“If you cannot see where you are going, ask someone who has been there before.”– J Loren Norris. Entrepreneurship can be confusing for everyone, especially when first starting out. The endless possibilities and conflicting strategies boggled in your mind may cause a lost sense of direction. While personal mentors are great to lead you down the right path, they are difficult to obtain without quality connections. For most entrepreneurs, they must study the successful businessmen to soak up any comparable quantity of advice. Digging for these entrepreneurial lessons can be time-consuming, thus a database of 5 economically successful entrepreneurs should be of great convenience. Please comment below if you have any lessons to share or if you enjoyed any of the advice detailed in this article.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is possibly the most popular entrepreneur today because of his insane workload and creative ventures. His workload per week is anywhere from 80-120 hours, which is mainly spent engineering according to Musk. An interesting feature of Musk’s daily schedule is that he makes blocks for every 5 minutes to maintain a rigid schedule and accomplish all of his daily goals. This method is known as blocking and is a good option for entrepreneurs who don’t require on-demand flexibility and prefer to stick with a daily schedule.
Musk is also an ‘advertising genius’ who spends approximately $0 on advertising for Tesla and SpaceX. Instead, Musk concentrates his funding towards the product, with his mindset being that a great product will sell better than a mediocre product that everyone knows about. Musk relies on reviews and ‘word-of-mouth’ to gain more consumers. Of course, his companies still promote themselves through Musk’s appearance on Television and his online presence.
The main lesson from Musk’s philosophy is that no salesperson can outsell a satisfying customer experience from a great product. Therefore, concentrate your efforts primarily towards improving the quality of your product/service rather than exhausting funds, time, and employees on marketing.
Among many other things, Musk is the exemplar for chasing your dreams. Musk has started 13 notable companies, most of which aren’t purely economically driven. His projects have passion behind them because he wants to positively impact the world.
The lesson in this is to try out everything you want to accomplish and have some sort of internal motivation behind your business.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates, the second richest man in the World, is a co-founder of Microsoft. Gates sheer grit should be the primary trait viewers should attempt to mimic. With Paul Allen, the Microsoft founders were famous for staying awake late in the night to finish codes. Their drive led to their lack of concern for nutrition, with Tang as their most common food item, which further exemplifies the sacrifices necessary for great success.
While it is unrealistic to expect all of my viewers to mimic Gates behavior, the grit should be shadowed to a certain percent.
For my adolescent viewers, Gates did many things in school that were unprecedented. His school allowed Gates to write a computer program that created schedules (even though Gates used the opportunity to place himself in classes with attractive girls). Gates also pursued his interests at Harvard, so rather than attending his assigned classes, he attended lectures he desired to learn about.
These stories of a young, irresponsible Gates do bring value to today’s youth: do not conform to schooling holistically, rather, pursue interests and gain relevant experience.
Jeff Bezos
Besides the lesson to marry wisely (and with clauses), the richest man on planet Earth and CEO of Amazon has shown what it means to modernize one’s business. Amazon started off as an online book store and now has sprouted into THE model for e-commerce. Amazon has continuously challenged traditional retail practices, whether through their delivery of almost any product to the revolutionary drone package delivery. Bezos consistently revolutionizes all previous precedents for commerce and is not afraid to manipulate business practices, unlike many businesses faced with new technological advancements.
The lesson for all businesses is to either create new normals or at least have flexibility when it comes to adapting to new technology.
“Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details”-Jeff Bezos.
Because of the lesson attributed to Musk, I won’t go in depth on Bezo’s philosophy to create a great product and diffuse it through word of mouth. Just know that this is an important development and similarity in most successful entrepreneurs.
“Given a 10 percent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten.” – Jeff Bezos
This quote provides an analytical approach to risk-taking in entrepreneurship. Bezos definitely proved his risk taking by turning down job offers at Intel and Bell Labs to start a business. If you wish to have entrepreneurial success, you must be willing to take risks and take them earlier in life when responsibilities are less than in adulthood.
Bezos was more of a natural as a child, but he did not let his talent convince him to not work hard.
The main lessons from Bezos, however, are in business practices: Invest your mental energy into your product and, unlike the Gunpowder Empires, adapt with new technologies.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg is yet another example of a successful person who initiated his success in adolescence. Zuckerberg created a messaging system by the time he was just 12 years old. Again, this is unrealistic for my younger viewers. However, try to take risks and gain experience at a young age so your adulthood ventures are ahead of the learning curve.
His attendance at Harvard was unique, primarily because he was still a stand-out computer programmer at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Zuckerberg doesn’t have any crazy work ethic stories, rather one can learn bunches form the way the Facebook CEO decided to found Facebook. Mark simply scoped out the online landscape and realized that there was no social platform apart from messaging. Nowadays, most gaps are filled. However, there are still many cracks to fill in current, emerging technologies that can make a large impact on their respective industries. The easiest way to find these gaps is to do extensive research in your field of choice and find any missing parts that you can fill in.
Finally, Zuckerberg exemplifies the value of shrugging off critics and maintaining innovations through thick and thin. Reportedly, critics refused to allow Facebook to develop without pointing out potential business flaws such as ‘it will never work internationally’ and ‘only young people will use that’. Regardless, Zuckerberg maintained that Facebook had value and stuck with developing Facebook to the social powerhouse it is today.
The lesson from all of this is to stick with your ideas if you genuinely believe that they bring societal and monetary value, no matter what limitations critics attempt to place upon you.
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett is more of an investor than an entrepreneur with Berkshire Hathaway. Nonetheless, the 89-year-old billionaire offers great lessons on the values of authenticity. In his book “Warren Buffett on Business”, Buffett details the importance of supporting the business you have stock in both through fiscal and mental means. In the same breath, he strongly opposes investors who flip stock often to make a quick buck.
The lesson here is that authenticity helps build a reputation for future business encounters. Therefore, do not use anyone for a ‘quick buck’ because it’ll limit your future business potential.
Buffett shares the commonality on this list of getting ahead early. In Omaha, Buffett first invested at age 11 after observing the actions of investors around him at an early age. His authentic values were developed by working at his family’s grocery store. His attempt at admittance to Harvard was shot down, forcing Buffett to attend Columbia University’s business school. Despite his early successes, the majority of his wealth was accumulated after the age of 60. This is yet another testament to the perseverance of the 89-year-old investor over the years.
The lesson here is that determination at any age will allow for success. It is never to late to achieve your goals, whether
The late success likely came from his insane habitual reading that took up nearly 80 percent of his day. Buffett compared the knowledge accumulated from his extensive reading to compound interest. If this comparison is accurate, there is no ambiguity behind how Buffett broke through financially so late in his career.
The lesson here is that reading is essential to gaining knowledge to implement in your business.
Buffett offered some direct advice to the public his essay for “Getting There”. In this literature, the renown investor relays the importance of taking care of the body and the mind throughout life. These two go hand-in-hand most times. A strategy to take care of the mind is detailed above: habitual reading. To take care of the body, exercise (even if it is only for 10 minutes) every day to maintain good health and strengthen neural connections.
Lesson: Take care of your mental and physical health and activeness to optimize your success and increase the length of your intellectual prime.
If you enjoyed these lessons or found them helpful to your life, share this article with your friends and leave a comment below. If you have any comments or concerns, feel free to leave them below or email me personally at anthony@snbdaily.com.
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