A brief overview and shortened version of Shane Snow's Smartcuts. Explains simple ways to become successful and innovate. Entrepreneur's success book!

1. Smartcuts
A shorter cut…
-Austin Walker

2. Climbing the Ladder
Great American ladder-climbing device is
debunked
• Only 4 presidents climbed the ladder
• Something wrong with this myth if most of the
world’s most successful people don’t follow it
• “Ladder Hackers”
• They also create small wins

3. Small Wins
Small victories can be created, but trading sideways has helped entrepreneurs increase
value faster
• Bigger or Better game
• Success has been taught to be a long-term strategy; it doesn’t have to be

4. Paying Dues
 Many entertainers toil for decades to get their break
 While they’re waiting they……
A. Pay their Actors Guild
dues
B. Hone their craft
C. Starve like artists
D. All of the Above

5. Mentorship
“Mentorship is the secret of many of the highest-profile
achievers throughout history”
• Entrepreneurs who have mentors end up raising seven
times as much capital for their businesses
• 3.5 x fast growth than those without
Using the mentorship to make your own luck
• Women are being taught to be dependent on others
• Mentorship programs don’t work
• Organic mentorship from a true partner is more effective
than all the others combined.

6. Organic Mentor Relationship Defined
 Two people connect without other interference or design
 A personal relationship
 Asking advice on other aspects
 True care for mentor and mentee health and well-being
 Getting “no” when needed
 Comfortable with giving someone a tough answer

7. Owning Failure
 Startup Funeral
 Small group therapy of small business owners that talk about how their businesses
died
 Failure has been treated as bad, whereas failure should be glorified
 Helps to determine what isn’t necessarily possible
 Learn new things that once were not part of the capacity
 Risks in the United States are easier to take
 Low societal consequence for failure
 High tolerance for business failure

8. Failure isn’t good?
 Harvard researchers found that failure was still bad:
 Failed entrepreneurs just as likely to fail as someone who’d never run a business
 Successful entrepreneurs are likely to continue to succeed more after each
success
 Where do you start?

9. We Start With Ourselves
 People tend to point to external factors as to why something went wrong
 Motivation is decreased in future jobs
 Internal factors were only brought in for wins
 Flattering results are sought out
 Reflect. Restore. Repeat.
 Reflect on how personally there was a problem
 Restore confidence, grasp the problem, fix it
 Repeat on the next failure

10. Surgically Fixing Problems
 Sometimes the best solution isn’t to bring in someone who has experience
in the industry or with the problem
 Formula 1 pit crew to help order surgical procedures so that there was less
mistakes made at children’s hospital
 Helped to save about 1/3 more patients
 Doctors and nurses communicated better

11. Programming New Changes
 DHH felt if he could put 5% of the effort in a class of the people who got an
A and still get a C, that’s amazing
 Used same perspective in coding
 Didn’t want to repeat himself
 Didn’t feel coding should be complicated

12. Learn How to Think
 Finland’s education system has helped turn around its country’s learning
ability
 Focuses on system that encourages students to learn how to think, not how to
memorize
 Children use calculators in class
 Teachers received at least master’s degrees when teaching at all levels

13. Depressed Billionaires
 Once the momentum has built for years, comes to an abrupt stop, what do
you do? Once you’ve:
 Become a billionaire
 Walked the moon
 Completed your life goals
 Continuing progress is the answer to fall out of this depression
 Start the “Olympic rings” over

14. “Success is like a lightning bolt. It’ll strike
you when you least expect it, and you just
have to keep the momentum going.” –
Michelle Phan, YouTuber

15. Innovation
 Innovation is about doing something differently, rather than creating
something from nothing; that’s an invention
 Disruptive innovation: simplification
 In order to disrupt, simplifying a product or making it less expensive increases market
share

16. Cutting the Crap
 Barack Obama and Steve Jobs wore the same clothes everyday
 “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I
have too many other decisions to make.”
 Removing tedious or difficult decisions can improve focus and increase the
amount of time left to do what’s important
 Proven in experiments that show that making lots of tiny choices depletes
one’s subsequent self-control
“Tiny startup companies frequently
come up with breakthrough ideas.
They start with so few resources that
they’re forced to come up with
simplifying solutions.”

17. Thinking Big. Then Big-ger. Then more.
Again. Repeat.
“The thing about giant swings is they
come with increased odds of
failure.”
SpaceX failed multiple times,
but got back on the horse
with a focused drive to
succeed and never give up.