Starting a Business QuickStart Guide. Ken Colwell PhD MBA
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Название: Starting a Business QuickStart Guide
Автор: Ken Colwell PhD MBA
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Экономика
isbn: 9781945051579
isbn:
Experiment constantlyConstantly experiment with new ideas and initiatives but realize that many aren’t going to work out. Try to inject a healthy dose of natural curiosity about new ideas into the way you think about your business, and the good ones will morph into opportunities.
In practice, this set of activities changes the path to success from the straight line that many people envision to the branching and divergent path that is a more accurate representation of the journey to success that you will encounter. The twisting path pictured is a visual representation of the entrepreneurial mindset and its relationship to failure. In short, each point of failure along the way is an opportunity to pivot toward a new path to success.
Risk and the Entrepreneurial Mindset
Starting your own venture obviously carries a considerable amount of risk. Embracing failure and aiming to fail fast does not mean being reckless with risk. Instead, it means understanding and accepting risk as an inherent quality related to starting your own business and managing that risk by improving your odds.
Think of risk in these ways:
Entrepreneurs interpret the risk vs. reward calculation differently.No one who is starting their own business believes that their actions aren’t risky compared to choosing another path. What they do believe, however, is that the reward justifies the increased levels of assumed risk.
The entrepreneurial mindset changes a person’s perception of risk.When failure is seen as a steppingstone and the path to success is understood to be nonlinear, an individual’s perception of risk changes dramatically. Compare that mindset with someone who sees failure as a dead end, or any path to success that is not a straight line as invalid.
Calculating risk based on a massive reward, perceiving risk through the lens of failure as an opportunity, and being comfortable with risk all differentiate an entrepreneur from a speculator or a gambler. In this way, risk can be seen less as static odds and more as a condition that can be influenced.
The Role of Luck
Many entrepreneurs scoff at the notion of luck, preferring rugged slogans like “I make my own luck,” “the harder I work, the luckier I get,” or “luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” Despite this self-made motif, self-reflective entrepreneurs will often readily acknowledge that luck has had a profound role in their success. I will say this about luck—you’re much more likely to find it if you’re out there trying to make things happen rather than passively waiting for fortune to smile down upon you.
That being said, if you scratch a little below the surface of any entrepreneurial success story, chances are you will find some sort of chance meeting, lucky break, great timing, etc., that just can’t be explained as anything else but luck. Sometimes it’s hard to sift out the “luck” because successful entrepreneurs and the adoring financial press that follow them have no incentive to admit to any sort of good fortune, and every reason to imply that every good thing that happened to them was the result of their intelligence, hard work, and careful planning.
Like many nascent entrepreneurs, you probably like to read stories about successful entrepreneurs as a form of motivation, but the stories you read are often hopelessly skewed and self-serving. They are, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, “just-so stories.” The phrase stems from Kipling’s famous book of children’s tales by the same name. I am not the first person to trust Wikipedia; however, the entry for just-so stories sums them up quite nicely. They are “an unverifiable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals.” Such tales are common in folklore and mythology. Just-so stories are the effectuation version of narratives—they start with the end result and work their way backwards rather than truly examining the root cause of the phenomenon.
Entrepreneurs are this generation’s folk heroes and myths, and we like to believe they have superhuman skills and abilities. We view them as the ultimate self-made men and women. However, that’s often just not the case. Going back to our Quick Case on page 24, Mark Zuckerberg was the product of an affluent household and an Ivy League pedigree. Bill Gates’ story follows much the same narrative. Warren Buffett’s father was a member of Congress, and he has a degree from Columbia. Jeff Bezos went to Princeton. These are not exactly Horatio Alger stories. This isn’t to say they aren’t admirable people—it’s just that their success stories are more nuanced than is generally acknowledged.
The best way to deal with the prevalence of luck is to not worry about it, because you can’t control it anyway. Worrying about things outside your control is a surefire path to stress and anxiety, neither of which are conducive to success. It’s also not very mindful. Mindfulness, the importance of living a self-actualized life, is discussed at length in the next chapter.
Do I Need a Business Plan?
Every business should have a business plan—even if your business isn’t seeking funding. As with many aspects of the entrepreneurial universe, there are many misconceptions surrounding business plans, their utility, and the scope of their function. Because of this, business plans are often seen as a waste of time. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
The last part of this book is dedicated to helping you build your business plan in a comprehensive and strategic manner, but for now, suffice it to say that your business plan is much more than just a summary of your business. It is also each of the following:
Communication tool: The business plan communicates your opportunity to potential founding team members, stakeholders, family members, and prospective employees.
Planning tool: In addition to helping you develop strategy, the business plan construction process forces you to become fluent in your opportunity, your market, and your industry.
Discovery tool: Oftentimes we simply don’t know what we don’t know. The business plan construction process uncovers knowledge gaps relating to your opportunity, market, and industry in an organized and systematic way.
Also understand that despite its utility, a business plan is not a magic bullet. Even the most well-written and well-constructed business plan is not a guarantee of success or even a guarantee that your opportunity will receive funding.
Q: Is it okay to outsource the writing/construction of my business plan?
Answer: No. The whole point of the business plan writing process is to ensure that you know the ins and outs of your business like the back of your hand. A critical component of your value proposition—the backbone of your business—is identifying who will be buying your product or service and why (chapter 8). A consultant will be able to point you in the right direction, check your work, and recommend ways to collect information, but he or she should not be doing the work. There is simply no substitute for rolling up your sleeves—even if you are the only person СКАЧАТЬ