Beware Of Advise: ‘’Failure does not matter, Success does’’ – Vinod Khosla

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty’’ – Winston Churchill.

Become Risk Tolerant: Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of reducing the chances of failure so drastically that the consequences of success are inconsequential. Someone said that a ninety per cent chance of failure isn’t a problem if there is a ten per cent chance of earning hundred times your money. Business is about accepting higher risk with the hope of gaining a higher returns. Willingness to fail is what gives the ability to succeed.

Find your internal compass: When business owners lacks a belief system or fail to act in accordance with it, they make mistake. Like businesses changing strategy in reaction to hear-says, popular opinions or fad. They make these mistakes because they care more about what is happening out there and public opinion,  than they do about their belief system.

Be wary of experts: The business space is full of consultants,  financial experts and other services people who have never ran a business nor founded a startup before, but claim to be business advisors. These people’s advice is worthless to the entrepreneur. unless for the ones that have worked at a startup or founded a company before. The risk factors involved in small businesses can only be understood by experience. Sometimes when one graduates from the university and gets into the corporate world and is lucky to progress to the management level, what has that person learnt about starting, running and growing a small business. At best the advice coming from such a person is useless to an entrepreneur, because it is not based on experience nor has it been tested and proved. No matter how detailed strategy and planning one does on paper, reality is always different. In military intelligence, it is said that however  detalied and prepared one’s strategy is, the war front always differs.

Forget the spreadsheet: IRR or the internal rate of return is a measure loved by financial analysts; it is the rate of growth a project is expected to generate, but it almost has no relevance to entrepreneurship and shouldn’t be used as a measure to evaluate investment opportunities,. Calculating an IRR gives the illusion of knowing how well a company will perform. Anybody who is well experienced will tell you, he has done enough business plan to know that, with it whatever is desired of the spreadsheet can be achieved – reality is different from what the business record books can predict.

With the above we continue my thoughts on persistence, the importance of believing (or maintaining a believe system) and when to ignore the financial records, which we started out sometime ago.

Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla ventures, one of the most successful silicon valley venture capital companies, once said that leadership is about having your own view, an inner compass.

Entrepreneurs should be wary of whose leading they follow and whose advice they listen to. Corporate executives, consultants, financial analysts, the traditional bankers and other experts know little or nothing about startups or small businesses, unless they have had a stint with one; so be careful about who you listen to.

‘’Pursue your true passion and believe your intuition, then the opportunity will come to you’’ – Namiko Kajiwara.

These factors and the above are worth considering in your quest for success in any enterprise:

‘’With enough persistence most things that seem impossible become possible’’ – Vinod Khosla.

Persistence pays off; if you actually believe something, you will try your best to make it work. Someone said it doesn’t always happen but it does most of the times. The issue is that most people accept defeat far too easily.

Consider your input; as entrepreneurs our mission is to make positive changes, even when you get a lower rate of return but a higher impact. Our obligation would be to go with that, knowing that at the end we would be creating a greater public good with more social impact, which makes for more conducive environment for commercial endeavours.

People think that business is all about the bottom line, but no, otherwise what is the use of sustainability. What is the worth of making all the money that can’t be sustained. Creating a balance is the rule and every enterprise is about creating values; which could be tangible or not: and that’s why there’s the profit , nonprofit and charity enterprises. The commercial and social enterprises, and the non governmental organisations.

In entrepreneurship the compass is your inner knowing, your intuition, a sixth sense or inner leading. Business decisions are entirely based on this, and no expert advice or spreadsheet can be a substitute, especially when these experts are inexperienced in startup business management. If you truly believe in any cause and have the passion to bring it to pursue it, then ignore all negative comments and do all it takes to see it realised.  Entrepreneurship is about creativity, innovation and disruptive creation. It might not be believable at the onset, but entrepreneurial spirit will enable you to pursue it to conclusion,  and when the outcome becomes obvious, then the market will believe.

Next week we would be looking at more insights in the subject of entrepreneurship.

Nwaodu Lawrence Chukwuemeka