Negosentro.com | 3 Lessons for Every Entrepreneur | Being an entrepreneur can be a fulfilling and satisfying career. It’s flexible and adaptable, but it can be tough to know how to get started. Here are three lessons for every entrepreneur.
1. Building Relationships
When you start building your ideas and your business, seek out people already in that field and interview them. Don’t just ask about their successes, try to make a genuine connection based on shared passion, skillsets or values. You want to find people who understand your goals and mission and can act as mentors or partners. A key takeaway from entrepreneurship is you can’t do everything alone; you need a team. Find people with complementary skill sets. For example, if you’ve got a great eye for technology but aren’t the best at recognizing market trends, seek out someone who does that you can partner with. Having a team with varied skills and a wider network of mentors and cheerleaders can really help get an idea off the ground.
Later, once you’ve made some headway with your business and you’re more in the public eye, you can branch out with the halo effect. You can blog or agree to speak at public events. The aim is to foster goodwill not just with mentors and potential business contacts, but with the general public and your audience for your product. People want to hear advice and learn from entrepreneurs. One of the ways you can leverage the halo effect is by starting a crowdfunding campaign. These campaigns raise money for your products and ideas and help you gauge proof of concept and community interest in what you have to offer.
2. Educating Yourself
You don’t need to go to college to become a successful entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need an education. Try to learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of those around you. If you fail at something, give yourself time to be upset about it, but then get back up and look critically at your failure. Where did you go wrong? How can you plan to do better next time? Reflect on your actions and decisions and ask for advice from your partners and mentors.
You don’t just need to understand economics and the ins and outs of your chosen industry. You also need to learn how to run a business and pivot quickly and easily. It’s important to have a learner’s mindset. Keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to learn about your industry, wider financial trends and how to take calculated risks.
3. Practicing Determination
You’re going to have to experiment a lot to build your product or service and your company. The old adage if at first you don’t succeed, try again very much applies here. For example, if you decide to start a pool building company, you’re going to need to incorporate many more services and offerings besides just the construction work. You’ll need to look into marketing, building a website and swimming pool financing, among other things. You shouldn’t let any of those extra steps get in your way. Determination can help you figure out how best to go about incorporating new aspects of business and thinking on your feet. The same determination will help you keep your eye on the goal and your feet on the right path. You’re more likely to leverage your education and the relationships you’ve built if you keep pushing forward with your endeavor.
Of course, there are the more technical aspects of a business that you’ll need to engage with too. However, some of the most important aspects of entrepreneurship are these background soft skills. You can have the best idea in the world and know exactly how to create a product or provide a service, but that means nothing if you don’t have connections and a wider range of knowledge to help you fine-tune your ideas and get them out into the world.
