Cast your mind back to school and college and try and think of instances where you took a call on something (it could be as simple as supporting a different team during the football finals) which was different from what the others were saying and then had the courage to stay with your opinion despite it not appearing "popular" with the rest of the crowd. This is a cornerstone of being able to strike out on your own as for many years of your life (once you start) you will be swimming against the tide and for that it is only your belief that will keep you going.The courage of being able to say and do things which are opposite to what the crowd is doing can be demonstrated early in ones life and for me if ever there was an entrepreneurship gene then that is what it is.
Staying with this for some more time , post your proving your "weirdness" and "surrounding yourself with yay-sayers" you need to get your belief iron clad. This belief in this case is your "way of approaching a business situation". Remember that in a job we are given two sets of directions one is "what to do" and the other is "how to do it" and when you want to strike out on your own there has to be some belief in you on either of these two things which convinces you that you can do a better job of the "what" or the 'how".
Think about this over and over again and make sure that you believe in that so strongly that even if you were the only person on this planet with that thought you would still not change it. let me give you an example to make this "belief stuff" clearer.
When i started business i had a simple belief .My belief was that once a person crossed the age of 21 he/she was an adult and therefore should know what is good and bad for him/her. In case that person didnt then he/she wasnt an adult and therefore didnt qualify to work in my company anyway. So if a person is an adult then post giving a road map with a clear goal that person should be able to navigate through and reach that place. Confused ! Well in simple language my belief is that people dont need to be constantly supervised to deliver fantastic results and i was looking to create an organization where you excelled because you wanted to excel NOT because your boss told you to excel.
I have given you this example to illustrate that a belief is NOT a business plan and can supposedly be as "unrelated" to business as what mine was (notice it doesnt talk anything of making something faster,cheaper etc which is what one reads in books and self help documentaries). A belief is PERSONAL to an entrepreneur and needs to be cherished and nurtured as that is what will give you the feeling of creation which will sustain you through bounced cheques and humiliating meetings (when customers make you wait for 2 hours and then tell you to come tomorrow and to ad insult to injury tell you to call before coming as tomorrow is a very busy day!).
This belief is what makes the core value of an organization (mine was freedom) and it flows from the founder/s and in case there are 2 of your starting this company then make sure that the core belief (whatever that is) needs to be common among all the people who start.
A belief cant be theorized upon so DONT read a book to get it OR think that one needs to get an MBA/go through a course in entrepreneurship to get it. A belief is fundamental (like to steal is wrong OR Sachin tendulkar IS the best batsman in the world!) and the best part about it is that it doesnt need a majority to prove it right !
So now we have covered three stages of the mind when it comes to being able to start something new
1.Being weird
2.Surrounding yourself with yay-sayers
3. Having one single unshakeable belief
I will post more on the next stage in a couple of days.......
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