Chapter 2 Chapter 1 Entrepreneurial mentality, ignite your future

Entrepreneurship is a very challenging social activity, and it is an all-round test of the entrepreneur's own wisdom, ability, courage, and courage.But that doesn't mean we can't start a business.It is to be fully mentally prepared before embarking on the road of entrepreneurship.Although the road to entrepreneurship is long and difficult, mentality determines everything, and having the right mentality will play a decisive role in your entrepreneurship.You may not need much money or ability, but you must have an extraordinary mentality.This is because strong willpower, tremendous pressure, quick learning ability and hundredfold self-confidence are all supported by a good attitude.

No matter how suitable your personality, habits, details, goals, perseverance, and other factors of weather, location, and harmony are, as long as you decide to be content with the status quo, these factors will not play a positive role in entrepreneurship.On the contrary, even if these success factors are not sufficient, if you can rest assured and innovate, you can still be successful. Many people often say that they are doing well enough and that it is impossible for them to reach a higher level. In fact, that is just an excuse for themselves.In the past, when most enterprises were state-owned, many people were used to being content with the status quo, thinking that this was an iron rice bowl.As a result, after a few years, the iron rice bowl was also broken, and people with this kind of thinking became victims of being content with the status quo, and became the first batch of laid-off workers.The reason is that they are too content with the status quo, regard work as a way of dawdling, do not think about making progress, and do not seek to make progress.The results of it?They were laid off and had no income.

Just think about it, what you had yesterday, will you still have it today?And what you have today, will it still be there tomorrow?In order to have a high-quality life yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we must not be content with the status quo, but must fight with full enthusiasm.Because when you stop, the whole world is still moving forward, even faster, and standing still is a kind of regression. In the past, we all had ideals and goals, and we all worked diligently for them. However, when many people achieved some success on the road of life, they lived a life of contentment. On the surface, this is a This is a very common and peaceful state of mind, but as time goes on, this state will gradually lead to failure.Due to complacency with the status quo, batch after batch of talented people lost their jobs, and batch after batch of vibrant companies went into decline, or even disappeared forever.Today you may be able to work in peace, get a salary and forget about unemployment, but tomorrow you may lose your job.Because being content with the status quo means voluntarily giving up the pursuit and not wanting to innovate.A person or enterprise without pursuit and innovation is destined to not develop for a long time.Therefore, being content with the status quo is a slow poison.

Similarly, as an entrepreneur, if you want to maintain your entrepreneurial passion all the time, you must stay away from the mentality of being content with the status quo and learn to "return yourself to zero".How to "return to zero"?Every time we achieve a goal and reach a high point, we must keep forging ahead and take the reached high point as a new starting point.Entrepreneurs must not only affirm their past achievements, but also work hard to achieve higher goals for tomorrow, so that their careers will always be on the road of continuous development and advancement.

The Way to Success of "Little Swans"——Uncomfortable with the Status Quo In 1982, Liao Changguang and He Yongzhi opened the "Little Swan" hot pot restaurant. At that time, there were only 3 tables in the store. After three months of losses, they realized their first profit - 70 yuan a day. Since 1983, Little Swan Hot Pot Restaurant has continued to expand its storefronts and expand its business area. By 1988, Little Swan had earned 100,000 yuan in 6 years, which was not a small sum of money at the time. These 6 years are the most difficult stage of entrepreneurship and primitive accumulation of capital for Little Swan.In the establishment of a business, entrepreneurs should not have the idea of ​​being contented and contented with a small fortune, but should have "ambition", keep forging ahead, and move towards a farther and bigger goal without being satisfied.Liao Changguang and He Yongzhi knew this truth deeply, so Little Swan began to move towards a higher goal.

In 1988, Little Swan opened the Hot Pot Hotel in Jiangbei, Chongqing, carried out exotic decoration, and designed private hot pot rooms with different styles.It took the lead in moving hot pot from street food stalls to Daya Hall, and carried out a real "hot pot revolution".After this revolution, Little Swan earned 1 million yuan in just one year. Little Swan achieved great success in the first year after the original accumulation, thanks to the business philosophy of the couple who are not satisfied with the status quo.Just imagine, if Little Swan is still wandering on that hot pot street, no matter how well-run it is, it will still be a food stall on the street, the target consumer group is relatively fixed, and the profit margin will be very limited. It is absolutely impossible Earn 1 million yuan in one year.The opening of high-end hot pot restaurants has opened the door to higher profits for Little Swan, which stems from the extraordinary courage and courage of its operators.Seeing that the market is so good, Liao Changguang and He Yongzhi started a new business expansion non-stop.

