Facts about Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs

...without crossing the line:

• Don’t make assumptions: make sure you have all the facts.
• Make sure your conversation serves a purpose: proving a point isn’t a productive goal.
• Plan out what you’re going to say: wording is everything, and that needs preparation.
• Address the phenomenon, not the person.
• Aim for a positive outcome: propose potential solutions.

We should accept and embrace failure not as an enemy but as a teacher. Through failure, we learn to accept human frailty and realize that the journey to entrepreneurial success is not a straight line.

To be successful, your mind and body should have the ability to flow and adapt to any situation. 

There should be less rigidity and structure in strategy and more flexibility and mobility. 

Bruce Lee advocated efficiency in his teachings: How one allocates his time determines the extent of his productivity.

You should not spend countless hours trying to perfect a technique that has no place within your scope of capabilities or use in your system.

We have to condition ourselves to move past our Glass Ceiling. 

We can do these through improved knowledge, increasing our personal bandwidth, experience, and accepting our inherent strengths and weaknesses.

1. Being an entrepreneur means facing challenges. Despair not, keep trying, your lucky break may be close. 
2. Have high aspirations. Chris dreamt of being a stockbroker even when he was struggling as an intern. 
3. Never show your weaknesses. Chris was a homeless father but he behaved and presented himself in a way no one would think him so.
4. Don’t let others opinions hinder your journey. Chris’s partner thought his idea of becoming a stockbroker was an absurd. 
5. Work towards achieving what you want. While working as a salesman, Chris encounters a successful stockbroker driving a nice car, decides he wants a similar life and starts working relentlessly towards it.
6. The current economic status won’t determine your future. Be adaptable and don’t allow it to effect long term planning. 

Innovation can be achieved by mature, large companies, not only by startups.

While most innovation comes from startup companies, some of the top innovative companies are mature and large (Apple was founded in 1976 and generates $228 billion. Google: 1998, $78 billion, Microsoft: 1975, $87 billion.) The myth acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy and deters large companies from attempting to innovate like startups.

• The foundational virtue of entrepreneurship is simply courage in the face of limitations. 
• The quality of effective entrepreneurial leadership combines a practical modesty with a frontiersman's ability to step fearlessly into the unknown. 

1. Passion. Passion cannot survive without a path.
2. Path. This is your plan for getting there, at the pace you set.
3. Positivity. No success is possible without cultivating an optimistic perspective.
4. People. Without the power of people around you to support you, mentor you, and otherwise love you, your passion will fall flat and your plan will never get done.
5. Perseverance. None of these P’s will work if you don’t fuel them with perseverance and hard work.
6. Productivity - how you use your time to make it count. Productivity pulls all of the other P’s together and enables you to love your life.

Use the 1-3-5 rule when putting together her daily to-do list.

• one big-ticket project to tackle
• three medium tasks
• five small things. 

This keeps you from feeling overwhelmed by an endless list, and also helps keep you focused on just those items.

We never arrive. We work hard to succeed, and then we have to work twice as hard to maintain that success.

It’s a slow grind. And it starts with our mindset.

Oprah Winfrey (CEO Of Oprah Winfrey Network): Considered one of the most influential women in the world, she is an American media mogul, producer, talk show host, author and philanthropist.

She grew up in poverty and by the time she was fourteen, she suffered physical abuse, molestation, and the death of her first newborn. A few years later, she won a beauty pageant, got her degree in speech and performing arts and became an ABC news anchor.

No matter how busy successful people are, they always spend at least an hour a day (thus five hours a week) learning or practicing. And they do this across their entire career.

Barack Obama is far from the only leader to credit his success to reading. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Mark Cuban and Jack Ma are all voracious readers. 

Build and maintain a unique connection with the employee, using your listening skills and attention to detail. Avoid the one-size-fits-all approach.

• Break the skill into various small parts, remembering that every big skill is a collection of many sub-skills.
• Identify the essential sub-skills needed to give you the maximum advantage.
• Practice the most important part that you have discovered, using the 80:20 principle in your learning.

The Pareto principle states that 20% of your activities (even lesser) deliver 80% results (even more) in almost every area of your life.

It is not humanly possible to practice all in a twenty-hour stretch.

A distributed practice learning method is achievable. It would roughly mean 45 minutes of practice for a period of thirty days in a row.

