 The three things you must understand before starting a business. In the year 2008, when I was starting out as an entrepreneur, because I had read hundreds of books mostly about entrepreneurship, I had some ideas about what I was signing up for. I knew it was never going to be easy but I never knew what I ought to know to make the journey a little easier. 11 years later, I think I know better and that's why I want to share with you in this video the three simple things you need to understand before you start a business. If you want your entrepreneurial journey to be a little easier, if you're new here, consider subscribing so you won't miss other interesting videos like this. The human nature What is the work of an entrepreneur? He discovers human needs, understands how they want to be served, builds a team of people, creates products or services and then serves other humans in such a way as to help them, help his employees and help himself. Look at all these and tell me what you observe. It's very simple. Entrepreneurs deal with humans all day long. I wish I had known this earlier in my career. You see, understanding human nature is the very first thing you have to do as an entrepreneur because if you don't understand how humans think, behave, react and want to be served, you simply can't be an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs once said, that has been one of my mantras. Focus and simplicity Anyone can write a book from his simple statement. Steve Jobs, being a great student of human nature, understood so well that human beings don't have the capacity to do many things at a time. This understanding is the reason why Jobs killed most of Apple's products in 1997 when he returned to Apple. By killing most of the unimportant products, Steve drove his team into concentrating on a few things that matter. Think about simplicity. Think about Yahoo and MySpace, one of the reasons why these two companies died in complexity of their model. The two websites had very clumsy, overloaded websites which were too difficult for human brains to love. The opposite of Yahoo is Google. Visiting google.com is very interesting because you are there to meet a clean and simple homepage with no distraction. Look at any Apple product and tell me what you see. Simplicity and great craftsmanship. That's because the guy behind it understood that humans are too busy and their brains hate clumsiness. Back to my point. There are so many things that will come your way as an entrepreneur. So many decisions you have to make, so many strategies to create and sell your product. The fundamental to all these is your deep understanding of human nature. If you don't understand human nature, you can't understand their needs. If you don't understand human nature, you can't understand how to create the kinds of products and services they want to pay for. If you don't understand human nature, you can't understand how to sell to them the way they will be willing to pay for your product or services. How I Learn About Human Nature I learn about human nature in three ways. I read books on human psychology. I read books about marketing and I observe people. Reading books about human psychology will help you to really understand how human brains work. Reading about marketing will give you a better picture of how great marketers have applied what they know about human nature and observing humans in real life will show you how they live, think and make decisions. All these will help you to understand how to create a business that people want and present it to them the exact way they want it and when they want it. The Long Walk to Freedom The second thing you must understand before starting a business is that it's not a hundred meter race. Entrepreneurship is a marathon. I understood this from day one but I've seen a whole lot of people who don't understand it. Entrepreneurship is a long, long walk. It's not a hundred meter race. Entrepreneurship is a marathon. If you are not willing to run a marathon, go and get a job and endure all the pains that come with jobs. It took me eight long years before I had my first breakthrough in business and I think I'm lucky. I think I'm lucky because a lot of entrepreneurs suffered a decade of their life before they could have their first success. That's why Steve Jobs advises that you should start early and that's the same advice I am giving you. If you are in your 20s and you ever want to be an entrepreneur in your life, you have to start today. Don't make that mistake of thinking that you'll work for two decades and then start your own business when you're 50. Nobody postpones a marathon till they are 50. If you want to run, start practicing now because it's going to take a long, long time. I'm not saying this to scare you, I'm only telling you the truth. The question you might want to ask me is, but why must it take a lot of time to succeed in business? The answer to that question is simple, there is no tested map for entrepreneurship. Let me explain. If you come to me today and you say that you want to be a medical doctor, a lawyer or an accountant, we can sit down and draw a map of what and what to do and we'll see the whole map right here and you can decide how and how to go about your dream plus how long it will take for you to achieve it. This is because everyone in the world goes into such a route and because all those routes depend on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the source of every money. Accountants want to be accountant because someone has built a business. A lawyer wants to be a lawyer so that he can either defend an entrepreneur or someone who works for an entrepreneur. A doctor would never have seen good business if not because someone creates a business that employs a lot of people which gives them money to treat themselves at the hospital. Because entrepreneurship is the source of everything, everything else has a predictable map but entrepreneurship has no map because it's the source. I'm sorry, nobody can give you a map that will lead you to business success. The only thing you can learn about entrepreneurship is printable, never a formula and that's the reason why you have a lot of things to figure out, a lot of mistakes to make, a lot of failures to overcome. This all takes time and you have to be prepared for it right from day one. You'll be misunderstood The third thing you should understand about being an entrepreneur is that you'll be misunderstood. For whatsoever reason, entrepreneurs are not normal human beings. If you are not willing to be misunderstood, you probably shouldn't try to be an entrepreneur. For example, when you get started as an entrepreneur and make no money, your friends and family members will think that you are crazy. But when you start making money, you'll start making more money than everyone and again, they will think that you are proud or lucky. When everyone is buying the latest shoes, phones and cars and you have none of those things because you are building a business, everyone thinks you are mad. Many years later, when you buy the most beautiful home in your city and drive the most expensive cars, everyone thinks that you owe them money. They think you should be generous by giving them money. These are just a few examples but you can be sure that by signing up for entrepreneurship, you are signing up to be an outcast. When you decide to be an entrepreneur, you may never again fit into the society and the more successful you become, the less true friends you will have, except you are very lucky. Don't forget what I've shared with you today. If you ever want to be an entrepreneur, study and understand human nature because that's what will determine your ability to know what people want, how they want it, when they want it and at what price they want it. Be prepared to go on a long, long, long journey because the road is not predictable. You have to figure out so many things on your own because entrepreneurship is the source of every other profession and nobody has any map for your journey. Be prepared to be misunderstood from the first day you decide to be an entrepreneur till the day you die because everyone else in the world is at the opposite side of the game you are playing. In all, I think entrepreneurship is the best way to leave. If you want to be an entrepreneur, be proud of yourself and be willing to fight hard to achieve your dreams. Thank you so much for watching our videos. Are you between the ages of 15 and 40? 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