Sorry about the relative quiet recently; the writing part of my brain has been otherwise occupied, drafting up the outline and first few chapters of a book on entrepreneurship, tentatively titled Radical Entrepreneurship: Guerilla Startup Tactics from the Real World.

Considering the completeness of the outline, and the relative ease of non-personal nonfiction writing, I should be able to flesh the book out to a few hundred pages rather quickly. More concerning, however, is my ability to balance that writing with keeping the blog alive, something worthwhile less for your ongoing amusement than for my ongoing sanity.

In case you’re curious, here’s the (still very rough) preface, that should give you some sense of what the project is all about.

Preface: What is Radical Entrepreneurship?

The word ëradicalí is an odd one, as it means two wildly different things. Coming from the Latin word for root (radix), it initially referred to the juice in fruits and vegetables, and by extension to the very essence, the core substance of things. Then, as the word evolved, ëradicalí took on a second meaning: extreme and unusual. Given those two opposing definitions, ëradicalí is a great word to apply to the style of entrepreneurship laid out in this book. On the one hand, Radical Entrepreneurship is about the core tasks of starting a company, the simple steps, small details, and nitty gritty of actually making a startup work. On the other, because so few people talk about those things, really lay them out in careful detail, some of the ideas presented may initially seem rather unorthodox.

Still, most of the strategies and tactics in this book are of the ëwhy didn’t I already think of that?í variety. I know, because I didnít think of most of them, at least when starting my first company. (Or, in some cases, even when starting my second or third or fourthÖ) Instead, I learned them the hard way, one mistake, and one subsequent climb back to success, at a time. Itís an ugly way to learn, but it works. Along those lines, thereís a great story about a young man who goes to a very prosperous older man to ask for advice:

ìWhatís the most important thing in life?î the young man asks.

ìGood judgment,î replies the older man.

ìAnd how do I get that?î the young man continues.

ìExperience,î replies the old man.

ìBut how do I get that?î persists the young man.

ìBad judgment,î concludes the old man.

That pretty much sums up this book. The things I present here arenít armchair theories that sound good, or business-school textbook truisms; theyíre the things that actually worked for me in building and selling companies, the good judgments I learned through years of bad judgments. Most of the successful entrepreneurs I know initially seem to have made largely the same bad judgments in their own companies. Therefore, Iím hoping that, by reading this book, and by putting the advice it contains into action, you can avoid making those same bad judgments yourself. That way, youíll be free to pioneer new and wildly creative bad judgments instead. Which is basically what entrepreneurship is all about.