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Four Building Blocks Of Entrepreneurial Success

Forbes Coaches Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Justin Kulla

Entrepreneurship is a unique experience that greatly differs from any other profession. It’s unique because there’s no blueprint with well-defined goals or tasks — nor is there a clear job description.

Entrepreneurs have to do a lot of different jobs, and those jobs are not always obvious. What’s less obvious is — you’ll fail a lot, in a lot of different ways, and you'll slowly realize that failure is an essential part of entrepreneurship. You just have to keep trying.

Tim Westergren, co-founder of Pandora, famously survived more than 300 rejections by VC investors before he finally closed the deal on securing capital. Now, it’s a billion dollar company and one of the world’s most powerful music discovery platforms.

In addition to having the willingness and persistence to fail, dealing with ambiguity is also a core part of entrepreneurship. You’re essentially putting a definition to something that wasn’t there before.

For high-performing people who want structure, the core features of entrepreneurship make it hard. Here are four things every aspiring business owner needs to have in order to achieve entrepreneurial success.

Vision

Vision is the driver of entrepreneurship. Yes, this has a lot to do with the American dream. People want to believe that if they have a great idea and work hard, there is unlimited potential. That’s what drives entrepreneurship in its best form.

It’s fun to think about entrepreneurship, but it’s hard to pursue it. The individual who goes to pursue it is someone who is constantly shaken by a vision that keeps them up at night.

They can’t help but start to piece together ideas to create that special something. It’s the building that’s really hard at the earliest stages because you have nothing but an idea.

The idea can sound crazy. For instance, you can come up with an idea for pizza-flavored ice cream and people will think it’s crazy until you create something that tastes awesome. Then it’s a great idea.

Having a strong vision enables you to take ideas out of your mind and put it out into the real world.

Education

The best entrepreneurs are constantly learning. They’re pursuing education in a variety of ways. Often, the best education is experiential -- where one learns by doing -- whereas some skills are more concrete and critical to get right, like processing payroll and managing a profit-and-loss statement. 

Take time to read about and understand the skills you'll need to know. Experiential learning will come on its own, like when making early sales or testing a product, for example. 

Mentorship

It’s very hard to be an entrepreneur without a support system around you. There can be a bunch of overlapping circles, and sometimes it’s your significant other who is the unofficial board member of your company.

At the same time, it’s also important to keep a network of people to help you make sound business decisions. These people or individuals should be impartial about your business, so they can keep an arm's length between the company and you. That way, they’re able to give honest feedback.

A business coach or experienced mentor can also be a great asset because business owners typically only have experience in one or two different areas, which means there are thousands of issues or challenges they’ve never encountered.

Your mentor will have seen hundreds of different companies in thousands of different cases, allowing them to share best practices and tailor their services to your specific needs. It’s also a great way to get exposed to new ideas and new people. People need different types of coaches and mentors.

Right Talent

How do you create the right muscles for your business? Hire the right folks.

Bad hires can have a significant impact on the business, including less productivity, lost time to recruit and train another worker and negative employee morale.

Companies are made up of people, and it’s important to find individuals who complement your skill set. There’s a whole variety of functions the company needs to do, and it’s highly unlikely that you have the skills and time to do all of it.

It’s great to be knowledgeable about different functional areas, but it’s even better to have the right team in place to flex the right muscles for your business.

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?