In life, you never want to find yourself in a situation where you’re reinventing the wheel. Instead, it’s better to take what people already know already and build on it.
That’s why, in this post, we are focusing on incredible advice from entrepreneurs who already made it. No – their words of wisdom won’t solve all the problems you’ll face. But they will give you a framework you can use going forward.
Make Friends With Everyone
Entrepreneurs often think that they need to have a tough exterior to get ahead. But that can become counterproductive, especially when it gets in the way of relationships.
Robert Johnson Is the co-founder of BET. He’s gone on record as saying that you need to make your friends before you need them. In business he says, everything is personal. So the better you can get along with people, the more you can ask of them in the future.
Discipline Isn’t A Dirty Word
Getting to the top of the business world requires a massive amount of effort and dedication to the cause. But there’s a sense today that you can take shortcuts. According to ActOne Group’s founder, Janice Howroyd, that’s not true. You have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else and do the hard things. Only that way can you build real value that customers will appreciate. Doing the difficult things automatically generates massive value.
Approach Your Career Like An Entrepreneur
Even if you want a regular career, you should still approach it like an entrepreneur, according to the founder of Black Enterprise Magazine. Your job is something you do for you, not just to put money in another person’s pocket.
Entrepreneurs Can Create Their Own Luck
There’s an idea going around that the rich just “get lucky.” If they hadn’t come up with an idea, somebody else would have done, and things would have worked out in their favour.
This argument, however, misses one important point according to Virgin founder, Richard Branson – the fact that people create their own luck.
For instance, imagine you’re a client and you go to a brand’s office space to make a deal. If the premises look amazing, then it encourages the client to sign on the dotted line because they will assume that they are getting quality. But if it looks run down, they might decide to go elsewhere.
In this way, something as simple as an office renovation can improve your luck. Small tweaks to the way you and your business present themselves can have a huge impact.
Entrepreneurs Should Learn From Their Competitors, But Don’t Copy Them
Jack Ma, Alibaba’s CEO, is famous for telling people to learn from their competitors, but never to copy them.
By learning, you get to avoid all the things that they did wrong. But when you copy them, you inevitably get into price wars.
Always look out for pitfalls but do your own thing. Don’t try to be anybody else. That won’t work.
So, which of these pieces of advice will you take onboard going forward?
Collaborator