A Good Hard Kick in the Ass

Basic Training for Entrepreneurs
Rob Adams

There are many myths about starting a business that are distracting and misleading for aspiring entrepreneurs, for example:

“I have a great idea for a new business. Now all I need is $10 million to get the company on its feet and going.”

“I have a new idea that’ll be a billion dollar business–all we need is a tiny slice of the $50 billion Internet market.”

“All I need is enough money to do some good advertising, and then my business will be able to go public in a couple of years.”

“This is such a great new idea that no one has ever thought of it before–we will have no competition.”

Anyone who believes these myths needs a good swift kick in the pants because they have nothing to do with how successful companies are actually started and grown in the intensely competitive winner-takes-all battles of the real world. Unless a potential business builder can ignore the hype and get back to the fundamentals, they stand little chance of success.
So just what, exactly, are the fundamentals of starting and growing a business? There are nine principles:1. Obsess over building a great team–not a great idea
2. Learn everything that can be known about your customer
3. Get to market fast with whatever you have! Right away!
4. Raise just enough capital to get to the next milestone
5. Investors fund great teams–not business plans
6. The right investors will always wait for quality returns
7. Know the difference between marketing and advertising
8. Own the sales process. Understand how to sell
9. Avoid complacency–retain the entrepreneurial spark

In essense, unless you stick to and handle the fundamentals well, nothing else really matters–you’ll simply end up as “roadkill” on the highway to success. Pure and simple, a business exists to make money. Unless you have a straightforward and logical way to achieve that, don’t even bother starting a new company–you’d be better off working for someone else who does.

A Good Hard Kick in the Ass