I was hearing to a TedX talk by Rajiv Talreja titled “Perfect Mediocrity vs Shabby Success”. As part of the talk, Rajiv identified 4 mistakes that he has seen entrepreneurs make from meeting over 300 successful people.
1. Hopeful Optimism
As entrepreneurs, we all hope to find the light at the end of the tunnel, the one success that we find after many failures, the rain after long periods of drought. But this optimism is misplaced if we do not act decisively. Without concrete decisions, going with the flow is the poison for the journey. This makes us feel small and accept things as they are.
2. Best in my team
As entrepreneurs, we all like to be the best person in the team. What we don’t understand that it creates a subconscious effect that we can only do the work to perfection. This means we end up doing things in a sequential fashion and miss out on doing activities consistently. Further as with most entrepreneurial enterprises, the issues that get attended to are the ones that cry out the most or the fire needs to be put out immediately. This kills actions that need to be taken to grow the enterprise.
3. Not hiring or hiring cheap
Most of the times in entrepreneurial ventures, availability of cash is difficult. This means either we don’t hire or we go out and hire on the cheap. What we are setting ourselves up for, by hiring the wrong type of person or person with limited or no skills, is that we have to do everything and ends up in lack of attention to greater issues of strategy.
4. Focussing on the customer
By focussing too much on the customer, the entrepreneur neglects building the right team, systems and strategies, setting themselves up for failure.
The entrepreneur, who is looking for his enterprise to grow and succeed should pay attention to the team, systems and strategy for they bring wealth to the enterprise and to the entrepreneur.
You can watch the full video on YouTube here