These 5 Reasons Prove That The Entrepreneurship Journey is Not a Walk in The Park

This article is written by Brian Malika, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

Elmira Bayrasli is an entrepreneur, writer, consultant, and lecturer. She was present at Startup Istanbul 2015 where she talked about success in entrepreneurship.

Think about that famous entrepreneur that you know, met or heard about. I mean all entrepreneurs that have made it out there seem to be having a time of their life and it's like everything is working out for them. But is true that entrepreneurship is a cozy affair?

Across the globe, entrepreneurs that people view as successful and having a time of their life echoed the following five views that actually contradict to the public perception.

(1.) Silicon Valley is  not  just about technology :

All the successful entrepreneurs within the Silicon Valley across the globe refute to the common perception that their secret key to success was inventing cool digital appliances and services from time to time based on their passions and abilities as tech engineers.

Rather, the successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs said confirmed that innovating new products and services was very challenging since they have to understand the nighty gritty customer needs the keep changing from time to time and this was in itself is hard for them as tech engineers to master.

 As such, these successful tech engineers had to explore studies on human behavior as social life of different parts of the world as well as working with other professionals like sociologists ,storytellers and marketers so as to be able to innovate tech projects that resonate with the tastes and pleasures of the targeted customers at a particular time .

This whole process of understanding social issues facing customers turns out not to be easy for an innovator that studied tech engineering. There needs to be a lot of flexibility in every way possible.

(2.) Wanna be a top innovator? Then focus on every little customer detail

Every successful entrepreneur out there agreed that knowing the exact customer problem was not easy . And sometimes they might be working on a customer problem for days and nights only to realize that they are working on a wrong concept!

Dedicating time, money and emotions to solve a customer problem only to realize that your doing the wrong thing can be really discouraging and draining. And as an entrepreneur, you have to be resilient enough to bounce back on the drawing board and start again.

A particular technique that all the successful entrepreneurs from around the world agreed upon was that during the process of innovating customer products and services, one has to focus on the root cause concern on why customers prefer a certain product and services. And this involves asking your team of innovators to give five reasons why customers would prefer to pay for a certain good or service and not the other.

(3.) Entrepreneurship is all about connecting with customer emotions

Again, if you are thinking that entrepreneurship is all about investing your time and money in a venture that will meet the needs of your customers for a calculated profit then you are very wrong . This is becasue all the successful entrepreneurs across the world agreed to the fact that true entrepreneurship was all about emotional connection with your targeted customers .

You  must innovate solutions that touch lives of your customers in order to stay relevant within the market. For that matter, it's never easy for entrepreneurs to get along with the different personalities that are characterized by your target customer base.

Therefore any entrepreneur out there that aspires to be successful must have the courage to overcome their comfort zones and be outgoing to everyone . And this is not easy most of the times. So I would say that entrepreneurship is actually sacrificing yourself to better the life of a customer.

(4.) Entrepreneurship is a communal venture

Well, most aspiring entrepreneurs out there pride in their personal abilities of creativity to come up with unique services or goods for their target customers which they protect dearly.

But the truth of the matter is that, if you want to better the lives of many customers, solve multiple social issues and scale beyond your borders then you must embrace the concept of forming partnerships with other entrepreneurs.

Think about how your innovative start-up or company can form partnerships with other companies in different angles of work and countries .

You are bound to grow if you offer more competitive goods and services if you work with entrepreneurs from different backgrounds and places .

I know sometimes you value the hard work you put to come up with an innovation and as such you might feel burdened to let someone ‘ride’ on your sweat. However, if you want your hard work to scale -up beyond your borders and imagination then, you must consider partnering with other entrepreneurs.

(5.) Ideas are great. But values are even greater.

Please note that entrepreneurship is about discipline to a set of guides that represent who you are. Sometimes the situation makes it hard for you to hold onto your business guides and principles.

However, if you wish to experience entrepreneurial excellence then you must be committed to stand for what you believe in . Do not be comprised of short term opportunities  to make huge profits at the expense of your values as an entrepreneur.W

Next time you see a successful entrepreneur who you want to be like, just know that they have gone through a lot of sacrifices, hard work, and flexibility to be where they are.

Maybe, you might need some form of mentorship if you are just beginning the entrepreneurial journey. Additionally, the five points that I have raised in this article are in a good position to enable you to reach the heights of success you admire to get to as an emerging entrepreneur.

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