Another member of Michael's Super Friends group (see last post) is a guy by the name of Cal Newport. Cal is a Ph.D candidate in Computer Science at MIT as well as a published author. I received a question from a friend Cal yesterday that he asked me to share my response to. Here was Cal's original email.

Hi Ryan,

We met once, in New York, many years back with Mike Simmons. But after receiving this e-mail from Michael I thought I might try to re-connect. I see from your blog that things are going quite well with your company. Congrats on all of that!

I actually had a semi-related note that I wanted to ask you about. Recently I've been having a lot of discussions---with Mike among others---about what separates doers from dreamers. That is, given two ambitious, intelligent people, who both have big ideas, why does one manage to start getting things done while the other stays stuck? In other words, I've been trying to explore what constitutes the "action habit" that seems to underlie many successful personalities.

Given your famed skill for execution, I thought you might be a good source of insight into this discussion. Specifically:

(1) From a general perspective, what do you think explains the difference between people who talk the talk and those whose execute?

(2) From a specific perspective, what's your mindset/strategy/physiological states that fuel your day to day work? Think about an onerous project you started recently, what specifically got you going?

Talk to you soon,
Cal

Here was my response to Cal's questions:

(1) From a general perspective, what do you think explains the difference between people who talk the talk and those who execute?

Well, I don't know if I have a complete answer, but here are a few tips from my experience.

1. Don't bullshit, don't hype. Sometimes you do need to get certain people like VCs or the media excited about your company or product, but do it with real substance whenever possible.
2. Be brutally honest with yourself.
3. Surround yourself with really smart, hard working people.
4. Work hard and intelligently consistently for multiple years.
5. Set goals and write them down.
6. Track the actual results versus the projected results and write down why you did better or worse than expected on at least an annual if not quarterly basis. (very key)
7. Don't jump from project to project. Stick with something dammit. It's almost always going to take 5 years to build anything of significant value. So find a good idea and then run with it. If it doesn't work out initially, if the core idea is good, keep at it. It took us 27 months to get Broadwick to $1 million in sales and just 7 months to make the next $1 million.
8. Read about how the world works. Read books like Lexus and the Olive Tree, Political Ideologies & the Democratic Ideal, Reinventing the Bazaar, The Commanding Heights, The Worldly Philosophers, The World is Flat, and The Tipping Point.

(2) From a specific perspective, what's your mindset/strategy/physiological states that fuel your day to day work?

I just want build a lot of strong relationships and make some money so I can have influence to be able to change the world significantly through entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and politics to reduce human suffering in our world and one day be able to give back to the world and this country by being able to be elected as a U.S. Senator, or in some other yet to be defined way. It all comes back to the long term motivation, which has to be thought out and very strong. My personal mission statement (printed on the right side of ryanallis.com) has been extremely helpful and given me clarity in this regard.