Winning Without Losing: Be Prepared
Winning Without Losing, the CMI award-winning book as “the best book for New Managers,” explains 66 strategies on how to be successful in business, without neglecting your personal life. Martin Bjergegaard and Jordan Milne interviewed a variety of successful entrepreneurs, and through their search they found that the key to a happy and successful life, is a healthy work life balance.
Every Saturday for 7 weeks, we will be sharing unique strategies that aim to inspire how you can achieve success without sacrifice.
This week, the selected strategy is chosen from Winning Without Losing‘s ‘Balance by Design’ section.
#2 Be Prepared
What do you do better than most other people? Swimming, cooking or maybe playing bridge? You may well have been born with talents, but, unless you have supernatural powers, practice was surely a defining factor.
The same goes for building your business; you have to practice and you have to be prepared.
The five founders of Fullrate, which turned out to be the success story of the year in Denmark in 2009, are the most prepared entrepreneurs I have ever come across. As former employees at the market leader they had done almost exactly what they set out to do again as entrepreneurs; create a broadband company from scratch.
Back in 2005, a company called CyberCity was the leading broadband provider in Denmark, riding high and ruling the market. Comfortable in its position, top management did not see any reason to implement the new technology appearing in the market. Therefore Peter, Stig, Haktan, Nicolai and Kasper disappeared out the front door and never returned.
One way to be prepared for any future venture is to obtain as much knowledge in the field as possible. Learning the ins and outs of an industry will help you be ready to take the next step towards your own business.
Instead they created the phenomenon called Fullrate; a rocket start-up launching cheap broadband for the people. Within 3 years they signed a $75 million exit to the old phone monopolist in Denmark, TDC.
Looking back, their fate seems predestined. At CyberCity, Haktan had built IT systems, Peter had acquired customers, Nicolai had taken care of finances, Stig had done strategy and Kasper knew the technology inside out.
All the important competences were gathered within the team. They trusted each other and delivered the same service as they had done in previous years, only cheaper and more efficiently.
But it does not necessarily take years to prepare for your next project. English super-entrepreneur Peter Jones, known from the TV phenomenon Dragons Den, writes in his book Tycoon about how at the age of 19–20 he worked for a couple of years in various computer companies in different positions, to learn as much as possible about the industry before he went on to create his own business.
His plan worked and he managed to create a successful business in record time.
You do not have to be an industry expert to be successful. Too many years of preparation can hinder your ability to act and think creatively. But a year or two absorbing knowledge is a good idea, whether you want to work with broadband or computers or something entirely different.
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