There are men and there are gods, entrepreneurs are not gods but they are definitely not ordinary men either. It takes one thing to be dedicated towards a job and it takes another to create the job, entrepreneurs are basically mad people, yes, we admit we are mad and that’s why we look like fools chasing an idea hoping it would work out and dedicating every thing to it. The journey is very tough and every entrepreneur at one point in time would have gone to Inc.com or entrepreneur.com to look for motivational write ups and advices on how to run their business, Good news is we always get advice, bad news is most times they don’t apply to us.. Today I will be sharing with you some advice never given to you (if you have heard some, then sit down and read it again).

I know you will be expecting some cool advice that would involve candles, pats on the back and fur Elise in the background but Bleep that, here is another world and in this world what I am telling you is

1. BE A BOSS BABY

What do I mean? You need to act professional but dream like a baby, the problem with the world is that we loose our imaginative gifts due to the boring “maturity” that many people go through but real entrepreneurs don’t stop dreaming, your little idea that you’ve got should be the focus, dream of how large you want it to be, dream of the changes you want it to make in the world, dream and dream and you will always be determined not to fail because of the potential of your idea.

2. NO ONE GETS YOUR IDEA LIKE YOU

no matter how well you explain your idea to any friend or family or investor, they will never understand it the way you do and if they don’t understand it either they try to talk you out of it or they stand back and watch you start then wait till all is good and they jump in.

Imagine you are mark Zuckerberg and you are trying to explain Facebook in the idea stage to someone, you would probably hear “MySpace is doing that already”, personally if Mark explained it to me, I would have turned it down as a dumb idea but only mark knew the difference and the key strengths of Facebook.

3. YOUR IDEA IS WORTHLESS UNTIL DEVELOPED

you have an idea to make man immortal or you want to make us live on the sun. If you do not have anything tangible to show, it’s still as good as useless, many entrepreneurs want to invite investors with sweet talks and revenue forecast but honestly it doesn’t work that way, the first thing every investor says is “show me”, if we want to listen to promises then we have APC and the next presidential candidate for that, if you want your idea to be recognized then you have to build it first, no one sees you until you are born, we can’t start buying clothes for baby in the womb without knowing if it’s a boy or girl.

4. INVESTORS MIGHT BE DANGEROUS

lol.. You probably wondering if I’m mad, yes I am, I said so earlier. We all dream of that angel investor but do you really need them? Your company might need to go through the epic financial battle to help it stabilize, your company might need to be governed by leaders who suffered and learned the hard way to manage a company, investors might sometimes be like a jack knife that is used to cut open a cocoon, it makes the butterfly come out easy but in the long run, a greater damage is done to the butterfly. You dream of having a worldwide service and still want to take the easy road.. Sometimes for large businesses, the hard way is the better way.. You need to suffer to learn how to prosper ask Steve Jobs, alibaba and Spotify.

5. FORGET THE BOOKS, BE YOUR BOOK

there are numerous guides online but honestly they are all crap, entrepreneurship is just like falling in love, it’s different for every one, a book might tell you to start with only 1000 naira, it doesn’t mean your startup requires that amount to start, a book might say you must learn to code, it doesn’t mean you should code to be a good leader, a book might say don’t advertise or you don’t need much to advertise but your startup might need a large scale publicity to even make a name, they are no specific guidelines in entrepreneurship, the map changes according to he who welds it.

6. YOU NEED TO BE A BOSS AND A BEGGAR

It’s fun to beat your chest when you have your company and try to approach every thing and every one like Bill gates, that’s a wrong thing to do. You need to balance business and sentiments as an entrepreneur, how? When paying to develop your idea, when negotiating with someone on your level approach them with the personal touch, appeal to their sentiments and they will favour you like a brother, when approaching companies way above your level, don’t appear timid, don’t beg, be professional and you won’t be trampled on. I know you expected it to be the other way round.. But nop.. This is how we live.

7. YOU WILL SUFFER

I’m not speaking as Poseidon to odyssey but it is the truth, you will be optimistic and when something goes wrong, depression will be smiling at a corner, you will lay down the best strategy and something from no where will come to Bleep things up, others will work from 9-4, you will be mentally worked up from 12am-12am, you will loose focus and you will loose many friends, frustration will set in but if you dream big as I said in the first point, you will have enough driving force to scale through

8. THE MAP AND DESTINATION RULE

what’s this about? It’s a simple theory, the big dream you want to achieve is the destination and your idea is the map, if you focus too much on the destination and forget about the map you will get lost and if you focus on the map only and you don’t raise your head up, you will stroll in to the Bush, balance is key.

So there you have it, no credits in this blog, the post is over.

GO AND CHANGE THE WORLD


For more interesting posts on several issues you can check out the blog

Source https://thegreatblackman./2017/08/19/advice-never-given-to-entrepreneurs/

I'm not sure if to laugh or be angry at the mods for not pushing this to front page when it was posted..this short piece is rich and powerful.