For instance, writing every evening for 30 minutes can give you a reward of a 25 000-word book in a 5 - 6 week period.

Entrepreneurship is a selfless endeavor. It is only when you genuinely are solving people’s problems, that you are going to win.

You will only make money if you really help your customers, not because you want to make money.

This digital revolution is giving rise to new kinds of entrepreneurship. New technologies are amplifying and accelerating each other.

There will be entrepreneurs who focus on inventing new digital technologies, those who use existing technology to disrupt old business models and finally those who cultivate the new tech to offer customized products or services.

It takes about 6,400 hours of class time and studying to get a 4-year degree. Assume that it takes you only 5,000 hours to master your field.

While you are happy that you've prepared for your profession, the knowledge you've learned is fast becoming outdated. We can safely assume that in 10 years, 50% of the facts in the field would be outdated. This means that for you, just to keep up in your current field, you'd need to learn 5 hours per week, 50 weeks a year.

Challenging times can create even more obstacles between you and success. But entrepreneurship is about leaning into the obstacles and finding and creating opportunities in places others have overlooked or written-off.
As others run away from the chaos, there will be more opportunity than ever to deliver real value to the world.

Even in an age where laptops rule, notetaking is still the tool of choice for highly successful students, entrepreneurs, and leaders.

Tim Ferris attributes his notetaking style as one of the most important skills of his success. Bill Gates and Richard Branson are both fanatic note-takers.

There isn't a one-size-fits-all note-taking strategy, you have to find one that is right for you.

This simple and highly systematic note-taking method helps you to understand key ideas and relationships easily. Best used for:

• Gathering information from a seminar or presentation.
• Recording college lecture notes.
• Studying literature or a textbook.

1. Write down the lecture name/seminar/reading topic at the top of the page.
2. Write down notes in the largest section of the page (right-hand column). Transcribe only the facts using bulleted lists and abbreviations. Take notes of questions that arise.
   3. Create question cues in the left-hand column that you will use later as a study tool.
3. At the bottom section of the page, summarize the main ideas of your notes. Ask yourself how you would explain this information to someone else. Keep it concise.

Read over your notes in the left-hand column and summary at the bottom as often as possible. Quiz yourself with the questions you've included in the left column. Repeat often to increase your recall and deepen your comprehension.

1. Create a title on top of the page.
2. Start building your ideas index: As you're reading, list the topics and ideas that seem to be important and reoccurring. Use short sentences. Use one idea per line.
3. Record the pages: Underneath every idea or concept heading, record the page where the reference appears.
4. Highlight the quote/passage/reference: When you find quotes and passages relating to your key ideas, highlight this place in the book you're reading.

Your index list will grow as you continue reading. You will no longer read every annotation. The index will direct you to exactly where to find it.

1. Determine the columns you'll need. e.g. date/event/impact/pros & cons, etc. The average amount of columns is usually between 4 and 6.
2. Create a document title on the top of the page.
3. Label your columns with the name of your categories.
4. Start note-taking. Write out each fact under its relevant column. Keep it concise by using abbreviations, shortcuts, and your own personal code devices.

There is a high degree of skepticism around the idea that entrepreneurship can be taught in a classroom.

Numerous successful entrepreneurs never went to business school or graduated from college. The abstract analytical models of a typical business school curriculum is generally in conflict with imagination, disruption, and counterintuitive action needed for entrepreneurship. Still, many schools feel there is a place for formal education when looking at entrepreneurship.

Three Top North American MBA programs developed their own philosophies in teaching entrepreneurship:

• The first approach focused on instilling an appreciation for the value of real-life experience in an "operating theater" classroom setup where the professor pokes and prods on startups.
• The second approach is focused on "rewiring" students to take action instead of falling into analysis paralysis. This approach invites students to accept a certain amount of risk.
• The third approach emphasized the types of resource and risk optimization that is offered by the more conventional business school. This philosophy may help more mature startups avoid common pitfalls, but it is less useful for entrepreneurs dealing with extreme uncertainty.

A consumer spends money and follows trends while an investor puts capital to work and takes advantage of trends.

Chronic consumers often go broke, and persistent investors often get rich.

Individuals who have bad habits ingrained in them will take more effort and self-discipline to make the change. Know that you are able to make a switch. It's okay to take baby steps and work your way to becoming an investor.

