Every successful business of our time was once nothing more than obscure startup with great potential which was eventually realized to the fullest. Today’s startups are more fortunate as they attract huge media coverage right off the bat and are practically known well before they ever achieve any success. From that perspective, starting up a business nowadays is fairly easy but getting it to work and survive all the pitfalls and setbacks along the way is as difficult as it’s ever been.
Aspiring entrepreneurs must therefore, be extremely creative, flexible, innovative and prudent when starting a business if they are to have a shot at achieving enviable success. Clearly, being a successful entrepreneur requires a great deal more than that but three things worth noting are:
1. Million dollar ideas are worthless unless acted upon
It’s been said time and again that ideas are worth dime a dozen and for a good reason. Ideas are awesome and often times very exciting but in and of itself completely worthless. Often times I see people trying to hide and protect their ideas with their life as though if revealed and let out in the open, it will be instantaneously stolen and put to work by someone other than the original creator.
Nothing can be further from the truth, for taking an idea from a thought to realization takes a great deal of effort, sacrifices, commitment and resolve, something only a very few are capable of. So next time you have an awesome idea, don’t sleep on it but start making plans on how best to turn it into reality.
2. Persistence is more important than your IQ
Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone despite what you may have been told. Starting a business is risky affair and as such shouldn’t be undertaken by faint hearted. In simple terms entrepreneurship can be thought of as dealing with uncertainties on a daily basis and loving.
Entrepreneurs throughout their careers are faced with most arduous of challenges, humiliating rejections, enormous setbacks and excruciating pain. Therefore, of all the must have traits and qualities successful entrepreneurs must possess, none is more important than persistence – the ability to get back up after a huge setback, temporary defeat or rejection and try again until ultimate objective is met. Make sure you’ve got the staying power before embarking on entrepreneurial journey.
3. Unhappy clients are your best source of improvement
Building a product or a service in a vacuum and launching it into a marketplace thereafter with intention to win people over is a backward way of doing things. In fact, it’s a sure way of failure. Gone are the days of command economy where a government decides what’s to be manufactured, in what quantities and what price to be sold at.
We live in a customer centric, market driven economy where businesses fight over detecting and addressing customers needs, wants and desires in the most economically viable fashion. The customer is the very reason any one business exists, because of which businesses ought to stay very close to customers and evolve around their needs and wants.
One way to evolve is by listening to unsatisfied customers and learning from them first hand what’s not working and needs to be changed or improved to accommodate their needs. Whatever it is that you do, remember to always be tweaking and evolving for complacency and ignorance are detrimental to success.
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