14 Things Every Entrepreneur Must Know by forbes

14 Things Every
Entrepreneur Must
Know by forbes

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A buddy of mine is a big-deal
business professor at an even bigger
deal university. And for reasons I
still don’t understand, he asked me
to come in and explain to his
graduate students what I have
learned from spending 30 years
talking to, researching and writing
about entrepreneurs.
Here’s what I said.
1. The best way to predict the
future is to create it .
2. The most important decision you
can make is…where do you want to
spend your time. You only have so
much time, energy and ability to
focus. That means, as much as you
would like to, you can’t do
everything. That’s a given. So is this:
The places which receive your full
attention will do better than the
places that won’t. What follows
from that is this: You need to make
hard choices about what you will
do–and what you won’t. And it is
really is the important decision you
can make, because everything else
you do will flow from it…including
the next point.
3. If you want to be a successful
entrepreneur, there is no such
thing as work-life balance. I am
not advocating that you spend a
disproportionate part of your life
working on your company. (I am
also not advocating against it.) I am
simply reporting that is what the
most successful entrepreneurs do. I
have never found an exception.
4. The best entrepreneurs don’t
come up with great ideas, they
solve market needs . You and I can
come up with wonderful ideas all
day long but unless they satisfy a
large enough need, one that
can support a business, they don’t do
anyone any good.
5. The one thing all successful
entrepreneurs have in common is
the desire to make their idea a
reality. What entrepreneurs need
most of all —above motivation, focus,
hope, financing, marketing skills, a
brilliant idea, etc.—is the will to
bring their idea into existance.
Unless you truly want to make
something happen, the odds are
nothing will. Without that desire,
nothing else matters…or occurs.
Your life will be filled in other ways.
6. Action trumps everything. Stop
thinking and get underway.
7. Take small, smart steps towards
your goals. Contrary to the popular
press, the most successful
entrepreneurs are not swing-for-the-
fences, bet-everything-on-one-roll-of-
the-dice  types. They are extremely
conservative. They take a small step
toward their goal; pause to see what
they have learned from taking that
small step and build that learning
into the next small step. Then they
pause to see what they have learned
from that second small step, build
that learning in and then take
another small step and so forth.
They don’t take large risks.
8. If you want to build a successful
company give up control . You can
try to micromanage but: the
business will never grow bigger than
one person (you, the CEO) can
handle effectively; the company
won’t be able to move very quickly.
Since everything will have to flow
through you, you will create a
bottleneck; you won’t get the best
ideas out of your people. Once they
understand the company is set up so
everything revolves around you,
people are not going to take the time
to develop their best ideas. “Why
should I,” they’ll ask. “He is just
going to do what he wants anyway.”
And it’s exhausting.
9. Forget about working on your
weaknesses, play to your
strengths. This is what will make
you successful in the long-run.
10. You need to be able to turn
every obstacle into an asset. Yes,
every single one .
11. All you need to know about
marketing in exactly 30 words?
Marketing, when you strip
everything away, is extremely
simple: You figure out who you want
to sell to, and then you determine
what it is that will get them to buy.
12. Here’s the only market
research you need: Get your
product out in the marketplace and
see if it sells.
13. If you insist on doing market
research anyway , here’s the one
question you need to ask. Show
potential customers a prototype, or
describe the service you are thinking
of offering and then say: ”Is this
something you would buy,” and if
they answer yes, ask for the order
then and there. If, as the cliché goes,
they are willing to put their money
where their mouth is, you are
probably on to something. If they
aren’t, you still have work to do.
14. You must figure out how you
are going to collect what you are
owed. Nobody thinks about this
before they get underway and
suddenly they learn first hand what
they phrase “cash flow crunch”
means.

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