede our lives to make a living."

Discussion Questions

Book Club Review

Thank you for being a part of the Modern Leadership Monthly Book Club. If y'all happened upon this folio and are not a member you tin can bring together for free here .

The book club is designed to explore books that will help us on our leadership journey. It is a role of the Modern Leadership Podcast where we breakdown a volume weekly in each episode. Yous can catch the podcast here.

This month's book is: The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living past Randy Komisar

My Request

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Brief Summary

This cursory quote from the book jacket sums up nicely what to expect in this volume, "A disarming … book that injects some welcome spirit into a stiff genre." Starting in Randy's "office, the coffee shop in Silicon Valley, where for years some of the biggest deals have been negotiated, we are introduced to Lenny and his "big idea" Funerals.com. The volume walks through the decision making procedure of ane venture backer, Randy Komisar, as he advises Lenny through gaining funding. Spoiler alert: the book is not the nuts and bolts of getting a new venture funded, but rather the mental land a founder must have to be successful in edifice a business organisation worth funding.

Almost the author – Randy Komisar

Randy Komisar is a Venture Capitalist out of Silicon Valley, at Kliener Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB.com), located correct on historic Sandhill Route. The heart and soul of tech investing. He is the one-time CEO of LucasArts Entertainment and Crystal Dynamics, and acted every bit "virtual CEO" for WebTV and GlobalGiving. He served as CFO of GO Corp. and senior counsel at Apple tree Computer, following a individual practice in applied science police force. He is a Founding director of TIVO and a graduate of Harvard law schoolhouse.

Randy lives in Portola Valley, California, with his wife, Debra Dunn, and Tika and Tali, the Horrible Hounds. He currently incubates startups as a Virtual CEO, helping to build businesses from vision and ideas.

Y'all should read this book if:

You dearest an anarchistic arroyo to business and being funded
Yous relish the teachings of Buddhism
You want to know the "mindset" backside successful start-up founders
You are interest in Old Bagan, Myanar
Y'all want to know how to drop an egg three anxiety without breaking it

Who shouldn't read this book

This book is not for you if you want a list of steps to take to be VC funded
You like a serious book with no hypotheticals
You want directly to the point writing with no tangents for coffee refills
You lot call back "start-up" is what happens when you turn the central in your car

What surprised me

This book came highly (highly) recommended. With a different style title, I am not certain what I expected. I knew Randy's history (bio) and his touch on with KPCB and Nest, simply I knew null about his style or personality. The book starts with Randy on a motorbike in Myanmar with a stranger monk riding behind him. I loved this volume from the moment I read the get-go word to the end when I discovered the answer to the riddle (egg… three anxiety). I was surprised at how conversational the book was. He entered my mind and answered the questions I (Lenny) had and addressed the fears we all face. I guess my surprise is how much the book spoke to me…directly.

Criticism

None- I drank the Kool-aid. I loved the book, enjoyed talking with Randy on the podcast, and highly encourage a reading of this book.

Takeaways

we exercise not need to cede our lives to make a living.
I focused on a critical weak link in the chain: the human side, the entrepreneurs and their motivations. While investors, analysts, and entrepreneurs were mesmerized by the vivid horizons of the New Economy, I questioned whether the rickety ships nosotros had launched with their inexperienced captains could ever get there. While the market momentum seemed inexhaustible, I wondered if across greed at that place was plenty passion to fortify the startup crews when the seas got rough—and they always do.
No matter how hard we work or how smart we are, our fiscal success is ultimately dependent on circumstances outside our command.

