We all have some lessons to learn, no matter where we are in life. It doesn’t matter if you’re 9 or 90, there’s always more to learn. For us younger folk, though, we don’t just have to learn new things, but un-learn some of our generation’s habits. Nevertheless, there are still lessons every millennial and generation Z entrepreneur needs, and I’m here to help get them to you!
1) Learn From Those Before Us
We have one major advantage over our parents, and the current billionaires: We get to learn from their mistakes! They had to make all those mistakes because they didn’t know what to avoid. We, on the other hand, can avoid those pitfalls, because we’ve seen what causes them, and how to skirt around it.
If we leverage that knowledge, use it to our advantage, we’ll be able to lead a much more advanced life. A life with not just one, but two lifetime’s worth of experience, and two lifetime’s worth of wisdom.
2) Don’t Beat Around The Bush Forever, COMMIT!
One of the biggest issues in today’s modern world is the lack of accountability. As soon as the going gets rough, people can just jump ship, and there’s no real repercussions.
This prevents people from having the willpower to keep going when things don’t go perfectly. People can give up too easily if they aren’t 100% committed. That prevents them from growing, learning from their mistakes.
You need to be all in, and learn from every mistake you make. You’ll find it much easier to work through the issues if you’re invested, have something to keep you accountable to the business. Once you have that tether, you can really begin to grow your business.
3) There Are No More Participation Awards
Unfortunately, we aren’t getting those little gold trophies anymore, not everybody is a winner. This is real life, and in this game there are very clear winners and losers. This is the biggest of the lessons every millennial and generation Z entrepreneur need, yet struggle to grasp, as almost all of us were babied at one point or another.
We were all probably given a participation trophy at least once, an award just for showing up and trying. Well, those are out of the question now. We aren’t going to be given any more awards just for trying. We don’t even get credit for working hard, if we don’t succeed.
Does that mean we shouldn’t work hard, if we aren’t being recognized for it? NO! We absolutely need to be working hard! That’s the only way to really succeed! I’ll put it this way for you: If we work hard and succeed (likely), we get rewarded. If we don’t work hard, and don’t succeed (also likely), we don’t get rewarded. But if we work hard, and don’t succeed (unlikely, but possible), we can go right back at it with more experience for next time.
There’s two options for where working hard can get you. Either you succeed, or dramatically increase your chance to succeed next time! There isn’t a way to lose if you’re really working hard and learning from the experience.
4) You’re Going To Have To Network
Even I hate doing this, if I’m being honest. I’m not a fan of face-to-face contact, or even a phone call. They feel awkward and forced, and I can’t seem to give my full focus to it. No matter how I feel about it, though, I still need to be doing it. There’s no two ways about it, success requires networking.
Whether you’re trying to get funding from a halo investor, or just trying to meet people who share your passion, and that you could bounce ideas off. Both of those scenarios are extremely beneficial to your business, and require contact with other homo sapiens.
Almost always, the people you’re talking to will want to meet face-to-face, or at least have a Skype call or something of the sort. This is one of, if not the, best way to judge a person’s character. Watching their face and body language as they speak, listening for “umm”s and “err”s, any stammering and st-st-st-stuttering. They’re undoubtedly looking for positive characteristics from you, such as confidence, trustworthiness, essential leadership skills.
If you can’t convince and motivate your investor, there’s no way you could lead and rile your employees to your cause. You need to be able to be charismatic, to be outgoing, to be a leader.. or at least be good at pretending to be those things (like me!).
5) Go In With A Plan, But Don’t Plan Forever
A business plan is absolutely *crucial* to the success of your business. No matter the scale, from lemonade stands to running Minute Maid, you need a plan of action. I speak from experience here, I’ve had to plan out every purchase and sale for cars for a long time now.
Plans can give your business a sense of direction, a purpose, and a destination as well. Without that, you and your employees may as well be a bunch of drunken ducks, going every which way. In order to get said ducks in a row, you need a plan and definite instructions for them.
One big trap that I fall into constantly is OVER-planning. I’ll go in, and get a plan going, and never stop. I’ll have planned six, maybe seven buys into the future, and never have made the first. This is crucial to avoid. Planning two or three steps ahead is good, but anything past that? The future is extremely unpredictable, anything could happen and make your plan irrelevant. It’s nigh pointless to plan too far into the future, as you won’t be able to benefit from it. A better plan would be to plan for shorter increments, but do so more frequently.
6) Failure Is GOOD
I know it sounds wrong, but bear with me. There is no better teacher, and never will be, than failure. You learn firsthand, and for your specific scenario. Experiencing what happened first-hand, you can make a course of action taking in to account what happened.
One of the greatest inventors of all time, Thomas The Tank Eng– wrong Thomas, sorry. Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.
With every failure that he went through, he stayed positive, and pushed through, eventually perfecting the light bulb. With that kind of determination, he moved on and made history.. All because he was able to learn from his mistake. He was a true entrepreneur.
One More For The Road: We Have TIME!
The last, and most important of the lessons every millennial and generation z entrepreneur needs to know, is that we have TIME. The most valuable, and only truly finite resource in the world.
Everything else came from somewhere, but time.. Time is the passing of energy, the only true unit of measure. Time has no definite end, yet we run out of it constantly. We have to make the most of what little we have, and that includes learning from those before us.
By learning from their mistakes and their successes, we can effectively live with the knowledge of more than one lifetime in our bodies. With the coming of the internet as well, we have access to more knowledge than ever before. That gives us a huge advantage over everyone before us, and allows us to be greater people than ever before. The only question is.. Will you be the one to be great, or will you let someone else take your glory?
