Lessons from the experienced for new entrepreneurs

This is a piece by Brainster, a platform for education helping you future-proof your career.

Are you considering starting your own business, or maybe you already did? It actually doesn’t really matter if you’re launching your own company or just changing your career in search of what suits you best, there’s one thing you should know — the startup world can be as complicated as it is exciting.

And whichever of the above you decided to do, you’re probably already aware of the amount of necessary risk in front of you. Yes, the risk is a pain in the neck, but if you do play smart, it can be controlled and minimized.

One of our favorite ways of risk reduction involves inspiration, education, and motivation; it’s basically following and listening to what the more experienced ones have to say. For instance, do you remember that time when Elon Musk, the guy behind Tesla, Solar City, and Space X said that one of the best advice he could give to a new entrepreneur is that of knowing how to accept criticism? He added that it’s incredibly important to ask for feedback from as many people as you can for the ideas you get and ask what they think about them. Of course, nobody ever enjoyed negative criticism, but unfortunately, that’s one of the fastest ways of facing your weaknesses, which is the first and most essential step in overcoming them and getting better.

And of course, nobody has ever written a motivational business article without mentioning Steve Jobs who never fails to inspire. One of his many tricks is that every time he would hire someone (especially someone that would get a senior spot in the company), except noticing how intelligent they are, he would also pay a huge amount of attention in noticing whether the new employee is actually in love with the company (Apple). According to Steve, if you’re truly in love with your company and what you do, the rest will come by itself.

The thing is that all the experienced and awfully successful people share more or less the same advice. So we gathered the essential ones and listed them below.

Ask for advice

Are you always the smartest person in the room? If yes, then you’re probably in the wrong room. One of the most (and for a reason) popular advice is one of the importance of mentorship. We can’t even stress enough the importance of having a (good) mentor.

Everyone, starting with Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and ending with Victoria Beckham and Michael Jordan had at least ones talked about how following a mentor is one of the reasons for their great success.

But unfortunately, when it comes to mentorship it’s easier said than done. Finding the right mentor is incredibly hard, and sometimes might even take years for you to recognize them.

But don’t get demotivated yet, until then, we all have Google. Read all the stories, tips, and tricks you can, read autobiographical books, and try to absorb as much experience as possible.

Do not settle

When your mum says you’re stubborn she probably means it in a negative way. But stubbornness can often pay off. Knowing what you deserve and not settling for anything less than that is what you should never stop doing.

For instance, do you know the story of Pete Cashmore? When they sold TechCrunch to AOL, Cashmore stubbornly decided not to sell Mashable. And who’s bigger today? Success never comes easy, and what can be seen as a failure today, can be the reason you win tomorrow. Sometimes years will pass until you reach the point you were aiming for, and you have to be aware of that, no company ever succeeded in months. Look at Zuckerberg, he didn’t sell Facebook (even though it was tempting) and he never hoped for overnight success.

Improve your communication with customers and employees

Garrett Camp from Uber states that the biggest reason for his success is the intensive and continuous communication with clients. Basically, it can be of any kind. It doesn’t really matter if it’s constant social media updates, sharing of information or direct correspondence with clients (which has never been easier than today) is of crucial importance for the wellbeing of your company.

But on the other hand, poorly informed employees in terms of news and ongoing plans and actions have the incredible power of messing and ruining things up. It can limit your employee’s productivity, and even more importantly the success of the whole company. Always, always keep all the employees on board, weekly and monthly staff meetings are a must.

Work smart, not hard

The concept that you have to spend many, many hours working in order to make something good is completely outdated. You can see companies realizing this by changing the basics of the way they function by introducing liberal working hours and remote working. Think about it, just as the reason for success is hard work, oftentimes it is the reason for failure.

With the technology of today and everything it offers us, it’s highly important to stay on track, informed and up to date with all the tools you need to work smarter and faster while saving time and energy.

Use your network as much as you can

Probably it might take you some time to realize the importance of a strong and broad network. Soon you will start noticing the benefits of nice acquaintances and how necessary they are for the success of a company. Even the internet didn’t manage to kill the influence of word-of-mouth marketing.

This means networking is not to be seen as creating and taking nice care of your Linkedin and Facebook connections. The idea behind successful networking is not in the business card exchange rituals but in the building and maintaining of strong and serious connections with people that will help you win your competition.

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