Marrying our values and passions to the energy we invest in piece of work, it suggests, increases the significance of each moment.
Rather than working to the exclusion of everything else in order to overflowing our bank accounts in the hope that we can eventually buy back what nosotros accept missed along the fashion, we need to alive life fully now with a sense of its fragility. If
The Monk encourages us to make work pay, not only in greenbacks, only in feel, satisfaction, and joy.
Success, even on your ain terms, entails sacrifice and periods of very hard work.
finding pregnant and fulfillment in i'south piece of work should not be an elitist notion.
The Monk is non primarily a business organization book; that is, it is not about buying low and selling high, but rather most creating a life while making a living.
The Monk is not about how, only almost why.
"Imagine I have an egg" —Mr. Wizdom cups an imaginary egg in his hand—"and I want to drop this egg 3 feet without breaking it. How do I do that?"
I see a mutual gene amid immigrants and entrepreneurs who strike out from the pack to pursue their dreams.
I admire people who are willing to bet everything on a conventionalities.
in my own history I've been helped by people who should accept given me the boot for my naïve and disruptive zealotry.
"Lenny, why is this a big idea?" "It's a large market, big dollars." "Will it change the manner the world operates? Volition information technology change people's lives in any meaningful manner?"
Startups are unique animals. Nosotros take them pretty much for granted out hither at present, only they are still endeavors that require very different skills from the ones needed in established companies.
VCs invest outset and foremost, I explained, in people. The squad would accept to be intelligent and tireless.
Anyone can sheet with the wind to his back. Startups usually sail into a stiff wind, leaking similar a sieve, in high seas, without food or water.
I explained to Lenny what I practise: I incubate startups. To that terminate, I provide the scarcest article of all, leadership and experience.
I invest my time, and, in return, I receive an equity stake in the business.
I can be very outspoken, if I fear that nosotros don't accept room for a misstep. Just the CEO is in charge; I'm there to make him or her successful.
Ultimately being right, or amend positioned, may be more of import than being commencement.
You have to be able to survive mistakes in order to learn, and y'all have to larn in order to create sustainable success.
It comes downwardly to my realization over the years that business organization isn't primarily a financial institution. It'due south a creative institution. Like painting and sculpting, business can be a venue for personal expression and artistry, at its heart more similar a canvas than a spreadsheet.
Why? Because business concern is about change. Nothing stands yet. Markets change, products evolve, competitors move into the neighborhood, employees come and go.
variously involved in the Valley as founders, funders, or functionaries—
"Deferred Life Program."
Stride one: Practise what you have to do. Then, eventually— Step ii: Do what you want to do.
When I graduated from Brown in the mid-seventies,
didn't seem to fit anybody's profile. It was troublesome to me that I couldn't observe a match; I had expected to settle into a career like everyone else.
The "serious" life I chose was the police force. In the fall of 1978 I trudged off to Harvard Constabulary School
THE ROMANCE, Not THE FINANCE
I never doubted Lenny's drive. Information technology was obvious from the very commencement, even in the armlock he laid on me at the door of the Konditorei. Bulldoze, commitment—those weren't my concern. I wanted to know what he really cared about. I wanted to know his passion. Lenny didn't seem to understand the question. He was showtime to nettle me.
In the first step nosotros earn, financially and psychologically, the second step. Don't misunderstand my skepticism. Sacrifice and compromise are integral parts of any life, even a life well lived. But why not practise hard piece of work considering it is meaningful, not simply to get it over with in order to move on to the next thing?
The distinction between drive and passion is crucial. I had asked Lenny well-nigh his passion. He thought I was questioning his drive and delivery. Passion and drive are not the same at all.
Passion pulls y'all toward something yous cannot resist. Bulldoze pushes yous toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do.
If yous know nothing nigh yourself, yous can't tell the difference.
I felt I had done the unforgivable. I had bailed out of a plane that was still in midair.
Without a grander vision, and some prospect of realizing information technology, Crystal was not a place I could see myself working the rest of my life. That meant I needed to become out, now.
Equally I tell the 1000.B.A. classes I sometimes address, it's the romance, not the finance that makes business concern worth pursuing.
Entrepreneurs, in my feel, don't like to exist told they're wrong.
The risk to work on a big idea is a powerful reason for people to be passionate and committed. The big thought is the glue that connects with their passion and binds them to the mission of an organization. For people to be groovy, to accomplish the incommunicable, they need inspiration more than than financial incentive.
Impatience wasn't Allison'south trouble. Finding something in Funerals.com to care about was.
Business organisation conditions are forever changing. Y'all need to reconsider your strategies and business models constantly and adjust them where necessary. But the big idea that your company pursues is the touchstone for these refinements.
Sometimes a team never even gain across the first slide, as the inquisitors hurl unanswerable or painfully sensitive questions that cut through dreams with surgical precision.
Sure, business organisation was about money. That'southward what makes it business organization. But first and foremost, to exist successful, concern is about people. It took me a while to learn that lesson.
My chore was to detect intersections of interest between the negotiating parties—not differences, but commonalities—and to build them into a solid relationship and transaction.
BUSINESS, I told Lenny and Allison, is about nothing if non people.
I found that the fine art wasn't in getting the numbers to foot, or figuring out a clever fashion to move something downward the assembly line. It was in getting somebody else to exercise that and to do it improve than I could ever practise; in encouraging people to exceed their own expectations; in inspiring people to exist great; and in getting them to do it all together, in harmony. That was the high art.
Lenny was going to take to answer those primal questions he had and then neatly avoided thus far. Why was he doing this? What was important to him, and what did he intendance nearly? Who was he, and how could he express that in his business organization?
Everything in this Valley turns on take a chance. Lenny had been hedging, unwilling to expose the big idea, because he suspected it had a substantial run a risk of failing as a business. Cheaper caskets seemed straightforward as a moneymaker, and he wouldn't have to stretch hard to attempt information technology.
The question he seemed to have answered was non, How can I make a deviation? simply, What's the to the lowest degree risky path to fiscal success?
Ironically, he had causeless the biggest chance of all in Silicon Valley, the risk of mediocrity. He had dug his ain grave.
Silicon Valley does not punish business failure. It punishes stupidity, laziness, and dishonesty. Failure is inevitable if you are trying to invent the futurity.
Riding the highs and lows long enough, never being able to encounter beyond the next meridian or the next valley, makes ane realize in that location is only one element in life under our control—our own excellence.
Work hard, work passionately, but apply your almost precious asset—time—to what is most meaningful to you.
"If we exercise our best and it fails, we'll still be glad we did it. It'south worth doing."
WHEN ALL IS SAID AND Washed, the journey is the reward. At that place is nothing else.
Reaching the cease is, well, the end.
If the egg must autumn three feet without a crack, just extend the trip to four.

My Key Fundamental Primal Takeaway

My key: I [Randy] invest my fourth dimension, and, in return, I receive an equity stake in the business concern.

Nosotros read a lot about venture money and the heave that information technology can give you in your business organization. We watch Shark Tank and see the Sharks teach start-up founders the reality behind business. This book is non about venture funding. This is a book about having the right mindset to make your business organisation successful. And that, is the key to many questions you accept well-nigh start-up success

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Source: https://jakeacarlson.com/monk-and-the-riddle-review-randy-komisar/