Well, I may be young but I have been an entrepreneur for over ten years. My first SEO consulting job was in high school where I built and ran a successful agency. And from there I co-founded a few software companies. Luckily for me, I was fortunate to grow up in a family of entrepreneurs, so I’ve heard a lot of great advice about what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur.
And I’ve also seen that all great entrepreneurs hold closely to a core set of beliefs. So what are those beliefs? Here are eight:
Belief #1: Make a decision and go!
This was one of the first lessons I learned when starting my first business and it was extremely hard to get used to making a decision and then taking action on that decision.I was so afraid I was making a mistake. Since then I’ve learned that making a mistake is not a bad thing. You actually learn from those mistakes, which helps you make better decisions down the road.
You will struggle with hiring and firing people, project budgets, office space and advertising creative. When you first start off in business you will take days and even weeks to answer these questions.
This core belief actually came back to me when I lost a million dollar client. They were happy with the service I was providing, but they wanted to know what else I was going to do to take their business to the next level. I had a few ideas, but I didn’t make a decision on which idea I was going to act on. Long story short, I took too long to make a decision and I lost a $1.2 million client.
Belief #2: Show passion, not perfection
It’s a lot easier to work on a project for closed doors for years until you get it perfect and then ship, but that just won’t work these days.Often when I talk to young entrepreneurs who are “working” on a project behind closed doors I realize they are afraid to ship because they don’t want to be ridiculed. But I always encourage them that what people don’t want a perfect product…what they want is a passionate person behind the project.
If you can show people you are passionate about creating a perfect product by releasing it, then getting feedback and iterating…then people will jump on board…especially if the product solves a real-world problem.
Don’t try to perfect anything because if you perfect something that no one wants to use, you will just end up wasting money.
At KISSmetrics we created 2 other versions of our product that are no longer live. We spent over $500,000 on the first version, trying to perfect it, instead of just getting it out there. Since then we have scrapped that product. If we used the minimal viable product approach instead of trying to create a perfect product, we probably would have saved that money.
Belief #3: Avoid the ugly baby syndrome
One thing that entrepreneurs are in the habit of doing is falling in love with their ideas…even if it is a bad idea. This is like parents who fall in love with their new baby, even though everyone knows newborns are ugly.You need to be objective in your business, with your plan and your product. Everything on the table needs to be up for debate if you truly want to succeed.
Seek out mentors to help you, and get advice from them on a regular basis. Listen closely to what they are saying. Listen closely to what your partner is saying and more importantly your customers.
This doesn’t mean you have to surrender every idea, but sometimes you may have to make drastic changes.
The CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, tells a story about how they were going down the wrong path and brought in the founder of Costco, Jim Sinegal for advice. Jim said, “You know, I don’t want to be rude but this is exactly the wrong thing to do.”
Schultz listened, realized Sinegal was right, and shifted their strategy.
One way to protect yourself from falling in love with your idea is to train yourself to fall in love with solving people’s problems. It doesn’t matter what you create to solve their problems, but as long as you do it in a simple, easy, and ideally an affordable way, you will be fine.
For the rest, You can continue reading here
