I joined TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) a global organization as a Chartered Member in the year 2005. As part of my membership obligation, I started mentoring startup founders and since then I would have met hundreds of entrepreneurs who approached me to get clarity on their uncertainty, identify the direction appropriate for their business as well as personal life and develop a definitive roadmap for their business success.
While interacting with all these entrepreneurs and also been an entrepreneur myself, we all want the same things; we want to deliver a strong customer value proposition, pursue a differentiated strategy, develop a better understanding of the market, hire and build a strong team, and raise capital. But, their approach to achieving these results are quite contrasting.
In my quest to discover the persona of these entrepreneurs, I found a verse in the Bhagavad Gita that I could relate to:
“In this world, there is a two-fold path, as I said before, O blameless One (Arjuna), the path of knowledge for men of contemplation and the path of work for men of action.” //3.3//
Let’s call them Gyanyogi and Karmyogi.
Even though they look similar, speak similarly do the things similarly, they are separate from each other in their approach to work and life.
A Gyanyogi Entrepreneur will find comfort in the path of peace, his journey will be inward to the self, knowledge will be his ammunition and attaining success through wisdom will be his goal. Most of the scientists, scholars, and researchers achieved their success working on their ideas and solving it to build a meaningful solution. Ratan Tata, Narayana Murthy, Bill Gates are popular Gyani entrepreneurs.
A Karmyog Entrepreneur, on the other hand, would prefer the path of power, his journey would be to conquer the world, energy will be his ammunition and attaining success by becoming powerful will be his goal. Dhirubhai Ambani and Subhash Chandra are popular Karmyogi entrepreneurs.
There are enough pieces of evidence of all sort of people succeeding in the business leveraging their respective geniuses. I believe you can too by following these simple rules:
Spend time engaging in the provocative questions not just finding the answers. There are umpteen number of people ready to hand over the answers if you are able to ask the right questions.
Search and question what you are skipping and ask yourself why? Entrepreneurship is hard — whenever faced with the difficulties question yourself to get what is that one thing which will get you where you want to be.
Someone has done your version of success before – emulate their beliefs, habits and maximize on their strengths. Avoid their flaws and costly mistakes.
Siddhartha met a merchant. Looking at him, the merchant asked “Everyone can do something. What can you?”
Siddhartha’s replied to the merchant:
“I can think” –good decision-making and asking good questions
“I can wait” – plan long-term, be patient
“I can fast” – be able to withstand pain and be resilient
You too can think. You too can wait. You too can fast.
Just do it!
Every entrepreneur starts their business because they feel they have the ideas, inventions, creations, messages, technologies, products, services, archetypes, frameworks, platforms or communities which once launched will change the world. And you find these ideas:
Pursuing your passion for the specific interest and honing your talents, skills, and abilities to deliver better results and monetize what you love. You believe that you enjoy doing it and you will draw a great sense of fulfillment and satisfaction while doing it. You draw the inspiration from the popular quote from Confucious “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”
The greatest ideas are born when you face life challenges, solve it and sell it to others who may be facing similar challenges in their life. The only caveat here is that there exists a significant number of people facing a similar problem else it becomes the problem of few and you’ll find it difficult to scale.
Fueled with the advancements in technology and the emergence of newer technologies such as Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Biotechnology, robotics, etc. our future is going to be substantially different than what you see today. If you can do some future gazing and spot future opportunities, you can build a high-value business idea today.
Entrepreneurs also get their ideas while working on something side by or helping someone. When you keep doing things and constantly improve it over a period of time and that helps you build something so significant that you can build a highly successful business out of your continuous work.
Sometimes, business ideas also come when you experience things during your travel, holiday or actively participating in the events. When you apply your skills and creativity to convert such experiences, you can build a wildly successful business.
Whatever may be the source of your ideas when you convert it into a market-ready product solving a real problem of your target customer with excellent execution and passion for success, you can revolutionize an industry, create wealth and change the world.