Here's how your Startup idea can take off in style

Life teaches us. Through the path of entrepreneurship, there will be plenty of moments when your faith will be lacking. However, an entrepreneur is single minded in disruption and your journey will be about breaking boundaries. If you have burning desire to start something, do it. Leave no regrets but be ready for a bumpy ride because if it was easy, everyone will be doing it. See the glass half full. What makes an entrepreneur is not knowing everything about business, it is your passion and your ability to live fearlessly.

Now, identifying gaps to be filled with innovations are key towards your initial steps in becoming an entrepreneur. Yet, start too big and people become paralyzed. Instead, focusing on a series of small ideas to get the innovation ball rolling, aggregate these measurable impact and work up. Know that despite if you have great ideas, it is impossible to do everything by yourself. Compare to having great ideas, it’s even more critical to have the right people in the right positions to execute them. Start with a highly technical team in areas of your work and stay nimble. When your team is small, your biggest barriers tend to be external in nature and this helps your team to move quickly and effectively towards the goals. Your team is one of your most important investments when starting a company. Surround yourself with a good team because you will need them to overcome all the obstacles that will come.

Next, to increase your chances of success, dedicate significant time to finding mentors and focus on critical business issues. Good mentors are invaluable to improve your performance, providing an an entrepreneurial advantage to help you with insights and with options that best resolve your challenges. Naturally, everyone have a different way of doing things (and that’s a good thing) but listen as though as you are a sponge and go on to define your own style as you increase your experience.

As an entrepreneur, one of your biggest assets is your ability to see the world in terms of possibilities as opposed to its pitfalls. However this can also be your greatest weakness. Developing an ability to step out of your viewpoint and to validate opinions and views other than your own will ensure that you are able to make objective decisions. Ask questions about alternate viewpoints, research and enlarge your knowledge base. Accepting that disagreement does not mean one party is wrong, and staying open-minded will help towards your long term success.

Do not let other people tell you that your ideas are bad. Instead, learning to express and adapt your vision to account for varied perspectives is critical to drive a business forwards. Spend a lot of time streamlining what your business is, what it does and what it represents. You’ll increase your chance of success if you know your strengths and limitations, constantly develop and refine your strategy, understand customer needs, and strengthen your product and service offerings by aligning your strategy and customer needs.

The better you understand your customer, the higher the probability of success. Adapt your company to changing business conditions and keep pace with the dynamic marketplace. Keep coming back at it, and don’t lose your edge.

Finally when delivering your work, be genuine and it will resonate with your customers, employees and investors. Focus on the questions: “How much? How fast? and At what margin?”. When in face of situations, observe how others around you work through them and grow from it. When in face of opposition, take yourself seriously despite your age or experience.

Make your hard work count on your entrepreneurship journey.

(This article is authored by Juliana Chua, Head, Business Development at RunSocial)