• Invest in yourself.
• Start tracking your expenses.
• Identify and improve your spending weaknesses.
• Get all bad debt out of your life.
• Automate your savings and invest your excess income.

You'll never be rich working for somebody else" is bad career advice. The idea that entrepreneurship is the best route to riches and freedom is false.

• Many of the wealthiest people earned their money working for other people, e.g. CEOs, financiers, engineers, doctors, etc.
• The assumptions that entrepreneurship offers a better path to wealth than working for others is bad economics.

Entrepreneurs do not generally out-earn their peers, according to a review.

• Entrepreneurship has a higher variance. Some people will win big and others will win nothing
• It's an attractive profession as most people would love to be their own boss. This generally makes entrepreneurship a worse way to make money.
• The barriers to entry are typically low.

However, these points apply to every profession. The risk-adjusted, expected income and barriers to entry should be roughly equal.

• If you’re feeling overwhelmed with the idea of doing more of the things that matter most to you, your calendar is overscheduled, or your physical space is filled with items that don’t serve you and your family, minimalism will help you make more space in your life.
• Space to take bigger risks, try something new or simply spend more time with the people you care about.
• Over time, minimalism can potentially help in making a radical lifestyle change like moving to a new city, changing careers or exploring entrepreneurship.

• Girls Scouts is an organisation for girls ages 5 through 18. The organisation combines life skills, STEM, the outdoors, and entrepreneurship with civic engagement and deliver essential girl-led programming.
• Girl Scouts sell cookies.
• There are 12 essential types of Girl Scout Cookies, but not all cookies are available everywhere.

The idea is quite simple – do not try to predict what cannot be predicted; instead, focus on what is within your control, take actions to make progress and course correct as the future unfolds.

The effectual approach can be summarized thus - control and shape the future, rather than predict and plan for it.

Students come up with a venture idea and move it towards a potential business opportunity using the concepts and tools learned in the classroom.

It is through this lived experience that they come to recognize the utility of an entrepreneurial mindset.

It gives them the confidence to embark on an entrepreneurial journey and equips them with the tools to increase their odds of success.

Chasing the latest investment trend, the latest crypto-coin or whatever is not how to make massive amounts of wealth. Trends are ultimately outside of your control & this creates high risks and stress on your part.

Taking control is the solution. Start a business! You are in control of you. Much more than a market. While most look at the new-rich successful investors as the heroes, the ones we should look up is the people who created these businesses in the first place. Emulate them!

1. High-performing business leaders focus on their future vision, life values and their purpose for doing anything.
2. Optimized business leaders get that way through the personal growth work they do daily to create a strong and healthy mindset.
3. These entrepreneurs tap into their inner strength and a commitment to keep their minds sharp. They understand that the right mindset is key to taking consistent action that leads to growth in their business. 

High-performing entrepreneurs understand that money does not equal happiness. Real wealth is a complete view of business growth.

Being wealthy means you have the freedom to spend your time on the things that are important to you and a life that lets you do all the things that bring you joy.

To become a high-performing business leader, you have to commit to optimizing every area of your life. It takes more than money to create true freedom. 

High-performing entrepreneurs understand the purpose behind the work they're doing.

You need a vision for where you're going if you plan to get there and experience the benefits of entrepreneurship .

Wake up each day with a plan, purpose and drive. The business growth you seek is on the other side of consistency.

Do you have a talent or proven track record that could become the basis of a profitable business?

The other day I spoke to a man who had spent years managing cleaning services at a hospital. Today he runs his own successful domestic and business cleaning service. And the examples of professionals who have started their own agencies or consulting service businesses are legion.

To find a viable business idea, ask yourself, "What marketable skills and experience do I have? Will people be willing to pay for my products or services?"

Write your ideas down. Let them swirl around in your head and coalesce. And keep an open mind and continue to assess everything you read and hear from an entrepreneurial point of view.

You don't want to run with the first business idea you think of; you want to discover the idea that's best suited to your skills and desires. Dream, think, plan - and you'll be ready to transform that business idea into the business you've always wanted.

• Builds reputation: Successful business leaders set themselves apart from the rest of the pack by mastering the skills such as patience, communication, motivation etc. that lead to success. Patience enables us the ability to work steadily toward our goals. When goals are reached consistently, we build our reputation. Great reputations are developed through persevering, not giving up.

