Want to be an entrepreneur?
Over a year ago, Covid-19 shook the world off its roots, triggering fears and insecurities across sectors. The world witnessed one of the worst economic deceleration of the millennium as majority of the businesses were not prepared for a global recession so harsh.
But this is not the end. The pandemic has in many ways, redirected people to reanalyse their priorities and goals in life. If you are an entrepreneur or aspire to be one, here are some tips for you:
1) Risk and hope as lovers
Entrepreneurship never comes easy. When one chooses to be an entrepreneur, before the glitz and glamour, comes the rough road of struggles, sacrifices and risks.
Entrepreneurship comes with loads and tons of risks, financial risks that might result in surviving on a couple of packets of maggi a day or reputational risks that might lead to friends and family constantly getting on the nerves with infuriating questions. While risk is crucial when you are starting up, risks should never be wild.As exciting it might sound to take wild risks with no flooring, risks should always be practical and calculative. Calculative risks is what di
2) Never stop trying
Whether we are at the bar drinking or taking a leak during a washroom break or watching random videos online, ideas are magical and yet not so hard to produce. The human mind is full of ideas, ideas that have the power to disrupt the world. What people lack is the motivation and drive to pursue them. People are often found to dismiss their own ideas or quit midway through the process if they have already started. It is very common for people to always undermine their ideas and they usually delay the start because they feel their ideas lack substance. Giving up is the enemy of creativity. Persistence after getting started is always undervalued. It's really difficult to know how good or bad an idea is until you actually start working on it. Once an idea is there, a problem is identified, it's best to pen down the problem statement. A problem statement has to be strong because it is the heart and soul of your start-up idea, it's the statement that attracts stakeholders to link with the start-up, it's the statement that the stakeholders consider the focal point and build along. The blueprint that a start-up builds with the problem statement as the focal point has to be fundamentally strong as it forms the solution statement which forms the vision and gives clear direction to the start-up. For a business to be successful, it has to have a strong problem statement and an equally strong and confident solution. That is it.
fferentiates successful businesses from the rest of the lot.Risk takers usually do not think of exit routes or factors that make a decision risky. That is the reason most of them fail. It's better to know the odds when making a decision and once you have already taken the plunge, just keep putting in work and always hope for the best.
Hope is what keeps you pushing when the light of acceptance is not visible in the tunnel of start-ups. Hope drives most of the productivity in the start-up culture. When the basis of hope is real world experience, knowledge and data, then the risks become calculated risks and then the hope transforms into 'trust' and that is powerful. Keep hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. Risk and hope move hands in hand.
3) Curiosity and persistence fuel opportunities
Entrepreneurs have a reputation of putting in long hours and working super hard. It's a myth that hard work is the key to success in businesses. we all have instances where we have worked so hard in school projects and still lost on the grades. Hard work is nothing but an expression to glorify a person's efforts. One should focus more on working smart and enjoying the pursuit, it's the curiosity and persistence towards the product that runs the game. An entrepreneur needs to take baby steps while approaching a problem. Sh/he needs to show commitment, and with the right intention and persistence, there is no problem a business cannot solve. In a start-up space, you never see instant success. So, there is no motivation to wake up the next day to go back and do the same thing again. That is when persistence kicks in; it has to cover up for the little pat on the back that an entrepreneur craves for. Persistence drives businesses.
Persistence builds businesses like no one else.