Principles That Successful Entrepreneurs Follow To Get Succeed

Anil Soni Blog

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Steve Jobs

Studies have shown that successful entrepreneurs use the means that are available to guide them to success. The means can be described with five principles:

1) Bird-in-hand Principle

When the best entrepreneurs set out to build a new business, they start with their available means. What cards do you have to play with? It does not matter if they are good or bad. You have what you have, and you take it from there.

The means you set out with are:

  • What is your personality: Are you an introvert or an extrovert, a nice guy, or a pain in the ass guy? Are you a perfectionist like Steve Jobs, or a relaxed guy like Mark Zuckerberg?
  • Something about you: Your education, work experience, leisure time activities, and knowledge from books and online sources.
  • Who do you know: Family, schoolmates, former colleagues, and the ones you have not met yet

 

2) Affordable Loss Principle 

It is often said that real entrepreneurs take big economic risks in order to win big - or lose big. But the most successful entrepreneurs limit risks by understanding what they can afford to lose at each step, instead of seeking big or no opportunities. Instead of borrowing money to produce numerous products at once, they produce one product, start selling, earn money, and then produce more products.

 

3) Crazy Quilt Principle

When a prosperous entrepreneur does not have the resources he needs, he seeks partners. He takes in partners early on in the venture as a way to fill gaps and reduce uncertainty. Partners can be family, friends, and people he meets on the way or seeks out for strategic purposes.

 

4) Lemonade Principle

A successful entrepreneur knows that the future is uncertain, and in a split second everything can change. Instead of making plans for the worst-case scenario, embrace change, and make the best of it. Often, an unexpected incidence can get absorbed in your company and used as a stepping stone to innovate and make better products.

The Americans use the term "Make Lemonade" when they face a bad situation. By this, they mean, that you will have to find a good way to tackle an uninvited problem with sour lemon, which they cannot eat. The solution might be to sprinkle the lemon with sugar, add water, and make nice lemonade. You can turn a bad situation into a good one.

 

5) Pilot-in-the-plane Principle

Most people want to control their own lives; it also applies to successful entrepreneurs. The four other principles are used to increase control over one's life as an entrepreneur. When you do the work based on your own resources, you will incorporate it with people you have chosen to work with. Do not invest more than you can afford to lose, and see the obstacles as opportunities. If you work like this, you will have a better chance of controlling your own life. At least you’d have a much better chance than if you had to manage resources controlled by external sources. This principle can be described as if you were the pilot of your own plane (your business). You decide the course, and you steer clear of the immediate threats around the thunderstorms and ash clouds. You never fly higher than you should, and you always keep an eye out for a proper landing area.