What are the laws of entrepreneurship?
All entrepreneurs create businesses, but all entrepreneurs are not created equal.
The business mastery series is a collection of unusual articles that will take you through the essential skills necessary for successfully starting and running a SIGNIFICANT company –a business that is changing the world and profiting from purpose.
The world of business is characterized by intense competition. Meaning, there’s very little room for mediocres. If you must go into business, you must be prepared to learn and apply the required skills.
There’s a funny trend amongst many entrepreneurs starting out in business. They often have this wrong mentality that business is simply common sense. So they go into the world of business with only this mindset – to apply common sense.
How I wish business was that simple. If it were, there wouldn’t be a high rate of failed businesses.
Common sense is an inadequate skill for running a business successfully. Even your life is too complex to be handled with common sense talk less of a business. The major reason for this erroneous approach to business is this; the acquisition of technical skills.
Technical skill is the required body of knowledge for practicing a particular profession or career.
For example; the technical skill required for being a musician is singing and song writing. In other words, you cannot be a musician if you don’t know how to sing and write songs. Also, the technical skill required for being a doctor is the knowledge of how the human body functions and knowledge of the medicines to correct any malfunctioning.
Why Common Sense Is NOT Sufficient To Run A Business
In business likewise, common sense is insufficient. That you have been trained and equipped with a particular technical skill which qualified you to operate as a professional, doesn’t make you a savvy business person. I‘ve been in business for over 5 years now and I’ve been observing many a business as they come and go due to the incompetence of the founders.
Why do you think majority of businesses started by highly successful professionals fail? Because running a business successfully requires more skills than just your technical skill as a professional. Your technical skill as a professional is just one of many skills needed by an entrepreneur to run a successful business.
As a professional, you may be the best at what you do (technical skill) but don’t think that’s all you’ll need to successfully manage a business. Banking on your technical competence alone won’t get you far; in fact, it will only get you trapped. You need to acquire other relevant fundamental business skills if you desire to succeed.
I’ve written this unusual article to help you identify the essential business skills, qualities and mindset necessary for entrepreneurship. These combinations of business skills, qualities and mindset are what I collectively refer to as the 27 irrefutable laws of entrepreneurship.
Let’s get started!
The 27 Irrefutable Laws Of Entrepreneurship
Prior to starting up your own business as a self employed professional, you were probably an employee being paid to dispense your technical skills for an agreed fee.
Now that you are in business for yourself, the first skill you must possess to not just succeed, but to also survive before success comes is entrepreneurship.
In my experience as a business owner and business developer, the greatest obstacle for many start-up self employed business owners is the employee mindset. You see the gap and reality of being an employee and that of an entrepreneur is not just different, but entirely opposite.
Below are a couple of the opposite realities of being an employee VS being an entrepreneur
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EMPLOYEE |
ENTREPRENEUR |
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The list is endless, but the main point of this analysis is this, entrepreneurship is a whole different ball game from employment which will require a totally opposite mindset of its own. In other words, to succeed as an entrepreneur you must stop thinking as an employee and start thinking as an entrepreneur.
To develop your entrepreneurial skills, here are 27 irrefutable laws you need to follow;
Laws |
Description |
| 1. Purpose | A greater reason beyond survival for living |
| 2. People | For service to many leads to greatness |
| 3. Character | A life worth emulating |
| 4. Knowledge | To do more, learn More |
| 5. Generosity | Giving more in kind than you receive in cash |
| 6. Risk | Only those who dare the unusual [extra-ordinary] achieve the unusual [extra-ordinary] |
| 7. Technology | Doing More with Less |
| 8. Vision | Think BIG, Start Small |
| 9. Result | It’s not what you do [efforts],it’s what you achieve [results] |
| 10. Self-Confidence | If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will |
| 11. Teamwork | Business is a team sport and only the team with the best players win |
| 12. Creativity | The capacity to bring to life that which never existed |
| 13. Networking | Who you know matters more than what you |
| 14. Focus | Your BEST can only come from your areas of strength |
| 15. Leadership | Your success is dependent on your capacity to inspire the trust and commitment of others |
| 16. Strategy | Winning in business is NOT by chance |
| 17. Management | No business can successfully function without a defined mode of operation |
| 18. Profitability | You will only GET as much as you can GIVE |
| 19. Passion | If you enjoy doing it for FREE, business is about doing it for a FEE |
| 20. Marketing | You will only go as far as your message goes |
| 21. Scalability | It is not yet a company if it still depends on YOU for survival |
| 22. Branding | If you don’t STAND for something, you will FALL for anything |
| 23. Thinking | Every problem solved is a step closer to success |
| 24. Perseverance | Every seed takes time to grow into a tree, so does your business |
| 25. Innovation | The more unusual things you do, the more valuable your company becomes |
| 26. Leverage | At some point, your business will need external funding, plan for it |
| 27. Legacy | What will the world miss when you no longer exists? |
Your turn
As with every list, this is not the end. There are a million and one more items that can be added to this list. Being a smart student of business, I trust that you will not take this as a final list but rather as a work in progress. So, I’m really looking forward to your addition to this list in the comment section below.
