Why Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, is my new hero

“We’re heading toward something big and it’s going to be good.” Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

I have no idea if 40-year-old Biz Stone, the guy Time magazine called “One of the Most Influential People in the World,” has read E-Squared.

But I do know this: he practices the principles with a vengeance.

In fact, it’s the very principles I write about in E-Squared and E-Cubed that transformed him from a college drop-out with massive credit card debt into a wildly successful entrepreneur worth $250 million.

On my flight to Australia (where I’m giving a writing workshop with Reid Tracy, president of Hay House), I had time to read Stone’s book, “Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of a Creative Mind.”

He throws around words like infinite possibilities. He knows attitude is everything and that we pull from the quantum field a match to our beliefs and expectations

As he says, “For any one problem, there are infinite potential solutions. Creativity is limitless. If you cling to what you know, you miss out on the limitless possibilities.”

When Biz was unemployed and living in his mom’s basement, he printed up business cards that said, “Biz Stone, Genius.” He claimed to be “building inventions with infinite resources and a world-class team of scientists at his headquarters—naturally titled Genius Labs.” It was his pronouncement of this dream that brought it into reality.

He knew, as I always recommend, to focus on the end result he desired.

It was that same visualization that launched his career at Google. He decided he wanted to work there and even though he had no college degree, he visualized his way into a dream job. He saw it in his mind before it came true, even though everyone told him that Google only hires PhD’s.

“I manufactured this opportunity without a college education, much less a higher degree; without working my way up a ladder. I wasn’t a shoo-in. I wasn’t anything. But I was experienced in one particular area: creating my own opportunity.”

When he started Twitter, he visualized that it would eventually “topple despotic regimes” which, as we all know, it famously did in a revolution in Moldova and then again in what we now call the Arab Spring.

As he says, “Hard work is important, but success is more about looking through the lens of possibility.”

In other words, the invisible realm always influences the visible.

He also knows that the importance of focusing on what you WANT to happen.

He saw his role at Twitter as being the “non-worrier.”

As he says, “When everything’s wrong and broken, instead of harping on what’s wrong and broken, you need to find what’s working and build on that.”

As he says, the solution always emerges if you look for the positive.

He also knows that the most important quality of any job is that it’s fun. He said the reason he knew Twitter would eventually work where the other start-ups didn’t (yes, he had plenty of failures before Twitter) is because it brought him joy.

Even the $500 million offer from Mark Zuckerberg (he and partner Ev Williams turned it down), came because they were joking around. They were driving out to Facebook offices for what they knew would be an offer to buy them out. On a whim, they agreed to ask for something so big, he’d never go for it. Let’s ask for half a billion, they laughed.

And sure enough, Zuckerberg called a few weeks later offering that very amount.

So Biz, if you happen to see this post, send me a tweet and, even though you already know this stuff, I’ll make sure you get a copy of both E-Squared and E-Cubed.

Pam Grout is the author of 17 books including E-Squared: 9 Do-it-Yourself Energy Experiments that Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality and the soon-to-be-released sequel, E-Cubed, 9 More Experiments that Prove Mirth, Magic and Merriment is your Full-time Gig.