Entrepreneurship refers to the concept of developing and managing a business venture in order to gain profit by taking several risks in the corporate world. Simply put, entrepreneurship is the willingness to start a new business. Being an entrepreneur is a risk and reward endeavor. No one can tell you how hard you need to work to become successful. Hopefully, you can think of these tips differently and see their benefits.

The number one reason small businesses fail it’s due to money matters here 82% of private companies shut their entryways in view of income issues. In case you will begin and maintain an independent company, you need to have adequate subsidizing assets.

For instance, beginning an online business site will require significantly less capital and foundation than, say, an assembling organization.

The main goal of prototyping is to bring your idea into the world to see if it can be made. Then, you have to examine the strengths and weaknesses of your product by comparing it to what else is out there in the marketplace. 

Add a design element but don’t compromise the fit. It’s ok to frankenstein parts of existing products together to create your prototype.

• Ask your trusted testers: what do you like about this product? What are the three things you would change about it? Would you use this?
• Negative feedback is really important at this stage and you need to know what to do with it. 
• Make a change of something you didn’t think about or, you don’t agree with and move on your path. 
• You need to be harder on yourself and continue asking yourself: is it your first choice? Does it really solve a really important need? Would you want to have this business option over something else in the market?

Study aspects of your product that are not as good as something else that’s in the market and figure out a way to potentially market your product so that doesn’t become a weakness, instead, it becomes a strength.

Show the other side of this objection and what the benefit is. Figure out how to sell people on your prototype as you make it.

1. Is this prototype scalable?  
2. How quickly can you make this product?  
3. What are your payment terms?  
4. Can we negotiate?  
5. Can you make every part of this product at the same rate?  
6. What’s the minimum amount of product I can order at once?  
7. What will my total costs be?  
8. What happens if you don’t ship me my products on time?  
9. Are there any circumstances that might cause this manufacturing price to change?   

You should convince your manufacturer, customer, or buyer that there’s an urgent problem that needs solving. There are four types of people you’ll be speaking with:

1. The director is someone who wants you to be very concise and to the point. 
2. The socializer is someone who wants to get to know you a little bit better. 
3. The relator is someone who wants you to connect with them and care about them personally. 
4. The thinker is someone who wants to know every detail about your product, whether they use it or not. 

There are several classes you can take to get more comfortable with selling products or services to strangers. 

• Take an acting or stand-up comedy class. Both will force you to confront your vulnerability and get you accustomed to talking to strangers.
• Take a debate class. It will push you to analyze two ways to look at an issue. 
• Take a public speaking class. Anything to get you more comfortable in front of a crowd.

• Paid advertising could mean a couple of different things: Maybe you decide to pay a spokesperson or an influencer to talk about your product or service in a sponsored Instagram post. No matter what you choose, advertising probably isn’t going to be cheap.
• Organic advertising is a slow process but it could be effective. Instead of paying someone to show off your product, send free samples or free trials to a few people. Another thing you can do is to flash out your product during public appearances or post on your own social media some pictures or make videos about your product or service.

The story of your brand is what you’re going to want to tell people when you’re making your product. The more open you’re willing to be about who you are and what you stand for, the more likely it that people will relate to you and therefore your product.

Ask yourself, where are you gonna get the most awareness in priority? Is there a podcast that is going to speak directly to your customers? Is there a tv show that you could aspire to be on? Is there a certain platform that you would want to be featured on? Make a list of it.

Use humor and speak to the customer, not at the customer. Talk to the customer like you are at dinner with your friends, don’t give a marketing speak. 

Don’t feel like you have to try to act like the experts and put all sophisticated language and polish on things. Just say “here it’s what this is and here’s why it’s your best option.” You have to be super vulnerable.

There’s a lot of types of filters you can think about when you’re figuring out what to post on your socials. I’m not talking about the usual filters, I’m talking about some questions that will help you shape your content, will it make people feel good? will it cause people to laugh or smile? will it make viewers learn something? will it help someone?

If the answer is no to just the first one, then that should be enough to keep you from posting it. You want people to associate your brand with positive thoughts.

It’s all about the four P’s: product, price, placement, positioning. You might have an amazing product, but it’s not going to sell if you don’t put it on the market for the right price. So the four P’s means that the product must be the right one, the price will depend on the product, placement it’s about the distribution of it, and positioning it’s all about naming and the packaging.

