Opportunity creation and innovation are critical to success. We need to execute on our strategic plans faster than ever before. This is true whether you are an entrepreneur or a team member for a Fortune 500 company. Entrepreneurs are the best at doing it all. They are masters at it.
Yes, serial entrepreneurs are peculiar. Their attire and behavior confirms it. Little can be learned by judging this book by their characteristics. You need to dig deep to understand them. What is important is how they think! How do they create these successful start-ups? Why are they so good at beating the odds? Who raised these people? What rock did they crawl out from under? Those questions have little to do with how they think or what they care about.
All serial entrepreneurs start their companies the same way. It looks something like this:
- They start as loners. They do not fit in the mold society wants to pigeon hole them into. They have a goal and they start small. Really small!
- Pull themselves up by the bootstraps. It may be a full time job to hitch their ride to their start-up; it's all about funds and a job to fuel the ride. They fund it through minimal initial revenue, if any. At most through the support a significant other – or a full-time gig they hate. The later is just a means to an end.
- Baby steps are proving grounds. Once they take their offer to a select few, they pause, regroup, reload and modify their offer and its presentation.
- Crawl, don't leap. The next step is to stick the toes deeper into the water. They never jump in with both feet. They take what they learned from the baby steps to their crawl. They know that upsetting a few will go viral. They have to get their core offer right!
- Rinse and repeat. Building a start-up into a viable and sustainable small business takes patience, action, advancement of knowledge and perseverance. They've mastered this!
- An idea is worthless without execution. Creating a foundational strategic plan is indeed important. Gaining ideas from the likes of Brendon Burchard, Ryan Deiss or Jill Konrath indeed keeps the creative juices flowing. However, let's actually act on those ideas and execute a plan. Serial entrepreneurs are masters at it.
This approach is a wonderment. It takes little time to launch. Your prospects and customers will give input that can immediately be acted upon in small steps. If you plan does not attract and convert in a profitable fashion, you have lost little and have the resources to battle for market share once again. If you're successful, you now have the foundation for a sustainable company that can act quickly.
Serial entrepreneurs can teach you an awful lot about being creative, fluid, responsive and acting on opportunity.
Copyright 2015 Viral Solutions LLC
by Thomas von Ahn | Chief Elephant Slayer
