Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2016. The description of Virgin Group as made up of more than 400 companies is a figure from 2016 or earlier, and the group’s size has changed since.
1. An entrepreneur’s goal is to own the business, not to work in it
We come from a culture of “if you own the shop, you mind the counter”, and that philosophy is exactly what burns entrepreneurs out and stops businesses from growing. At first, an entrepreneur’s job will probably be 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But if, over time, your business can’t run without you being there, you don’t really have a business; you have a job. You need to be able to build a business, or a structure, so that the company can run without you. Until you manage that, you can’t call yourself a true business owner.
2. Remember the basic needs and the other areas that shape success
Success in business is of no use to you if you can’t meet other basic human needs, such as your personal relationships, your health and even your own growth as a person and as a professional. Above all, though, business figures of the stature of Tony Robbins talk about the importance of feeling that, in your career as an entrepreneur, you are contributing to a greater cause. In other words, ultimately, a business that only makes money is not a good business.
Besides, success in business is not only about business and finance. When we looked at the six areas of life we need to master, we talked about mastering our emotions, our values, our time, our physical health and our relationships.
3. Winners anticipate, while losers just react to setbacks
It’s true that one of the most popular messages in the entrepreneurial world is “don’t be afraid of making mistakes, and learn from them”. But truer still is the fact that some mistakes can cost us far too much, and could even be fatal for our business.
There are many challenges, problems and setbacks that other business owners have already been through, and the key is to learn from those people and anticipate the mistake, so that we can avoid it in time. There’s no need to run into a wall if someone else has told us how to avoid it. We learn from mistakes, but we also learn from the ability to avoid them.
4. Face reality as it is
Forget how things used to be or how you’d like them to be. Look at the reality of your market, your company and your customers. Kodak made this fatal mistake.
Kodak invented the first digital camera in history in 1975, but refused to see reality for fear of losing its profitable business. Failing to see how its customers were changing drove the company into bankruptcy. Kodak would have preferred people to keep printing their photos on paper, and would have preferred those photos not to be stored digitally, but the truth is that what Kodak would have preferred didn’t matter; what mattered was what its customers preferred.
5. Many small businesses are better than one very big business
This is the philosophy of Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, which is made up of more than 400 companies. Branson knows what it’s like to see a company in danger, but he also knows what it’s like to have hundreds of other companies that are doing well. Perhaps that’s why Branson is willing to take risks on a new business idea or a new project.
It’s one of those pieces of investment advice we can apply to business: “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. In business, diversifying pays off.
(See: 9 tips from Richard Branson for entrepreneurs)
6. Your small business can compete with big companies
If you listen to your customers and focus entirely on them, David can beat Goliath, or at least keep Goliath from swallowing David (see: the theory that in the battle between David and Goliath, Goliath was the weak one).
There comes a point when some big companies forget why they were founded in the first place and focus solely on their own profits rather than on what benefits the customer. That’s where a small business can find its strength and attack the big company’s weakness.
Talk to your customers and listen to them. They’ll show you the way forward. And that brings us to the next point…
7. It’s not about selling, it’s about helping
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is clear about it: selling isn’t about convincing people; it’s about helping them. The truth is that we all make a living by selling something, and success belongs to those who know how to sell. But it’s also true that selling often has negative connotations, because we try to get people to buy things they don’t need, and we sometimes sell for our own benefit rather than the customer’s.
So we need to create a product or service that is genuinely useful and helps other people. That way, the salesperson’s job becomes far more effective and the customer comes back.
8. A good candidate isn’t always good enough
If you want to try your luck and/or survive in business, look for a reasonably competent employee. If you want your company to enjoy lasting success, hire only the best. I’ve sometimes watched companies run recruitment processes to find a professional when the person they needed was working for the competition: passionate, competent and with a deep knowledge of the market.
Ask who is the best in the field you want to hire for, and then sell that person on a future project at your company. Get that person on board. If you work with the best, you’ll be the best. I often use Elon Musk as an example of this.
Elon Musk’s recruitment strategy is very simple: hire the best possible person, whether it’s an engineer to build a rocket or someone to serve ice cream at the company. And this part is literal: when he was looking for someone to make frozen yogurt for the company, he told SpaceX’s head of talent to go to Pinkberry and bring back their employee of the month.
See also: 3 ways to accelerate success
Featured image: Sean X Liu, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
