Thinking Of Starting Your Own Company?
Here are things upcoming entrepreneurs need to keep in mind
Starting a company on your own more or less feels like being punched in the face every hour every day. There is no exaggeration here, just a metaphor of how much your life’s gonna turn around once you start this painfully beautiful journey.
No matter how much you have read, watched or studied about building a business, you’re still gonna be in the dark now and then all along.
Being an entrepreneur doesn’t mean you’ll have to be strong at the business game. It requires much more than that.
As you must have seen, famous entrepreneurs not just lead their companies well but their own life as well. Here’s a heads up about a few important things that’ll help you on this path,
1. Stop Caring About The Society
One guaranteed key to success is not caring about what others thing. You’ll only end up wasting your crucial time and energy on thinking what other’s think about you or will think about you.
Welcome the critics but not the haters. You are the average of the five people you spend your most time with which clearly indicates, stop spending time with the negative elements of your life. Be more with folks who support you and love you instead.
2. Build Resilience
Practice Patience & Persistence.
Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither can a business. It’s hard and it takes time to build a business. Movies don’t seem to capture this at all. Only 5–10% of the companies stay after 5 years of operations. The key is to not give up when all things go south because it’s something bound to happen and still keep working through it all.
Pro tip: Grow or improve just 1% at least everyday.
3. People Matter
Friends and family are equally important but unfortunately many people in business loose this crucial touch in their life. You will too, at times. A TED speaker’s study claims that one of the biggest factor for happiness is social connections. Hustle day and night but always take out some time for the people you love. They are the ones who are gonna stuck with you in the storms.
4. Aim To Become A Monopoly
All businesses should strive to become a monopoly, says the billionaire, Peter Thiel, who was an early investor in Facebook. He explains why opening a restaurant is one of the worst business ideas owing to the fact, at core all restaurants do the same thing. By monopoly, he means owning a market through which the business can set its own prices. Monopoly companies stand to create (and maintain) lasting value for themselves, Thiel says.
5. Start Small
Dream big, start small.
Don’t go out and compete against the giants. Competition is for losers, quotes Thiel. Keep your focus on the end game but take small steps first before scaling your business. Do things that don’t scale for the initial customers, mentions Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator.
Lots of companies focus on being big rather than being good, which eventually results in the downfall. Become great at the small scale or at a specific thing and then expand.
6. Find The Need
Never start a business just for the sake of having your own company. Find a problem, a pain point. Don’t start a business unless there’s ‘a wrong that you want to right’. Steve Jobs said that. Find a way to solve the problem and figure out a way to make money out of it to eventually become better at solving the problem. It’s hard out there and you must have a deeper conviction for not giving up.
This will become the ‘why’ of your company and somewhat of your life.
7. Take Risks
In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks, cites Mark Zuckerberg. As said before, there can’t be a perfect rule book on starting a business, you have to try out new and different ideas or strategies even if it’s seems impossible at first. Big and crazy ideas have to implemented to become big. Not all decisions will have a perfect reason behind it and that’s okay.
8. Competition Is For Losers
“All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.” — Peter Thiel
Competition is extremely costly to maximum product reach and wealth creation. It becomes a battle of who can slightly out-do the other for cheaper and cheaper. Instead of trying to compete with other people or businesses, it’s better to do something completely novel or to focus on a tightly defined niche.
Competing with others leads people to spend every day of their lives pursuing goals that aren’t really their own — but what society has deemed important.You could spend your whole life trying to keep up, but will probably have a shallow life. Or, you can define success for yourself based on your own values and detach yourself from the noise.
9. Execute, Execute and Execute
Ideas are nothing, implementation is everything. Ideas have zero value, stresses Gary Vaynerchuk, American serial entrepreneur, four-time New York Times bestselling author.
He again and again emphasize on the point of doing. You won’tr get it always right in first place for most part but you’ll only know that if you ‘do’. It cane be said that solely execution is what differentiates the biggest companies from the smaller one, not the idea.
10. Embrace Failures
You will fail. There’s absolutely no way to prevent it. You’re gonna face tons of new problems for the first time.
A perfect rule book can’t exist. Best thing one can do is to fail faster and fail more.
So you end up making the mistakes in the start and learn from them sooner than the rest. Learn from each and every mistake.
11. Stay Humble
It’s easy to lose your feet from the ground after tasting “success”. It’s easy to forget where you came from. In the mist of a different lifestyle and success, it’s easy to become arrogant.
Try not to forget your origins. Humility, gratitude keeps your success in proper perspective. You couldn’t do what you’ve without the help of countless other people. Always stay grateful.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
— Steve Jobs
