26 Short Entrepreneurship Lessons I Learned From Starting My Own Six-Figure Consulting Business
“Someone with half your IQ is making 10x as you because they aren’t smart enough to doubt themselves.”
Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash
Your business growth rate will never exceed your learning growth rate. An unlimited budget for learning will create unlimited potential for growth. Invest heavily in courses, books and masterminds. Keep learning, and the business grows. Stop learning, the business dies.
Technology makes one-person businesses lucrative and viable. You don’t need a big team to achieve big results. Exploit the leverage offered by the internet. If you’re high value, work for yourself. If you’re not high-value, go back to step #1.
Don’t take criticism from people who you wouldn’t take advice from. And don’t take advice from people you wouldn’t take criticism from either. Learn to scrutinize and prioritize feedback.
You don’t need to be amazing to start, but by starting you become amazing. Every step you take will illuminate the next step. If you never start, you never know where to go next.
Perfect conditions do not exist. There will always be an excuse not to start your business. Inflation, recession, interest rates. Insert whatever excuse you want to use. At the end of the day, you either start a business or you don’t. There is no in-between.
If you can’t embrace uncertainty, you’ll never be an entrepreneur. Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty. That’s why most people will never be entrepreneurs.
A strong personal brand is the best product you can build. A personal brand allows you to build intimacy at scale. Your brand allows your audience to build an emotional connection with you without your active input.
Everyone underestimates the importance of interpersonal skills. Being a good person, that is reliable and communicates openly and effectively will create more opportunities for you than any technical skill ever will.
Your reputation counts for everything. With the internet, a poor reputation spreads like wildfire. People talk. But if you become known to deliver high-quality work and are good to work with, you’ll never run out of business. Word of mouth is still the best form of marketing.
Learn from everyone around you. Bad teachers can teach you more than good teachers. Avoiding what not to do in business is more than 60% of the battle. And sometimes avoiding stupidity is easier than striving for brilliance.
Being an employee brainwashes your mind. Employees think: I am not paid enough to solve this problem. Entrepreneurs think: I can get paid a lot to solve this problem. See the difference?
Learn to cold email and DM on social media. The number of people who message me saying ‘hey’ or ‘hi’ tells me how bad most people are at this skill. I never respond to them. And don’t expect anyone to respond to you either if you are doing this.
Instead, do this. Make it personal. Add value. Interact with their content first. Tell this person how they impacted your life. Get to the point quickly. Leave room for them not to reply to you. Your approach should be: give, give, give and then ask.
Entrepreneurship is not sexy. I work smart and hard. You’re naive if you think ‘working smarter’ will beat your competition. There will be plenty of smart and hard-working people.
“Every transaction is paid for at least three times. First, with the money you pay. Second, with the time you spend. Third, with the reputation, you create through your behavior.” — James Clear
The great gift of business is learning how to fail in public. Most people will never start businesses because they are scared of looking stupid or the judgment by people. Starting your own business trains you to face your fears and occasionally fail.
Your business dies when it is no longer flexible and adaptable. The famous last words of most dying businesses include: ‘this is the way it has always been done.’
Intelligence without self-belief is useless. “Someone with half your IQ is making 10x as you because they aren’t smart enough to doubt themselves.” — Ed Latimore
There are two competing truths in business. Your business needs new ideas to survive. But you get paid for your unique execution, not your unique ideas.
What looks like overnight business success is usually the tipping point of decades of hard work. Every entrepreneur I admire spent decades in obscurity and uncertainty. They also have a laundry list of failures before they became wildly successful.
Entrepreneurs are human. And humans need a supportive community. Curate your environment. Don’t let negativity in. Don’t let people who doubt you get close to you. They are cancer to your goals. To achieve your business dreams, you might have to leave a few people behind.
Be more concerned with the direction of your business, not the speed. If you’re going to spend time climbing up the slippery ladder of entrepreneurship, just make sure the ladder is leaning in the right direction.
Every business plan looks great until you get your first customer. The best form of business preparation is not planning for a perfect scenario, but creating a market entry strategy that can handle uncertainty and change.
Business questions are ONLY answered through starting. You don’t grow a business through theory, only through practice. The worst action you can make in business is taking none at all. Indecision is still a decision.
Create a business to solve a problem at scale. “Understanding a person’s hunger and responding to it is one of the most potent tools you’ll ever discover for getting through to anyone you meet in business or your personal life.” — Mark Goulston
You don’t need permission to become an entrepreneur. The world’s best entrepreneurs are neither decreed nor degreed. They simply saw a problem, thought they could solve it and scaled it. Stop waiting for permission, just start.
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