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Think of a company as a machine you design and build.
Your ‘machine’ always has certain parts. It sells something to someone, and re-invests some of that to help make more sales in future. What’s left over is profit for the owners.
The most important qualities of a good entrepreneur are energy and determination. It doesn’t hurt to be persuasive, but this can be learned.
Please forget all of the terrible deluded nonsense you’ve heard about the value of ideas. Ideas are cheap, fleeting things; by itself an idea is worth less than a half-eaten sandwich. At least you can eat the sandwich.
Original ideas are overrated. What isn’t overrated is timing.
Many a good business has ridden to success on the coattails of another – it is usually better to have some rivals over none. You just need to become 10% better.
A big part of starting a company is convincing people to believe in you before they probably should.
While doing all this you need to juggle between making the perfect company (idealist) and paying your bills (realist) – an absence of either will eventually kill you.
Do not scale prematurely. Don’t try to be a big company early on – just aim to be one. Be slow to spend and to hire at first. Don’t waste time writing mission statements and policy documents. You’re small, nimble and on a mission. Make and sell things.
It’s because what makes you a great company is you, and unless you can bottle up you into a business model, you can’t grow.
I think entrepreneurship is a form of enlightened gambling. Skill and tenacity are big factors, but luck plays a big part. However, as long as you can keep picking yourself up when you get knocked down, try different things and keep learning, the odds are in your favor. You just have to dare to chance them.
Curated from “The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an Entrepreneur [Observer]”
