Three Entrepreneurship Lessons by Abhinav Gautam

Abhinav has kindly shared his Top 3 Entrepreneurship lessons with us in order to inspire our youth.

FAIL GRACEFULLY
Entrepreneurship is hard. And in the journey, there are both ups and downs. Failing is inevitable. Success does come, but often with failures along the way. So, learn how to fail gracefully.

Failures strike all the time in your startup’s and your personal entrepreneurial journeys. Though they can be heart-crushing, embrace them and use them as stepping stones to success. This means recognizing, reflecting, and accepting failures. Set small short-term goals with well-defined metrics that allow you to judge how your startup is performing. If you accomplish a goal, celebrate the success and move to the next one. If not, then accept the shortcomings and recognize what went wrong. Were the time expectations set incorrectly? Was what success looks like not communicated to your team or to yourself? Did you put in enough hard work and time? Reflect on why things failed and what went wrong. Evaluate how you can fix that and reaadjust the course for success. Try the same goal again, or pivot as needed.

Embrace your failures and own your mistakes. No one is perfect, and that’s what makes you unique. Having goals and working hard on them is important, but failing to meet some goals only allow you to tackle your next ones better and with agility. Failures are a key part of your entrepreneurship journey, and critical to both your and your startup’s growth.

LISTEN
One common reason why failure occurs in entrepreneurship is that we don’t listen enough. Entrepreneurs think out of the box and work passionately to solve a problem with a solution that often changes the business landscape. However, this often puts entrepreneurs in a closed mindset, especially early on in their startup journey, where they are focused on making their original idea succeed.

This often leads to failure, because the real customer pain-point is never identified and the solution for it is never validated. Entrepreneurs learn of their failures or identify them too late, and don’t pivot their startup as needed. They build and build, and when their product (or service) launches, it often does not lead to sales or expected growth. A startup is not a business if customers don’t pay you for your product. These failures happen because startups often don’t talk to their potential customers early on and sometimes launch products without ever talking to them.

Go out and talk to 100 potential customers before you work on your solution. Build customer personas from day one and adjust them as your startup and solution evolves. Use the personas to design your product around your customer. Build something that you know they will pay for, not something that you believe they will pay for. Once you have launched, gather testimonials to get feedback on your product to learn further about your customer behaviour, to grow your sales, and pivot as needed. A startup is only a business when you know what your customers want and they are willing to pay for your product.

Being in a closed mindset is not only limited to startups. Founders often get stuck in their own growth mindset. Having the right team is the key to a successful startup. As you build and expand your amazing team, don’t forget to listen to them. This doesn’t mean just get feedback from co-founders and the executive members. Build processes to allow internal company feedback and hear from your sales, customer support, and various teams to gain insights about your product and customers.

Most importantly listen to yourself. Feedback from customers is important and team feedback is crucial. Be always curious and be open to hearing from anyone. Advisors, investors, and just about anybody else will give you “advice” and “what to do” for your business. This all is valuable and should be evaluated, but at the end of the day you know what’s best. Trust your gut, and use external feedback to adjust and supplement your decisions.

CARE FOR YOURSELF
Listening to your customers, team, and yourself is key to avoid failures. However, nobody knows the complete story behind your and your startup’s entrepreneurship journey. The journey of entrepreneurship is exciting, fun, and tremendously rewarding. But it is often a lonely, high-stress journey that comes with significant challenges and failures. The challenges take a heavy toll on your mental health by resulting in burnout and leading you to question your decisions. However, simple techniques can help counter them.

Value your time. There are limited things you can do in a day. Being an entrepreneur often requires handling all aspects of your startup. As you grow your startup and team, delegate and give responsibilities to your team members. Decide what requires your inputs the most, prioritize tasks, and focus on doing what you love.

Hang out with other entrepreneurs outside of your work. Be open and emotionally vulnerable with them. They are likely facing the same startup and personal challenges as yourself, so listen to what they recommend and return the favour by helping them out as well.

Take time to relax. Running a startup is a 24/7 job, and it will always be on your mind. But from time to time, do something that lets your brain rest and recharge. Use that replenished energy, get back to work, and put a fresh perspective on the problems your startup is facing.

Don’t forget your passion. It’s okay to fail and start again. That’s how you get better and become a better entrepreneur. Trust your gut, you know what’s best for you and your business.

Entrepreneurship is hard. Fail gracefully, listen, and care for yourself. Don’t
forget to celebrate your wins (especially the small ones) in the journey,
dream big, and have fun!

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