When you think about your own product, do you think of it as premium? Mid-tier? Value-based? Determining this will help you price it properly and position it on the market,

Keep in mind that perceived value often has little to do with your product’s price, it really hinges on whether you can convince customers that your product can and will satisfy their personal needs. Some ways you can play with perceived value:

• Play up the exclusivity of your product: consider the effect of phrases like “limited time only” or “special offer” on potential buyers.
• Back up the excellence of your product: eliminate customer’s hesitance about whether or not your product work by offering a money-back guarantee. 

When you’re creating your brand, you have to be very clear on where you want to show up in the marketplace.

• Do you want to be premium?
• Do you want to be mid-tier?
• Do you want to be a value-based brand?

You have to figure out:

• Where you want to compete?
• Where do you want to show up?

• Clear goals. People know what they’re aiming for. So they feel purpose-driven in what they’re contributing.  
• Trust. Trust your employees and they’ll trust you.  
• Purpose. Beyond making money give your employees a reason to be at work.  
• Employees need to feel empowered in their position to make mistakes, to do the job the way they think it should be done, and not be micro-managed.  
• Fair compensation. For everybody. Show your employees that you value their time.  
• Share wins. Consider treating your employees to some spoils when you hit a home run.  
• Freedom to make mistakes and learn.

• Entrepreneurs often adopt a set of thinking tools that are often rare for normal professionals.
• One major tool is rapid prototyping. Many people see this as a product development strategy. 
• But in reality, it’s an abstract thinking tool that applies to a lot more than product R&D.
• Sometimes the right way to solve a problem is simply to do a lot of things and see what works!
• The essence of this thinking tool is that you go out and try a bunch of things, without waiting around for a perfect answer.
• It also requires listening carefully for feedback, so you can get hints as to what to do next. 

Any battle, whether war or business is already lost when approached with complete ignorance and misunderstanding.

Should the armies from Winterfell and Dragonstone approach the army of the dead without knowing only fire or dragonglass can destroy the army of the dead, it was a lost battle right from the start.

Lesson - do your research, understand your market, know your customer. Use facts (data) and less assumptions in your approach to business or you may be wiped out quickly.

Everyone in Winterfell had an important part to play. From those gathering food prior to the war, to those making weapons from dragonglass, to actual war frontliners, it took everyone’s effort to win a successful war.

Let us not forget those like Sansa who could only encourage the weak, and of course, Mellisandre, the horrible witch everyone disliked - she actually ignited fire on the Dothraki army blades and gave them more hope.

Lesson - everyone in an organisation has value to add to the success of a company. Find out how they can value, and let them know how it makes a difference.

It would be unwise to assume you got it all covered. No! Business isn’t always predictable. Even some the biggest of reputable businesses have faced sudden business challenges, some of then wiped out of existence.

During the war at Winterfell, they completely missed a risk - if Khaleesi isn’t able to see their signals from afar, she couldn’t come riding down her dragon to light the trenches and protect Winterfell from the army of the dead.

Lesson - have a disaster recovery strategy and plans in place to keep your business in operation. Simulate scenarios and be prepared.

Danny and Jon led the armies at the war. Prior to this, they were already dealing with internal and sensitive issues and still had to focus on the mission - to win the war.

There were times when both had to fly on their dragons and rain fire from above, but there were moments both found themselves on the ground fighting with swords.

Lesson - to lead anything successfully, you must first manage yourself, then lead others. Inspiring your team helps build a collective vision and teamwork.

You need to give a bit more insight into the business element by clearly explaining your business model, the market, the facts and figures, the competitive landscape, and the go-to-market strategy.

People often start off with the hero’s plan as the first act, which isn’t the best route to take. While you absolutely want to highlight that there’s a big market among other factors that show the viability of your product or solution early on, you don’t have to get so deep into it at the very beginning.

Over 50 years ago, economist William Baumol noted that economics was a theory of the economy that left no place for entrepreneurship. Economic models, simply put, were “entrepreneur-less.” Economics is no better today; in fact, it’s arguably worse. It focuses on faceless economic forces in formalized models. Modern economics is to a great extent a theory of equilibrium and efficient outcomes. But it is not a theory of the market.