Entrepreneurship may one of the hardest career paths, but nothing comes close to the sheer satisfaction and reward of building something yourself from the ground up. One thing’s for sure, it’s an exciting journey that’s always in progress. Even if you’ve smashed your goals for yourself and your business, there is this constant will to take things further or to the next level. And that’s great!
To keep you inspired, we’ve rounded up some of the most important lessons drawn from the experiences of the world’s top founders. Their companies may be global household names today, but in even in that lies a lesson – we all start somewhere, no matter how small.
Start small, think big
On that note, we’re reminded of Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook simply as a means for students from the same campuses to get to know each other.
He famously developed the platform from his Harvard dorm room, and while this was indeed a small start, his vision was laser-focused on what it would become. And now here we are, almost three billion global users later, multiple platforms acquired, and the formation of an advertising giant.
Trust your gut
In his moving Stanford address in 2015, Apple Inc. founder Steve Jobs said “Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
It may sound cliche, but on this journey of entrepreneurship, you are your biggest ally.
That’s why it’s important that you believe in yourself, your convictions, and your ability to achieve the goals you set out for yourself, no matter the odds. How far you and your business can go is only determined by how far you believe you can take it! Don’t lose sight of the vision.
Find solutions
For those still starting out, it’s important to note that many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs found their success by finding a solution to a problem they’d noticed in everyday life.
For example, Melanie Perkins, the founder of the design platform Canva, noticed how unnecessarily complicated traditional design tools were for students. She’d encountered a problem she knew needed fixing and had the conviction to build something that made design more accessible for non-designers.
Never accept the status quo as the end-all-and-be-all. If you find something problematic, chances are, many other people experience the same and are just waiting for an alternative. This certainly was the case with Perkins and graphic design software.
Your people will make or break your business – look after them
This heading says it all. So many businesses, from start-up to conglomerate level, have demonstrated that if your people are not valued, your business can’t thrive.
When employees feel taken care of, they perform at their best.
In the last few years, many Silicon Valley workers have started protesting conditions in the workplace and exposing unethical internal policies, which negatively impacted these businesses. It is not easy to repair an organisation with an unsavoury public image, especially when it relates to the way they treat their people.
Keep an eye on the Outsourcery blog for more advice on how best to journey through the entrepreneurship life.
