When you start your own company, the path to success can be exciting and exhausting at the same time. Most entrepreneurs have good business ideas and leverage self-motivation to help achieve their goals, but lack the experience needed to succeed. Therefore, a useful step you could take in this situation is to pay close attention to what successful entrepreneurs say about their experience.

Although their ideas are now returning billions of dollars in annual revenues, it was not always like this for some of the biggest names in the business world. Some of them have been in the same situation as most early-stage entrepreneurs, while others can offer valuable advice regarding wealth management and overcoming business challenges.

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, ranks second among the wealthiest people in the world list, with a net worth of over 90 billion dollars.  One piece of advice he gave to emerging entrepreneurs is to focus most on what customers are unsatisfied with. The feedback you get from them often reveals the aspect of your business that you need to improve. Keep in mind that every successful business must be customer-oriented.

“As tempting as it may be to staff your new business with friends and relatives, this is likely to be a serious mistake.” – Richard Branson

Richard Branson ranks eighth among the wealthiest British billionaires. With a net worth of over 5 billion dollars, he is most known for founding the Virgin Group. His advice for startup entrepreneurs is to pay much attention to who you are going to work with and avoid your friends and family in this process. This is a very common mistake for early-stage business owners, as it is easy to convince your close ones to believe in your ideas and be patient regarding the financial benefits. However, in a market as dynamic as the startup one, it is very important to hire the most skillful and dedicated people you can find. Working with friends or family, you might fail to assess their contribution correctly or look in the other direction when they do easily-correctable mistakes, thus hurting your business.

“I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.” – Mark Zuckerberg

With a new worth of about 60 billion dollars at the age of 34, he ranks seventh in the top richest people in the world. His advice to startup owners is to always do the easy things first. The reasoning behind this statement is that easy tasks can be done more efficiently. A startup needs rapid progress, and a hard solution can take months or years to implement. Of course, what Mark says is not to ignore the difficult business aspects and only do the easy ones. The strategy he proposed is to always do the things that can be done quickly first, because an early-stage company needs constant improvement and suffers when the work is slow.

“Quality is much better than quantity.” – Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was one of the wealthiest and most influential business people that lived, acquiring a net worth of about 10 billion dollars. During his life, he gave numerous motivational speeches and offered valuable lessons to entrepreneurs. One of his most important pieces of guidance, that can also be seen in Apple’s business model, is to focus on quality rather than quantity. If you want to make an impact, you should do so by offering something desirable and not something that is easy for everyone to get.

“You have a viable business only if your product is either better or cheaper than the alternatives.” – Caterina Fake

Caterina Fake is an internet entrepreneur with a net worth of 25 million dollars, most known for founding the social network Flickr. Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to study the market really well and pay attention to what competitors offer. In order to make people buy your product or invest in your business, you must take a step forward from the crowd. People have no incentive to pay attention to a product that offers nothing new or better than the already existing ones. Therefore, look to innovate or create a cost-effective model to make your business stand out in front of customers and investors.

“If you're going to start a business, you need to really love it, because not everybody is going to love it.” – Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington is the co-founder of The Huffington Post and has a net worth of 50 million dollars. She says that in order to be successful, you must love what you’re doing. This is especially true in the startup environment, because many people will not be so keen to listening or liking the solutions you come up with. This will generate a lot of challenges and difficult moments and in order to stay afloat and not lose the trust in your product, you must love it from the beginning. If you do so, your motivation will give you patience and drive to accomplish your goal.

This is what some of world’s successful entrepreneurs think their businesses benefited most from. If you are an inexperienced, but very ambitious entrepreneur, come up with strategies on how their advice might be integrated in your business model, but always select what suites your company and work ethic.

The above references an opinion and is for educational information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice. Investing in any business involves risks, including illiquidity, lack of dividends, loss of investment and dilution, and it should be done only as part of a diversified portfolio. Please click here to read the full risk warning. 

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