The most important lesson of all: Go home. Make time for the ones you love. The easiest thing to think about living like an entrepreneur is that these skills apply to only one part of your life: your job. That's a mistake. In the same way that entrepreneurs are redefining many of the traditional rules of the workplace, they're also helping to break down one of the most stubborn boundaries of all, the one between work and family. While it's popular to say you can have either a successful career or a meaningful personal life, I'd like to suggest you can aim for both.

You can't rock the boat without being told you're off your rocker. Entrepreneurs' greatest asset is their contrarian way of thinking, their tendency to zig when others zag, to go in a new direction. But many people don't give themselves permission to get going for fear that they will be called crazy. I say not only is crazy a compliment, but if you're not called crazy when you start something new, then you're not thinking big enough!

Crazy is a compliment.

One of the key skills you'll need to bring change to the world will really test your creativity, as well as your sanity, your patience, and your resolve. It has to do with how to take your dream and make it as real as possible. It doesn't really matter what your dream is, "going big" means doing it to the utmost. To do that, you need one thing: other dreamers to share your dream. If you learn to make your dream a team effort, you'll find the key to growing big.

A lot of people will tell you the first step to starting something new is to have an idea. But to me the first step starts long before that. The first step to acting like an entrepreneur is to look not at the writing on the wall but at the spaces between the writing. It's in the gap between what's being said and what's not being said that entrepreneurs thrive. The way to get going is to find the courage to take your dream out of your head and put it to the test in the real world. Don't just think it; act on it.

When Edison first started out with his "crazy" idea for the light bulb, skeptics were unmoved. They called Thomas Edison a con man and taunted him to prove his bulb could really work. Despite the naysayers, Edison pushed on, demonstrating the importance of sticking with his "crazy" idea which would go on to turn him into one of the world's most well-known entrepreneurs. The key here is to fan the foolish fire no matter what!

Today, entrepreneurs are at the forefront of a new era in which organizations put talent at the heart of their business models. And they have no choice. Having grown up surrounded by entrepreneurial freedoms, workers expect flexibility. They insist on collaboration. They demand meaning. Creating an environment that brings out the entrepreneurial instincts in your workforce - a worldview we might call "employeeship"- is key.