Entrepreneurs Don't Think, They Do

(source: https://www.pinterest.com/iebusiness/entrepreneurship/)

The Startup Mania Curve

Startup Mania can be defined as the enthusiasm of a person to startup. Based on a lot of cases I have seen, this mania tends to follow a pattern with the age of a person. This may not be accurate in your case or cases you may have seen, but is the general trend I have seen in people around me.

THE STARTUP MANIA CURVE EXPLAINED

In college, everyone now is talking startups. “Startup is the new guitar. Every college kid wants one” - Arunabh Kumar. A person who is 20 and in college tends to develop a very strong startup mania and is highly inclined to startup or join a startup.

Once this stage passes and you get into a mainstream job, the mania tends to go down. You start working and get ‘settled’ in your job. Things look good as you are learning a lot and doing new stuff. After 3-4 years, you start getting rewarded for the efforts put in and things keep moving in your career.

Around 10 years in to the job, a stage comes when you feel you are not happy. You have a family, you are earning well, so why this feeling? You start thinking and realize maybe you are not enjoying your work anymore. You have heard people talking about how exciting startup life is. An urge again comes to startup and your mania levels rocket upwards.

If this phases passes again and you end up either staying in your company or end up merely changing a job, you tend to get ‘settled’ again. This time, you do so for a long period. Now you decide to forget about startups and really start focusing on your job and career growth. You start looking at the highest position you can reach in your job and start putting in efforts for attaining it. This is usually the longest phase and your startup mania remains low in it.

You know you have to retire at some age (generally around 60). 5-7 years before it, you start planning your retirement. You are old but you still want to work. After all, how much can you travel or meditate or relax? You start planning a business which you can start and which can be with you even after you retire. The mania rises again.

After this stage, the mania is irrelevant and you end up doing what you want to do combined with what is available to you.

M.S.Dhoni - Good Form is a State of Mind

Entrepreneurship is similar to Cricket in many ways. Just as we say when a batsman is doing well, he is in form. In entrepreneurship, if a business does well, we say the entrepreneur is on a roll. If a batsman makes a mistake, he gets out. If an entrepreneur makes one, he fails.

The difference in both situations, in cricket and entrepreneurship, has more to do with the state of mind of the person. When you are doing well, you feel positive and confident and tend to make the right moves. When not, you tend to put pressure on yourself, make mistakes and are further pushed down by people around you.

Positivity is the key to sustain through ups and downs of your career. It drives you when you are going strong and supports you during your weak periods.

Social Skills on an Entrepreneur

A good entrepreneur should possess good social skills. One can learn a lot from interacting with people around. Some cases where interactions can be useful -

Recruiting Good People

Generating Interest from Investors, Customers

Getting Tips, Advice & Skills

Getting Feedback & Suggestions

The more you interact, the more you get to learn. Entrepreneurship is more about being street smart than being academically equipped (a personal thought!).

First-Hand Learnings of an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship teaches one a lot. The learning is first hand and very diverse.

Learning is broadly from the following 2 things.

Experiences: Whatever you do teaches you something. If what you do goes right, your learning is good. If is goes wrong, your learning is great.

People: An entrepreneur should keep learning from people around him/her. The more skilled or experienced the people around you are, the better the learning is. From picking up core domain skills to learning how to build a team, there is a lot which can be learnt.

A good entrepreneur will keep learning from his/her surroundings and activities. We should always 

keep our eyes and ears open and should develop an interest in learning as much as we can. Besides these first hand learnings, reading is also a great way to learn from other’s experiences.

Trait of Successful People

Startup Pledge (Must for Budding Entrepreneurs)

All budding entrepreneurs need to take this pledge before becoming an active member in this wonderful world of startups. This will help them create an outlook which will make their journey smoother.

THE PLEDGE

- I pledge to never stop learning

- I pledge to make my startup my passion and be a parent to it rather than a manager

- I pledge to build a team of people in my journey who are equally passionate and zealous about my startup

- I pledge to be focused and share my focus and goals with my team

- I pledge to be open to feedback and to make alterations in my path whenever required

- I pledge to be non-biased in anything I do

- I pledge to be patient and not let anxiety or restlessness into any of my decisions

- I pledge to never let the morale of me or my team down

- I pledge to create a story which will inspire others

Be Empathetic

Empathy is your ability to relate to and understand someone else’s situation and perspective. Strong, enduring relationships are almost always built on empathy. It’s a life skill that requires self-awareness, practice and experience. The ups and downs of your personal and professional life will influence how you empathasize, and with whom.

Common experience connects people through an instant bond and a shared level of trust. For example, I can easily empathize with others who have lost a job, started a business, had cancer, struggled with finances, or written a book because I too, have experienced those circumstances.

Just be aware, empathy does not mean you have to agree with others’ opinions or try to please everybody. Instead, consider the feelings of your employees, partners and colleagues when you make decisions. To cultivate this skill, react less, listen more and try to put yourself in the other person’s position.

Next time a client or employee is struggling, take a few moments to listen and, if you can relate, share a personal story.

(taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233709)

How Bill Gates Started

His father was a lawyer. A very successful one. His mother a teacher. Reading magazines in middle school he first thought about how cool it would be to open a company. You could say that’s how he started – with a childish dream. Many kids have dreams though, so what happened next?

How Bill Gates  Started To Hack

Next, Bill Gates saw a computer at 13. The school he went to bought one machine and a teletype. He paid for the time to use it. When money ran out, he hacked into the computer to use it for free. Then he got banned by the school. Then the school realized he had a rare skill so they asked him to use the computer and help them find bugs. He started to be a hacker.

Started to Hustle

Next, Bill scored 1590 out of 1600 on SAT. He went to Harvard. Only to find himself unsure about where to start – as a pre-law major or as something else? Reading Popular Mechanics one day in college he read an ad about a new computer. He called them to say that he wrote a programming language for it. (He hadn’t.) He asked if they might buy it. He hadn’t even started to write the language. But, he started to be a hustler. And, yes, the computer company was very interested in buying.

Being a Workaholic

Next Bill sat down with his friend Paul from high school, and the two wrote that programming language that he talked about on the phone. Bill wrote 50% of the code, using Harvard’s computers. Bill coded all day long, slept at the computer, woke up and picked up programming exactly where he left off. Bill started to be a workaholic.

Being a Copyright Guru

When they were done, Bill flew to New Mexico to show this new language he had written called BASIC. The computer company bought it for $3,000. But Bill kept the copyright. Did he somehow know it would be worth a lot in the future? So he started to be a copyright guru.

Started to Visualize the Future

Five years later IBM knocked on Bill’s door to see if he had written an operating system they could buy. Bill hadn’t. But he said, “Yes.” Real quick, he found an operating system from another person in Seattle and bought it. With the copyright. Then he sold it to IBM. For a lot more. This was DOS. And without copyright – they never asked for it. “Who would pay for software?” they reasoned. It’s the hardware that people are after. Bill saw the opportunity to make people pay for software. Bill started to see the future. He was now a visionary.

Bill Gates Started to Be a Perfectionist

Then Steve Jobs showed up. He wanted Bill to write new software that was visual. Programs like Excel and Words. Programs that looked human. Bill got down to work. Jobs thought Bill’s team’s product was tasteless, but Bill kept at it. He got better and better until he got really good. Bill started to be a perfectionist.

Being a Visual Thinker

But Bill was not going to spend his life working on Jobs’ brilliant ideas. Ideas, after all, are worthless until executed. Plus, Jobs’ ideas were stolen anyway. And so it was fair game to do the same. Bill remembered where he saw this idea of visual interfaces – it was Xerox. And now he wanted to create a visual operating system of his own. He called it Windows. He started to be a visual thinker.

Being a Tough Cookie

When Jobs heard about Windows, he went ballistic. He lashed out at Bill calling him down to Cupertino. In front of ten Apple employees Jobs accused Gates for robbing Apple. Bill listened calmly and replied that Jobs stole the idea just as he did himself. Bill started to be a tough cookie.

When Windows launched, Bill visualized a world where every home had a computer, and that computer was running Windows. Bill started to become very rich. And as his vision materialized, by 39 he became the richest man in the world.

(taken from http://fundersandfounders.com/how-bill-gates-started)

The Devil is in the Details

I came across this article (taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/271646) on how an entrepreneur should develop a skill of paying attention to details and going into the nitty gritties of the business.

'We’ve all heard the old saying -- “The devil is in the details." I personally believe it would be better to say, “Your ultimate success is in the details." Managing details is likely the most important skill of any successful business person. 

People who are weak in this area will tend to ignore the details. They will categorize them as “little things." But if you let enough “little things” build up, they will turn into a “big thing." Big things kill businesses! As the primary of your own business, you need to become an expert (and example to others) of how to deal with the details.

Examples of important details are reviewing, and understanding, your daily financial reports, emailing your key people with little “thank-yous” for a job well done, managing email in general and about 1000 more things.

If you are struggling in any of these areas, you already know it. Let this little piece be your slap in the face. Your company, and employees, are depending on you to make the venture successful.'

Health is Wealth

I am writing this post sitting in the hospital getting a full body health check up done. Once we start working, a lot us tend to ignore a lot of factors, which in the long run, will help keep us going.

For someone like me for whom my work is what drives me in life, I realise that if I have to keep working for the longest time possible, I need to keep a check on my health on a constant basis. Think of the time you are down with very high fever, at that point you can barely think about anything other than your health. Your work comes to a stand still.

Eventually everyone will have to suffer from health issues, which will disturb and hamper our work lives. Our effort should be to reduce this period by taking care of ourselves so that we can keep doing what we like doing for the longest time possible. Maybe late in life, but now is when I truly appreciate the saying - "Health is Truly Wealth".

Be on the Lookout

Since learning is endless, so are opportunities.We must develop a mindset and an acumen to spot the ones correct for us.

This works exactly the way you wait for a bus at a bus stop. You know which route you need to take (you realise your skill sets). You wait for the right bus (opportunity) to come and you jump on!

