I’ve been building businesses for nearly 20-years now, it’s in my blood and something I find incredibly fulfilling – I can’t think of my life without it.
That’s perhaps the reason (or even the result of) following entrepreneurs who align their entire lives around their passion for making a difference, being everything they can be through business.
Look, we all have to make a living, most of us want to contribute to society beyond what we do today and the reality is that your career or business is a very significant portion of that equation.
I ran across a posting earlier today where Sir Richard Branson posts a response to a letter he received from an aspiring 12-year-old entrepreneur who asked him for advice on skills and tips when starting out in business.
This topic is especially fascinating as Sir Richard was not a good student, in fact he was consistently under-performing, struggled with learning disorders and left school early to start building his businesses.
As always with Richard, he is an open book…here are a few important points he shared that we can all learn from:
1. Entrepreneurs take action...his first job was a student newspaper where he took charge knowing he had a group of like-minded people who had a passion to get word out about protesting the Vietnam War…he knew there was a “market” for this information and so he went ahead and made it happen despite having zero experience, not being able to read properly AND being painfully shy. Taking action is the best learning ground, you immediately know what works and what doesn’t and can apply that to your life going forward
2. Entrepreneurs find a way...Sir Richard admits he had dyslexia and so he needed to learn to delegate in order to get things like writing and editing done more effectively. Where others quit on themselves, entrepreneurs understand there is always a way and have enough confidence in themselves to find it
3. Entrepreneurs follow their passion…Richard did not start his student newspaper to make money, he started it because he knew there was a message and an audience. The same goes for your business…it should be aligned with a passion tuned for commercial potential rather than the other way around
Can you apply these tips to your own business or business aspirations?
Is your business or business idea aligned with a deeply held passion within you to help serve your market?
Have you already started to jump in and begin interacting with your market – if not, why not?
Do you have the inner confidence, the inner strength to overcome no matter what roadblocks emerge?
If you can get your ahead around these 3 fundamental aspects of business success, we are in for an exciting journey in the coming months!
