Successful entrepreneurs thrive in an environment of uncertainty, taking advantage of opportunities as they present themselves.
In other words, entrepreneurs move fast!
In order to move fast you need the following:
- Access to capital
Some people are lucky to be born into a family with cash, or to attend a school with other kids whose families have cash, or to marry someone with cash.
If you weren’t born lucky, you need to make your own luck. You need to be able to access capital so you can take advantage of opportunities.
The simplest path is to make money for other people. If you develop a reputation for making money for other people, you will one day find a queue of investors at your door ready to back you in whatever you do.
This is not a quick process. It takes decades of delivering results. But it’s the only way to tap into capital markets.
- Partners
You can’t be everywhere at once. If you want to grab opportunities as they arise without dropping the ball on existing projects, you need to have partners.
Partners you can trust not to steal from you and not to make a mess of the job at hand.
Its easy to go through life as a one-man show, micro-managing your company and knowing no one can screw you. But then you won’t have capacity to grab opportunities when they arrive at your doorstep.
Instead you’ll be stuck on your boat watching the ship of your dreams sail by.
- Domain expertise
It pays to know something about everything, and everything about something.
Great entrepreneurs are generalists that develop a specialization in one industry. They become known as the experts in that field.
So when opportunities arise in that field, the smart money knows who to approach.
You can’t take advantage of opportunities if they never knock on your door. You need to have a reputation for expertise if you want people to knock on your door.
- Track record
Talk is cheap. Action is everything. There is no substitute for a track record. Let your past speak for itself.