THE ROAD TO RICHES: A 10-step entrepreneur blueprint to wealth by the Entrepreneur Abdallah Abu Sheikh.
The Entrepreneur: It is a fact of life that money is one of the mediums through which earthly success is measured. We also know that money makes earthly pleasures much easier to attain.
To bring many of your dreams and ambitions to life, you must achieve a level of financial freedom that can only be attained by mastering the art of money-making and understanding the laws that govern wealth, which, like the law of gravity, are universal and unchanging.
In today’s world, we are not educated in the science of governing money and attaining financial freedom. On the contrary and as businessman and author Robert Kiyosaki describes it, the educational system is designed to put more people into the ‘rat race.’ People who live paycheck to paycheck are always at the mercy of budget constraints and under the misconception that money is scarce and almost impossible to attain.
Reality proves the opposite is true, money is plentiful for those who understand the universal rules of its acquisition. The underlying truth is evident, the same rules that governed money thousands of years ago still govern it today.
It is important to understand that our prosperity as a nation depends upon the financial prosperity of each and every one of us as individuals. The success of a nation depends on the individual success of each and every one of its citizens.
Our acts can be no wiser than our thoughts and our thoughts can be no wiser than our understanding. Therefore, we need to develop an understanding of the keys of financial gain and financial freedom in order for us to free ourselves from the cyclical nature of the “rat race”.
I have been lucky to have the chance to spend the last 4 years learning and studying about this idea from various well established mentors in the business sector. I have collected a large corpus of well-studied and widely agreed acknowledged, theories, stories and concepts pertaining to the topic.
I am not claiming however that I am entirely correct or complete in my thinking as this topic is far more complicated than any single person can know but I am simply offering the best of what I have managed to accumulate from some of the most prominent corporate figures globally.
In any case the consequence of my research and analysis, is this series of articles that I hope will inspire readers to grow and sustain their financial capacity and help better educate those who read it on how to come up with financially viable solutions for their difficult personal and corporate financial problems.
Lesson 1: CAPITALIZE ON YOUR NEED
Being in need or suffering is a blessing in disguise for all those with entrepreneurial aspirations. Need creates a drive and a desire to work. Desire is the fuel that will sustain you in your journey to riches.
All successful entrepreneurial ideas first started out as the search for a solution to a problem and there is no better way to find a solution to a problem than to suffer through it. Finding a problem to solve is the first step in your entrepreneurial journey.
A lot of the time, many people fall under the misconception that finding a real problem to solve is a difficult task or think that all the real problems have already been solved. Not so. Simply reflect upon your own life and look for solutions to the problems that you personally endure.
The bless of suffering helps you develop an emotion that is common in every successful person you will ever come across, and that is passion.
One of the most prominent muslim philosophers, Imam Al Ghazzali defines passion as “anger and love combined”. Innovators and entrepreneurs usually develop a certain level of anger towards their current situation, because they identify the inefficiency of the status- quo.
This anger fuels them to keep moving forward. They also develop a certain amount of love towards their goals and that is what keeps then motivated and focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.
FEED YOUR OWN NEED
Most of the world’s greatest business ventures were established by pioneers who were trying to feed their own need or solve a problem that they dealt with on day-to-day basis.
There are many examples of entrepreneurs who have found success by scratching their own itch. When you are trying to create a product or service to solve a personal problem, you instantly know what works and what does not work.
When you try to solve someone else’s problem, you are constantly stabbing in the dark at what could, or could not be, the right solution. In other words, never build something you yourself wouldn’t use.
If you build something you see no utility in using, why would you expect others to believe in its value?
History provides many examples of startups born out of an individual’s need to find creative solutions to a problem they were facing personally.
Entrepreneurs are usually fueled by their need and desire to not wait around for someone else to solve their problems. They go out and try to personally tackle them. In the process, they ultimately wind up developing a viable solution not only for themselves, but for others as well. Take the example of Reed Hastings.
His impetus for starting Netflix was discovering an overdue rental of Apollo 13 in his closet and having to pay $40 in late fees. While Hastings was already an accomplished entrepreneur in the software world, it seems that his most successful enterprise, Netflix, was created out of the need to solve a problem that affected him directly. His $40 problem turned into a $154-billion company solution.
Entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg provides another ‘scratch your own itch’ example. He wanted to figure out if girls at Harvard were single before asking them out, and this led to the development of the world’s largest social media platform, Facebook. The same is true of many successful businesses we are familiar with including Apple, Microsoft, L’Occitane and more.
For many entrepreneurs, the most lucrative problems to solve are those that hit close to home. When you suffer through a problem, you get to know it better than anyone else and you get a special understanding of all its dimensions.
This gives you an advantage over everyone else evaluating at the same problem from a distance without the personal connection. So, the first step on your journey to riches: know your own need and think about how you can feed it…
The Entrepreneur – Lesson One
This is the first lesson piece out of 10. The remaining will be produced in a sequential articles and lessons under the title of THE ROAD TO RICHES as part of Venture’s new column: The Entrepreneur by Abdallah Abu Sheikh, covering entrepreneurship topic and function as a guide for start-ups.
For lesson Two:
Managing Director
LUX Enterprises