ONE LAST THING!
If you enjoyed reading this unusual article, Please retweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, Linkedin, google+ and forward via email. Thank you.
Thank you for your time! Now over to the comments ….
Hey Tito – this is a pretty thorough list of laws you’ve provided here…
One of the most significant laws that defines an entrepreneur is their tolerance for risk to make their aspirations and vision a reality. No risk, no reward.
Great post!
Thanks Mark,
The willingness to sacrifice the available for the desirable is the risk every entrepreneur must face. This is what makes the journey exciting; the joy of creating a reality we can’t guarantee. I guess it’s just nature’s way of teaching us to trust in fate. If everything where certain, the journey would be boring. The reward is in the pursuit.
I loved your reply too – you have a way with words!
Thanks Mark, you too have very keen eyes 🙂
You are a Mad genius Philips in the real sense of it. The Laws above are quite irrefutable. I love INNOVATION as an entrepreneur because that is what makes you survive in a business environment where others have been existing before you. You need to do things different from what your competitors are doing else every client will follow the status quo. Keep it up.
Thanks Henry.
Appreciate the nice words. I agree with you on innovation, without it as entrepreneurs, it’s hard to gain market entry and product acceptance. Thank you for stopping by.
Very good post.I have enjoyed and benefited very much.I hope such post more and more.Thanks to author.
QUITTING – Knowing when to walk away. Not every good idea is a business idea
Thanks Mumzy,
What a brilliant addition to the laws. I like the way you framed the description too. Certainly not every idea is worth pursuing. Profound!
Thanks Tito…Interestingly poignant perspective you possess
Thank you!
Hope to see more of you around. 🙂
This is a very valuable compilation here Tito. Indeed, business is NOT common sense. These laws will be quite useful to all entrepreneurs regardless of their class; start-ups or established ones.
Thanks for sharing. Great Job!
Kemi,
Thank you for your comment. That’s one of the validity of laws, they are universal and applies to everyone regardless of class/status. These laws help to sharpen the entrepreneurial mindset for both start-ups and established ones.
So nice to have you around the community.
Hey Tito,
Great laws and description chart you placed.
“# 8. Vision Think BIG, Start Small”
I know for me starting small is difficult. I think soo big and I want to go from A to Z from the start.
Example: One day I started a media buying marketing campaign. It required me to spend $1000’s a month just to operate it. but the thing was, I barely had a few $100.
But I was so sure that I would make my money back the first month that I placed the charges on credit cards, just to cover operational costs. I was greatly disappointed when I found out that my efforts where not working as I expected ( I was going through testing phase, but didn’t expect it).
So I wasted $1,000’s of dollars trying to go from A to Z, when I should have just left it alone and started a smaller marketing campaign to work myself up.
Great Post. 🙂
Zahib,
Much thanks for this awesome comment. I like the personal experience you shared about “The law Of Vision: Think Big, Start Small”. Most entrepreneurs fall into this prey when starting out. They want to plant the seed, water it, watch it grow and reap the fruit all in one day. They forget it doesn’t happen that way!
Every idea needs time to mature. Every business needs time to grow. And every market needs time to develop. All these are what makes thinking big and starting big a very volatile approach. As entrepreneurs we must accept one painful fact; the difference between “here” and “there” is the letter ‘T’ which stands for TIME.
Thank you so much for your awesome comment.
Wow, you blew my mind with all these laws,but would like to know your take on a business idea survival vis-a-vis economic conditions. Thank you.
John,
Thank you for stopping by, appreciate your comment and question. Every business has to contend with economic conditions in order to succeed. You task as an entrepreneur is to study the economy and the realities on ground and seek out a way to provide your product/service to suit the realities of the people in the economy. There will always be challenges in business, you are to strategically tackle these challenges and thrive despite them.
There is no one answer to this John, this is one of the realities of entrepreneurship. The reward is in the pursuit. These laws offer the required mindset to weather the entrepreneurial storm ahead.
I hope this helps.
Hey thanks for all these as we need all these thing to run a business.
You are welcome Sheshnath. Thank you for stopping by.
I am already becoming a fan of this site.How do you get content like this is way above my thoughts can preceded.Great works you are doing here Tito Keep them coming.Cheers.Great great work,Keep it up.
