ENTRETUDE

Entretude Element VIII: RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility is personal and professional accountability. Entrepreneurs are responsible to their customers, employees, family, community and industry. As an individual you are also responsible to and for more than one person or for more than just one thing. Your goal is to find a way to be accountable to others but to also be accountable to yourself and the goals you have set for your life and your own success.

Entretude Element VII: CONSISTENCY

Consistency is about standards. In an entrepreneurial enterprise, your goal is to deliver to a customer a reliable experience that keeps them coming back because they know what to expect. The same is true of your approach to life with Entretude; your goal is to attain and maintain a particular standard in whatever you do. You don’t deliver less and you don’t accept less, either.

Entretude Element VI: INNOVATION

 Innovation is the act or process of creating or introducing something new. As an element of Entretude, innovation is the process of using information about yourself and your environment to create new opportunities based on what you’re good at, what you do well and how you work collaboratively and productively with others. Boomers have a wealth of experience and skills. Our challenge is thinking about what we know, what we’ve experienced and what we can do in innovative ways. That’s where you’ll create new opportunities for yourself. When you think innovatively, you bring your history and your future goals together to come up with new ideas and ways of doing things by thinking about yourself and your accomplishments in ways you haven’t before.

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Entretude Element V: COLLABORATION

To be successful in business and in life, you must engage in mutually beneficial relationships with people and organizations. Success has never been and never will be a solo effort or achievement. As an element of Entretude, collaboration means working with people and organizations you can help and that can help you achieve mutually beneficial goals. Real collaboration begins with the same question: What can I do for someone else?—not: What can someone else I know do for me? Being of service to others is more of a benefit to you. Whatever effort and resources you expend will come back to you many times over.

Entretude Element IV: AWARENESS

Personal awareness is having knowledge of yourself and your environment. It is the kind of awareness that comes from observations and your experiences. Successful entrepreneurs know what effect industry trends and the business and economic environment will have on their success now and in the future. As an element of Entretude, personal awareness means that you must have knowledge and understanding of what impact the things you influence and the things that influence you will have on your personal and professional success. Enhanced personal awareness is just one of Entretude’s real benefits. It is the beginning of a process of information and transformation that changes the way you think about yourself and the world around you forever.

Entretude Element III: FOCUS

Focus is concentrated effort or attention on a particular thing. Like a business needs to stay focused on its mission, its raison d’être, you’ll need the same kind of concentrated effort when it comes to planning and implementing activities, strategies and tactics that move you toward achieving your goals. Focus is also how you set your priorities. You decide in advance what’s most important and what you’re willing to give to attain what you set as your goal. Focus is what keeps you balanced and moving in the right direction instead of wandering in the wilderness, which we’ve all probably spent a bit of time doing.

Entrepreneur + Attitude = ENTRETUDE

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Lloyd Wright

This blog is for those of us in our second act – the Baby Boomers. We are approaching or we've already ventured into what has traditionally been the age of retirement. Well like everything else we've ever touched – we've been game changers from the very beginning and now our generation is redefining what retirement means.

Life is demanding more of us than it did of the previous generation. Our outlook and our obligations are demanding and different. Some of us are still employed, some are looking for new professional situations and all of us - given the current economic situation – are trying to figure out what's next.

We have decades of experience, multiple talents, maturity, insight, wisdom and years of productive life ahead of us. My goal for this blog is to show my generation how to use Entretude to re-define the rest of our lives – our second act. I'll share my personal experiences with you as well as information and insight from other baby boomers who are integrating an entrepreneurial attitude into all aspects of their lives - work, play, relationships and community. Together, we'll give you the tools to become more proactive and empowered and less reactive and protective.

You're In the Driver's Seat

"If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else."—Yogi Berra

Entretude is not a road map, a manual or a miracle. Entretude facilitates a very personal process that challenges you to make cogent, conscious decisions about your future. Entretude challenges the prescribed approach to work, life, age and occupation - specifically for our generation. The old model for middle age was not designed for who we are and offers no clues as to what our second act is supposed to look like. Recession, job shrinkage, the housing crisis, the economy and overwhelming uncertainty are pretty good indicators that for most of us, the old model is just not an option.

A few times each week I'll share information and the insights on Entretude. I'll introduce you to talented people who embrace, understand, engage and inspire - those who walk the Entretude walk and talk the Entretude talk. From them, from me and with your vital input, we'll explore ways to use Entretude to develop your second act.

A New Road, Better Resources and Better Results

What you get out of Entretude is directly correlated to what you're willing to put into it. This can be your personal navigation system - your journey, your destination. You travel a road of your choosing with the top down, the sun is shining and the wind is at your back. You've mapped out your future and you've decided where you're going, how far, how fast and what the scenery will look like when you get there.

Let's get started.