Entrepreneurship is a journey, not an outing.
You cannot make a deal with yourself by saying:
“I’m going to try this out for 2 years and see.”
Entrepreneurship is about living life on your own terms. Dream huge. And when you do, dream with your eyes open.
Presenting here the various points of this fabulous book that every startup founder / business person must read!
- It doesn’t matter what socio-economic background you come from as long as you have hunger to succeed, innate confidence in yourself, in your abilities, guts and conviction to take “sensible” risks and can do attitude - you will prevail
- There’s no ‘right age’ to be an entrepreneur. No one but you know when you’re ready.
- Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Frank assessment of ability and desire to succeed matters.
- Never think: “What will happen if I fail?” If you’re half smart, you’ll figure out how to survive.
- Never underestimate the power of humor
- Entrepreneurship in nutshell: Action and reaction, Understanding, Confronting and transcending fear, Working,disrupting and succeeding, Trying and failing, And then laughing later - absorbing lasting life lessons
- When you are new in business, ask questions without worrying.
- As a professional, a leader or an entrepreneur, there will be times in your career when you’ll be an outsider, either because you’ve changed sectors or jobs or started a new business where full domain knowledge is not your core strength. Embrace this, be a quick learner and sharper listener.
- Build a team that complements, yet challenges you, hones your skill set and get them aligned with the bigger picture.
- Don’t get yourself in desperate ‘must do’ situation and you’ll always pay the fair and balanced value.
- Trust and credibility are crucial for building strong, long-term business relationships and require some give and take.
- When working with organizations that are clients in one business but competitors in another, strong Chinese walls are crucial and must be built into your company’s culture.
- Domain knowledge is important, but some quick steps - building an experienced team, fostering key alliances and getting a strong review process in place - will get you moving forward.
- Failure is as much about missed opportunities and poor judgement calls or procrastination as it is about things going wrong.
- Think of failure as setbacks. Dealing with failure should be cathartic, it should lead to introspection.
- To re-calibrate after setbacks requires confidence and conviction and entire team’s support. Open and frank communication is powerful tool.
- In the 21st century it's all right to not be the first one to hit upon an idea. It’s fine to be a smart 2nd or 3rd with lot of insights from others.
- In the next decade, there will be more books published on ‘How I failed’ than ‘How I succeeded’ when publishers realize what entrepreneurs already know - failures and more interesting - at the end of the day you’re still here with the courage and confidence to write your own story.
The world isn’t flat and who cares? Even though 99% of us feel we are unequal to a task at some point in our lives, entrepreneurship provokes us to confront and conquer that myth. Luck and inequality are two sides of same coin. If you have that coin in hand, throw it far, walk away and start building your dream!
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