Hello John,
Thanks so much for your participation here. I appreciate your comments. Thanks for your comments.
Awesome post bro! You’ve nailed it all! “Think Big, Start Small” Yeah, that’s the KEY! Hope people who embark on the entrepreneurship journey really understands what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. Live by the laws, you dwell on the mountain top. Thanks so much for sharing. Have fun 🙂
Thank You Sam!
I appreciate your stopping by and thanks for the comment. Great to see young entrepreneurs like yourself courageously taking on this journey of the less traveled.
All the best!
I luv this site besides no one should lag in this generation…I admire this vision and its mission…
Thank you Jane!
I appreciate the nice words.
Hi Tito:
Really enjoyed reading your article on the 27 irrefutable laws of Entrepreneurship. Excellent stuff ! After reading it in its entirety, as well as all the comments on it, I was surprised that no one, not you or any of the others who have commented, have made any mention of FAILURE as having any part in Entrepreneurship. I think Failure plays a very large role, and by large I mean Huge, Massive, Immense ! Failure is something that every Entrepreneur faces and embraces much much more than anyone else. Entrepreneurs fail 100s of times before they ever succeed at anything. It is what molds them, teaches them, and by not allowing failure to make you stop pursuing whatever you are trying to do, failure eventually fails, the entrepreneur wins, and for the first time, (s)he actually becomes an Entrepreneur. One has to really embrace failure in order to succeed in life. Most people do not embrace it. And I think it is THE most important characteristic of an Entrepreneur, this quality of not ever letting failure stop you or get you down, but to take every failure as a step that you must overcome to reach at the top of the hill where success awaits !
Raj!
Thanks so much for this awesome comment. I guess this is one of the beauties of the internet; allows for collaborative learning.
Your contribution about failure is definitely relevant as one of the laws of entrepreneurship. Success is never achieved overnight, but through persistence, hardwork and resilience to never giving up despite many setbacks.
Really appreciate your effort to point out this law of failure. I guess that makes the Laws 28 now 🙂
Thanks for your great and very thought challenging post. Just a quick question to consider; when God gave the 10 commandments, He afterwards pointed out 3 most important of it which later translated to the most important one “love”. Now Of these 21 laws, from your experience thus far as a smart entrepreneur, which 3 are the most important and why?
What an intelligent question Oyoms, thanks a lot for bringing it up.
Here’s the 3 you should never do without;
1) PURPOSE -it determines how far your business would go and it’s the number differentiator between you and any competition.
2) PEOPLE -no matter your skills, at some point 24hours will be too small for you to do what you need to do to keep your business going. This is when you need smart people to handle key areas of your business. Without people, your business will not grow beyond you.
3) STRATEGY -business is not common sense, you need to have a superior way of doing things that will position you for the success you desire. Strategy is the secret behind your actions in business. If it’s well thought out, your actions will yield results, if it isn’t, you will keep going in circles!
Once again, thanks for your reply and these priceless wisdom which you are sharing.
I also want to appreciate you for giving the opportunity to add more to the list.
I am just going to complement these laws:
Now from my experience as an entrepreneur, here is how I would state the first five laws:
1) PURPOSE:
First of all you must have a purpose for what you are going to be doing. How is this going to add value or what problems am I solving. Infact without purpose every business will die a natural death. The scriptures teaches when a salt loses its flavor it is useless and destined to be thrown out and trampled under(Matt 5/13).
2)VISION: this is the big picture, what height do you want to reach? What are you building? This is like a building plan, in it you see the plan of the floors, the electrical plan, plumbing plan. Etc. but the building must then start from foundation.
3)PROFITABILITY: this is where you ask if this whole thing is profitable, how do I generate money? What will customers pay for, is it just the tangible item, or are there intangible features? What is my economic engine? According to Jim Collins, Good to great, He calls it “profit per x” ?
Now the scripture teaches on profitability according to the gospel of Luke:14/28: which of you intending to build a tower don’t first seat down and count the cost?
4)PLAN- the plan has to do with your STRATEGY. Just like you said, winning in business is not by chance. This is where you identify your market, whole am I serving? Your niche or at least your point of difference.
5) PATIENCE: you are not really an entrepreneur and doomed to fail without patience. Patience is one quality most people often overlook. Most entrepreneurs, do not understand the word “growth”. Patience will make you take good risk. Without it, you will be in debt and continually recording losses. Most startups, most entreprenuers are like v8 engines doing 140kmp but sadly without breaks
What can I say Oyoms? Simply awesome comment. Thanks a lot for taking the time to add to the discussion. You just took the whole post to another level with your insightful contribution!
What a write up! God bless you. Keep up the good work.
Loved this article very much. Every word in it counts. Small words but endless message. Thanks for making it so concise.