My name is Gordon Tredgold. I am the founder and chief enablement and empowerment officer of Gordon Tredgold LLC, based in the US. Working as a senior vice president for a Fortune 100 company and running IT Services for 48,000 end-users on a global scale was a tough job. It was long hours, lots of pressure and difficult customers. But, even so it was nothing compared to joining the ranks of the entrepreneurs and starting my own business.
Here are 10 things I wish I had known before I started as it would have helped me be better prepared for the important first few years of my entrepreneurial life.
1. Don’t create new products, solve problems.
Forty-two percent of product launches fail because there is no need for the product. That’s right 42 percent fail because nobody wants the product.
So instead of trying to develop new and wonderful products to look for problems to solve. Where there’s a problem, there is a need.
2. Forget about being an overnight success.
Even the companies regarded as the quickest overnight successes, Amazon and Yahoo, took at least three years to get there, and the majority of companies take up to 10 years to really make it. So if you’re the goal is to be the next billionaire start-up owner then you need to be prepared for a long haul.
3. Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
Your success is going to come from your strengths so make sure the majority of your time is focused in that area. We all have weaknesses, but either outsources those areas or hire someone to take care of it for you. Focusing on your weaknesses takes you away from what you’re best at and is not a good use of your time.
4. Get the right team around you.
We can’t do it all on our own; we need help, but we need to make sure we get the right help. Twenty-nine percent of start-ups that fail do so because they had the wrong team in place. So take the necessary time to evaluate the team that you need and then hire the best people you can.
5. If you’re going to fail, fail quickly.
Failure is all part of the process, not only should you expect it, but you should plan for it. The best approach for failure is to fail quickly, adapt and try again. One of the worst things we can do is to fail slowly, desperately hoping that things will turn around. You need to learn quickly what’s working and what’s not that needs to be stopped.