7 Things I Learned in My First REAL Year of Entrepreneurship
I followed these 7 tips to build a successful startup.
Most entrepreneurs fail.
If you’re an entrepreneur, the chances are you’re going to fail unless you read this.
Today I’m going to break down seven things you should do before you become an entrepreneur.
The tips I’m going to give you, whether you want to be an entrepreneur or not, will help you in your work life as well as help you become an entrepreneur.
1. Work for someone else.
Everyone’s like, oh my God, I want to be an entrepreneur. I’m just going to go out there and create my own company.
Yeah, you can do that, but you’ll make many mistakes. You’re not going to learn how to communicate with people or build teams. You’re not going to learn how to hire.
You’re not going to learn how to fire. And even when you work for someone else, you don’t learn that immediately.
You have to be in the workplace for many years and get promoted before you learn some of these things.
That’s very important because if you don’t know how things work in the corporate world, you will not do well as an entrepreneur.
2. Read books from other entrepreneurs.
So many people, like the CEO of IBM, talk about mistakes they’ve made.
By reading these books, you’ll learn from other people’s mistakes and avoid making them when you go out on your own.
And here’s the thing. You look at me, and you’re like, oh, you’ve done all right. I’m not that smart.
But what’s helped me do well is I’ve learned from other people’s mistakes and my own, and I’ve avoided making the same mistakes repeatedly.
Eventually, that led me to what I should be doing, right? Because finally, you start crossing off all these things you shouldn’t be doing, so you’re left with what you should be doing.
3. Learn to budget
It’s harder to make money than it is to save it. And when you’re an entrepreneur, you will be strapped for cash.
You will not do well if you don’t know how to live on a budget or save money. So, start learning how to budget.
Now that could be using tools like mint.com. Whatever you want to do to figure out your budgeting, do it.
4. Learn to solve problems.
In the corporate world, when you solve problems, you often run into politics; sometimes, money can solve it, but sometimes you can’t.
I’m not saying it’s easy, but as an entrepreneur, many problems you’ll have are even tougher because you have more things against you.
You don’t have big budgets; you don’t have a ton of staff, and you don’t have a ton of people with experience to help you out.
If you can’t figure out problem-solving and work on your problem-solving skills, you will not succeed.
Because you’re always going to be pushed against the ropes, things will go against you. And that’s why problem-solving is very important.
5. Figure out your passion
If you don’t love what you’re doing, you will not keep doing it repeatedly. You’re going to quit as an entrepreneur.
It’s not about putting in 40 hours a week; you’re going to put in 60, you’re going to put in 70, and you’ll still find that your competition is bigger than you and ahead of you.
That’s why if you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re not going to put in the time and energy you need to succeed.
6. Be efficient with your time
You don’t have enough time in the day. There are only 24 hours. So, use tools like rescue time to figure out: where are you wasting your time? Where are you efficient?
Cut out all the stuff causing you to waste time, such as logging onto Instagram 20 times a day. Sure, I’m not saying don’t use Instagram, but logging in once, twice, or four or five times is enough.
You don’t need to log in 20–30 times a day when starting a business, running it, and trying to grow it.
7. Find a problem that you want to solve.
So, you’re not going to make money because you want to.
You’ll make money because you’re solving a problem and helping people. And that problem that you’re solving, your solution better be cheaper or more efficient, if not ideally, both.
When you do that, people start paying you. If your solution isn’t cheaper or more efficient, why would they pay you versus the competition?
So that’s it. If you enjoyed this article, make sure you share :-)
