The Best Path to Entrepreneurial Success is to Do the Unexpected

If you have a true, passionate desire to become an entrepreneurial leader, it may seem contradictory, but the best path to exceptional success is to either reinvigorate a failing company or start a new one in a business sector currently dominated by established companies.

At first blush such an approach may seem like business suicide, but this strategy offers the most potential for success and because so few are willing to try it, there is little competition.

Here are a few tips on rebuilding or starting a company in a business sector dominated by established companies:

1. Make sure you understand and have experience in the selected industry.

2. Understand that success will come easier by actually changing the industry rather than trying to compete in it.

3. Position your company to compete against rather then with the established companies. Make sure you understand the difference.

4. Strive to become a disrupter of the industry’s status quo by calling out what the established companies are doing wrong. It’s not easy, but through passion, innovation and force of will, it can be accomplished and lead to high levels of success.

5. Offer fresh, different and even radical solutions to the needs of the customers, even if they don’t yet know they need a new approach.

6.  Don’t try to differentiate your company by trying to do better at what the other companies are already doing. Rather, offer products or services that other companies have not conceived of, can’t or won’t do.

7. Know you are on the right path when others constantly offer the admonition, “You can’t do that.”

8. Understand you are making progress when the established companies begin to attack, criticize or copy what you are doing.

9. Create a spirit de corps in the psyche of those who join you in the venture by making it a “we against them” environment.

Allow those who join your venture and add value to fully share in the value created. 

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Robert MacDonald -- Former CEO of ITT Life, retired chairman and CEO of Allianz Life of North America, founder of LifeUSA; author of numerous books on business, management and leadership. 

bobmac5201@gmail.com

                                        

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