3 Crucial Ingredients to Entrepreneur Success

KungFu Panda says there is no secret ingredient. So why are we looking for it??? There is hard work and some things that you really need on a practical basis for entrepreneurial success.

These things are resources, skills, and idea.

1. Resources (Money)

First off, you must have resources. By resources I really just need money. You need money to start a business. That, everybody knows. But is money really necessary? what if you have a lot of time? Some people might say: I don’t need money. I have a lot of time and I have a lot of talent. I’m gonna take my time plus talent and I’ll make myself into a success. On the surface, that is true. But let’s think about this for a minute. If you have nothing but time to work on your business idea who’s paying your bills? How are you living? Living and paying your bills cost money, so even if you don’t spend any money on your business idea, you still need the money to live.

Let’s go a step further. If you spend all your time working on your business idea, then you’re necessarily not making money with your time. People say time is money, and there’s truth in that. By dedicating all your time on your business, you’re missing out on opportunities you might otherwise have to make money, such as working at a job. So spending time on your business comes with a opportunity cost that a lot of people don’t account for. But in the end, whichever way you look at it, you still need money. You either need money to start your business or you need money to buy time from other things you’re doing so you can spend your time on your business. There are other things you need money for, which we’ll discuss in a second.

2. Skills

The second thing you need is skill. Of course it’s always good to have skills, but having a broad set of skills is crucial to the success of your business. When you are starting off, resource or money is limited. So you have to take over a lot of tasks yourself. You have to be able to manage the business, maybe do a bit of marketing, and you also have to dedicate your skills on developing a good product. That’s why skill is crucial. Without the right skills, you either cannot produce a quality product or service or you have to pay someone else to do it for you. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have all the skills, but you should have as much as possible, so you can do most of the things yourself in the beginning until you are able to get other people to help you along the way. Of course you can’t have everything, so you will still need help, but the more you have the less you need from someone else.

3. Idea

The third thing you need is a good idea. I have previously written about how to come up with the right idea. I put idea last not because it’s not important, but it is because a lot of people have a lot of good ideas yet there are very few people who can turn a good idea into a good business. So while ideas are important, it isn’t necessarily as important as the other two things.

So let’s refresh our memory: resource, skills, and idea. Those are what I call the triangle of success. A successful entrepreneur or business must have all three things. Now you might ask, what if Id on’t have them all? Rarely do people have all three things. As a matter of fact, I think if you had all three things, chances are you’re already successful in something you were doing.

So what if we don’t have all three? That’s okay. In my experience, if you can have two of the three things then you are likely to be able to get the third thing pretty easily. Let’s take a look at this. If you have the resources and the idea, you’re missing skills. All you have to do is find someone who can help you by bringing in the right skill set. You can pay that person; you can bring that person as a partner; or you can pay that person as an employee. Either way, with your resource or money you will be able to get the right skills. What if you have the resource and the skills? Well that’s a no-brainer. If you can make things happen with your skills, plus you have the resources to make it happen, all you need is an idea. You can start your own search, like a shark tank, and get the idea you want and use your resource to make it happen. lastly if you have the skills and you have the idea, you have two ways to go about this. First, you can work on it yourself and make a product or service and then try to sell it and make it into a success; or you can find an investor who might have the resources but lack the other two things. That’s a good match. That’s what investors — angel investors; venture capital — that’s what they are there for. They’re there to provide the resources necessary to take a person with good skills and the right idea to the next level, to success.

There you have it. Those are my three NOT so secret ingredients to success as an entrepreneur. Don’t worry if you don’t have all three. Work hard, look around, get two of them and you should be able to obtain the third one. Good luck out there!