Never Be Conservative With What You Can Achieve With Your Business

Andrew Carnegie was the founder of the legendary Carnegie Steel Company, who made a vast fortune only to give it all away, becoming the first great entrepreneur turned philanthropist in history, a tradition that was followed by his contemporary, John D. Rockefeller and much later by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

Carnegie always believed in running his business top capacity and not bothering about the margin. He was always clear to his managers that he wanted his steel factories to operate at full steam, regardless of highs and lows of the economy or other factors. His goal was to be the biggest and the most dominant steel producer in the country, regardless of any external challenges.

What can you learn from this? Greatness can never be achieved if you are too moderate with your ambitions or too conservative. To achieve greatness, you must stretch you capacity to the maximum. 

Don’t worry about temporary pitfalls; always focus on a larger goal.

(taken from http://www.liverix.com/4-business-lessons-you-can-learn-from-andrew-carnegie)

Never Blame Others

This is a rule we must not only apply to work, but to life in general.

As humans, we have a tendency to find fault in what other people around us have done before looking within. I might be guilty of this also from time to time. We tend to forget that we ourselves have chosen these people to be around us. Be it team members of my startup or my spouse, it was my decision to put them here in the first place and now simply cribbing out what they have done wrong is something a loser would do. Anyone can make a mistake and if I genuinely feel that the person is not deserving, I better do something about it.

Be the Dumbest Person in the Room

Entrepreneurs should have a tendency to be the dumbest guys in the room, For this, they will need to hire the best people to join them in their startup. An entrepreneur should never feel insecure about letting good people in, thinking that the latter might end up becoming more valuable than the former and might end up starting out on their own as well.

A good entrepreneur will always take in the best people, motivate them and keep learning from them on a continuous basis.

The Thrill Will Go, The Passion Shouldn't

The definition of a thrill is temporary excitement, usually experienced for the first time.

It's thrilling to ride a roller coaster. The fifth time you have to ride it, though, it's more than a chore, it's torture.

The definition of the thrill is that it's going to be gone soon.

You might have been thrilled to go to your first job the first day. Or thrilled to see the first comment on your blog or thrilled the first time one of your books was translated into another language.

But after that? How can repeating it be thrilling?

The work of a professional isn't to recreate thrills. It's to show up and do the work. To continue the journey you set out on a while ago. To make the change you seek to make in the universe.

Thrilling is fine. Mattering is more important.

(taken from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/02/the-thrill-is-gone.html) 

Get a Mentor, Not a Teacher

Mentoring is supposed to be an intensive, individualized and private experience. If you aren’t getting one-on-one attention, you’ve got a teacher -- not a mentor.

Unfortunately, this presents a challenge for both parties. For mentors, it means turning down capable protégés if you’ve already committed to another. And for students, it could mean going to the trouble of identifying the perfect mentor only to be turned down for scheduling reasons -- which may or may not be explained to you.

Don’t push it. The goal of a mentoring relationship is progress, and that’s only possible if the guidance is individualized. There is a mentor or protégé out there for you, but you’ve got to wait for the timing to be right.

(taken from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/270752)

A Bad Habit We Must Avoid at all Costs

One bad habit which I feel I and a lot of us have is that we want to put our feet in many things at the same time. We feel we do this to hedge our risks, i.e. we feel that atleast one of them will work and give us a return. However, the downside is that we are not able to fully commit to something and hence the chances of succeeding in any become lower.

At a few times in my career till now, I have been found guilty of doing 2 things at the same time. I used to feel that I need to push either upto a certain point and will take a decision once I see either of them moving faster and reaching some scale. This has backfired for me and I now understand where I was going wrong. Once you commit to something, you should fully back it. A lot of 'noise' will be around you which will try to sway your focus. One should channelize all our efforts and energy in one direction, especially at a startup stage, to better our chances of succeeding.

The 3 P's of Entrepreneurship

New entrepreneurs need to rely on the three P's... Practice, Patience and Perseverance.

Keep PRACTICING what you know and what you learn -a Mastermind of no more than four other entrepreneurs a little behind and a little ahead of you can help tremendously with this.

PATIENCE is the absolute hardest part of entrepreneurship, and I keep the saying "Rome was not built in a day" on my desktop to remind me to be patient--all good things come to those who work smart, not just hard.

PERSEVERANCE is my most prized skill, and I learned it best while potty training my kids - I WILL NOT GIVE UP! (diapers are a pain)

(The author is Mary Kathryn Johnson, founder and host of the Parent Entrepreneur Power podcast)

Grow Step by Step

Entrepreneur's think in terms of stages or increments. They never commit large resources up-front, working within a single stage. The traditional manager, on the other hand, is given a budget to complete a project and he or she will force an outcome no matter what new facts may emerge during the life cycle of a project. Compare this approach to the entrepreneur who never takes such huge risks. Entrepreneurs manage risk by making decisions incrementally and they move forward very cautiously, moving to the next stage only if a specific event or action has occurred. This approach allows the entrepreneur to better control risk as opposed to the traditional manager who takes on major risk. By not wasting valuable resources, entrepreneurs not only manage risk better, but they preserve and protect value. They also have better control over the final outcome of projects.

(taken from http://www.exinfm.com)