 A few days ago I was telling one of my friends the story of how I got my first breakthrough in the business world in the year 2016. It was after 8 long years of trial and error, I then asked my friend a rhetorical question. Why must it take so long to achieve success in business? I know the answer to that question and the answer is because you have so many things you simply don't understand when you're starting out and the way nature teaches you is by mistakes. It's when you make mistakes, fail and fall that you learn and become smarter. In today's video I want to look back and share with you some of the mistakes I made. This won't be bullet proof for your own mistakes because you'll have a whole lot of yours but it might help you to avoid a few of them. If you're new here don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. 1. Try to compete When I started out in the year 2008 I believed I had read a whole lot of books about entrepreneurship and so I could start a business in any market and win the market share from the players who'd been in the market for a decade. This turned out to be a deadly mistake and I later discovered that successful businesses aren't built by competing hard. Successful businesses are built by looking for a tribe to rule, a kingdom to dominate. You can't become successful in business if all you want to do is compete because competition leads to a situation where you start fighting with pricing. When a business starts fighting its competitors with price, the devil has won. You might end up with the largest share of the market but you will destroy your profit margin. That's why most businesses make no money. 2. Selling what people need Another big mistake I made was hoping that if I could figure out what people need I could easily make a lot of money. Listen very carefully because this is very tricky. People don't buy what they need even though they sometimes buy what they need. This is how it happens. If what people need is the same as what they want, yes they buy. But if people don't want what they need, they won't buy. The best example I love to use is books versus alcohol. Everybody in the world needs books. Almost nobody needs to be drunk. Though people will buy what intoxicates them, they won't buy what can improve their mind, which is books. The best thing you can ever do as an entrepreneur is to figure out what people want and need. If they don't want it, it doesn't matter how much they need it. 3. Hoping to learn business by reading business books A few years before I started out in the business world, I read a whole lot of business books because I thought that I could learn business by reading about business and that's partly true. Just as you can learn how to drive by reading a few books about driving, you can learn business by reading about business. However, you don't want to believe that reading a hundred books about how to drive will suddenly make you a good driver. You'll also want to get some practical experience as you read as well. 4. Not concentrating on marketing books on time On April 11th, 1983, Apple hired John Scully, who happened to be the president of Pepsi Cola. Scully didn't know anything about technology, so why would a technology company hire him? So it happens that Scully was a genius marketing guy and Steve Jobs knew that knowing marketing is better than knowing about technology when it comes to making a business successful. If you want to be successful in business, you have to study marketing because that's what 90% of entrepreneurship is all about. 5. Being soft with people Till today, I'm a very soft person because I was raised in a soft environment, but I've learnt over the years that some people are just selfish and are willing to take advantage of you. What I do now is to quickly recognise such people and crush them quickly. 6. Not adopting technologies on time Oh, this should have been number one because this hurt me more than anything. I ignored technology for the first six years of my entrepreneurial journey. I was stupid. If I'd known what I know today about technology, I would have started using it the very first day I arrogantly went into the business world. You see, so many people have worked hard to build stuff that can make your journey a whole lot easier as an entrepreneur. You'll be dumb to neglect all these technologies or only use them for entertainment. Think about blogs, social media, YouTube, hundreds of software applications and plugins. They are all your assistants and you have to use them to promote your business and to build your business system. 7. Expecting some people to believe in me I think I wasn't expecting most people to believe in me, but I was hurt when some people who are close to me seemed not to believe in me, when I was actually expecting them to believe in me. Here's the thing, if you're starting a business soon, just know that life is about to become very, very rough. You're on your own as most people will assume that you cannot succeed and some of them will let you know either with their words or actions. You better see yourself as a lone ranger and fight on anyways. 8. Not knowing how investors think It took me a long time to understand how investors think and when I say investor, I mean anyone who might want to give you any money for business. It's actually very simple to get people to invest in your business, but it's not easy. You have to prove that you know what you're doing and that you have a bit of a track record. Trying to get other people to sacrifice their money on you when you have no track record of growing money is not going to work. 9. Giving people percentage of my business too early I did this and I would have been crying now if not because the people I gave percentages of my business to were not smart enough to know I was putting myself into a cell. They didn't see the future so they lost the equity I gave them. Today they would have been making a lot of money from my sweat and I would have hated myself for it. If you can, keep all of your company for as long as it's needed. Yes, you might want to raise capital, but if you do it too early, you'll give too much and when your business ends up being successful, you'll cry every night because you made a mistake. 10. Persuading others to build businesses Today I teach entrepreneurship and I love it. But one other big mistake I've made was to almost force some close friends to be entrepreneurs. It seemed like these friends hated their jobs. So I would be like, okay, you have everything it takes to start a business. I was wrong, they didn't have anything it takes to start a business. And I would have been blamed in many ways for their failure. Now this is my advice to you. If you think you have what it takes to start a business, don't think others do because if you sugarcoat what it means to be an entrepreneur, you'll get people to make silly decisions like resign their jobs, borrow money or something like that. And in the end, it might fail and they'll hate you for it. Yes, you can teach and inspire. You can encourage people to start businesses, but don't sugarcoat entrepreneurship. If I had to start all over again, I will fall in love with technologies from day one. I would not try to expect anyone in my family to believe in me. I'd make sure 90% of books I want to read are marketing books. I would be wary of people who'd like to take advantage of others. I would not sell anything because people need it, but instead look for things that people need and want. I wouldn't persuade people to be entrepreneurs. And most importantly, I will never compete. I will instead create a kingdom, a tribe, a movement for my products. If you like this video, we'll appreciate you to share it with someone. We love you.