I cannot help but think about this idea on a daily basis. The world seems full of people who are generally at peace with doing the bare minimum, climbing whatever ladder they happen to fall on and then complaining after. “I have no money!” “I have no freedom!” “I hate my boss & job!” Sound familiar?
But do they ever ask themselves: “What is the thing nobody else will do?”
Entrepreneurship is all about being able to identify opportunities at the right time and have the wherewithal to make the best of them. It is not easy to make it “big” in this arena, nor is success guaranteed. The reason why so many people still hold on to their dream of ‘being-their-own-boss’ and running their own business is that entrepreneurship offers a challenging, highly creative environment where there is virtually no limit to the heights of success they can scale. A successful entrepreneur is a ‘creature’ like no other, an individual who is willing to explore opportunities that no one else would dare approach, a person who is not just willing, but keen to do the thing nobody else will do.
From inspiration to business launch
Many successful businesses began as an inspired idea. Who would have imagined that a ‘flea market’ would capture the world’s fancy and catapult the originator of the idea to global fame and financial success? Yet that is exactly what happened with eBay. The idea was simple and it was not a novel one either. However, the multi- million dollar business took shape only because of Pierre Omidyar’s unique ability to draw inspiration from the ordinary and transform it to cater to the present day market. There is little doubt that Omidyar would have been laughed at when he first proposed the idea, but it is equally true that he is having the last laugh today having become a billionaire at age 31.
Spotting the gaps and bridging them
Winner of the UK’s Kalixa Pro Outstanding Small Business of the Year Award 2014, Sam King talks about how he set up Limelace.co.uk, when he realized that people would love to buy gifts and home interiors that are way out of ordinary. The marketplace for gifts or home décor may be saturated but within this segment, King realized that there is little in terms of exclusivity and he made the best of this opportunity to position himself firmly in this gap. By looking beyond the obvious, navigating through all the noise and clutter and by being a creative hustler, King did what no one else was doing and made his business idea a success.
Embrace challenges
Challenges are the life blood of entrepreneurship and when you prepare yourself to face them, you also prepared to overcome the single most troubling obstacle to success. The entrepreneur’s biggest enemy is fear of failure. It happens all too often that a start-up owner who is on the verge of a breakthrough takes a step back just out of fear, where a single step ahead would have taken them to crowning success. Risks are always present, but it is necessary to remember that these risks may just be screening incredible opportunities. There are many situations when doing the ‘right’ thing or the ‘practical’ thing or doing what everyone else would have done is just not the best you can do. These are times when you should forge ahead and do what no one else will, to achieve successes that come only to the truly gifted entrepreneurs.