I am super talented, and I know what my dream project is! Just finished graduation, so I started my own business, on my way to making the first million. I wanna do it, the f**king Rambo! I’d take no partners and take over every corner in the business.
These are some very common words among the young. If you ask them, entrepreneurship is all about their brainchild and how it’s gonna rock. Well, we all are proud of our babies and farts, but that isn’t the case with everyone around. In fact, most of these young turks want to be single parents. And that’s definitely compromising your brain child’s success rates.
Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at 19 and turned out a billionaire by 23 is something every Instagram business motivation page says. But what about the game he made at 12? Watch the Social Network, and you will know he had partners. Bill Gates had one during his initial days at Microsoft. Steve Jobs had ’em. So, that’s the thing! Partnerships are real!
However, people, especially the young, are more interested in being solopreneur than being an entrepreneur. It is nothing but lone wolf syndrome. And as a matter of fact, it’s not the selfishness of hogging up all the glory or keeping every buck made. It is sheer unwillingness to have co-authority, trust someone to share their vision, and allow someone else to make decisions that could make or break the business. The idea of sharing feels like a f**king disaster, and it leads people into committing epic fails.
It could lead to situations where you find yourself working for peanuts because you aren’t simply good at sales. Or burning cash despite improving revenue because you lack basic accounting skills. You could be putting your business at legal risk due to a lack of compliance knowledge. There is X number of things that can go wrong because a successful business is more of an orchestra than a rockstar.
So how do you do away with this urge of being at the helm of control? Nah, finding partners straight away isn’t going to work. You gotta grind on someone else’s business. It is the most practical way to start your own. You will get to see how the industry functions, the ins and outs, the push and pulls, good days and bad days, ups and downs, pretty much 360-f**king-degrees! And in most cases, you would find a partner at work. If you are in the market, you meet god damn people who have the same hunger and problems as you. You find allies! You might not know some skills, and they wouldn’t know yours making it a perfect match.
The next thing you should be doing is trying to find mentors. People who are willing to teach you the tricks of the trade. It is even tougher since you wouldn’t want to disclose your big idea, but that’s needed. A mentor will help you save your business from committing cliché mistakes. It’s a cliché because almost half of the businesses don’t survive past half a decade. And that’s legitimate businesses, not side hustles. Maybe 95% of these side hustles fail, but it never makes it to the surface. So you’ve got to get yourself a mentor who is supposedly sitting at a height.
They can tell if you are racing towards the mountain’s edge on a suicide mission and bring you to your senses. You may be too new for the business landscape, but someone who’s spent enough time and has climbed a tree can see the bigger picture. Chances are, even they may help you connect with the right partners.
So make sure you don’t play the lone wolf, have enough people to watch your back, and a good mentor, just like a movie.