In 1990, Little Swan established a branch in Chengdu, which was located in the outskirts of the city, with a business area of ​​more than 2,000 square meters. At the beginning of its opening, it was a hit in Chengdu.The singing and dancing performances on the hall stage and the spacious parking lot in front of the store have become the main highlights to attract business guests in Chengdu. At the end of 1993, there were 12 Little Swan branches all over the country, and the annual turnover exceeded 50 million yuan. Chongqing Little Swan Food Culture Company was formally established. Beginning in 1994, Little Swan adopted a new cooperative business model: opening chain stores in various places; by the end of 1998, there were 50 chain stores, nearly 5,000 employees in the group, and total assets of 160 million yuan.This model makes founder He Yongzhi known as "the first person in China's franchise business".

In 1995, Little Swan began to enter the hotel industry again. On the one hand, it worked hard to enhance the gold content of its own brand, and on the other hand, it took the route of diversified operations to expand its operating income. In September 1996, Chongqing Little Swan Hotel, the first privately-owned star-rated hotel in Sichuan, opened for business, and hired professional managers from famous international hotel management groups with high salaries to manage it. It made considerable profits in the first year of opening. The reason why Little Swan Hot Pot has developed so rapidly is mainly due to the management philosophy of the founder who is not satisfied with the status quo.This reminds every entrepreneur that in the process of starting a business, after you have accumulated a certain amount of capital and experience, you must try to seize the market opportunity and develop your business as quickly as possible, otherwise, once the opportunity passes, it will be too late to regret .

Driven by the active market economy, many people are preparing or starting their own businesses, and many brave people have "plopped" into the water. No matter what their swimming style is, whether they are butterfly strokes, breaststroke strokes or "dog planing", they are sprinting to the other side of hope. However, However, many people are still hesitating on the shore, unable to start a business for a long time, why hesitate?Because dare not!Why not?Because of fear! In fact, whether it is a small business or a large business operator, they will have fear in the process of starting or re-starting a business.Large enterprises have accumulated the ability to resist risks in the process of their own operations, and have certain advantages of their own, so they can completely rely on this advantage to overcome fear.For those who are preparing to start a business or just starting a business, when facing the fear of starting a business, they must be prepared for everything, stabilize their mood, analyze the market thoroughly, and after a comprehensive understanding of the entrepreneurial system, innovate and overcome fear Psychology, entrepreneurship can lead to success.Of course, as an entrepreneur, it is also necessary to understand the reasons for fear. Only in this way can we prescribe the right medicine and overcome psychological fear.

The study found that entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises have different reasons for fear in the process of starting a business, and the objects of fear are various, but the most common ones are: the fear of project feasibility and entrepreneurial risk when choosing a project at the initial stage of starting a business; Fear of cumbersome business registration procedures and subsequent tax issues when starting a business; fear of entrepreneurial methods during start-up or development; fear of processing and adaptability to different information during entrepreneurship; market, the fear of competitors.In addition, legal issues, funding issues, marketing, and innovation are also the focus of fear for entrepreneurs.

In fact, in the entrepreneurial process, fear varies from person to person.The way, degree and time of influencing entrepreneurs are only clear to the entrepreneurs themselves.For example, some people worry about starting their first business, while others can start several projects at the same time, and then become nervous about whether they will be successful or get expansion capital.Therefore, overcoming fear also requires entrepreneurs to make "individualized choices" and take different actions according to their different situations. In short, most people have some entrepreneurial phobia more or less, but in fact, as long as we can plan carefully and think about the existence of various difficulties in advance, we can firmly minimize the risk. Overcoming fear to start a business Samuel Cohen, 21; Jeremy Krause, 23; Thomas Hilton, 22.They are the founders of the Jeremy Ice Cream Company in the United States.Founded in June 1997, the company specializes in the production of "super ice cream" with a unique taste. In 1998, the sales volume was 1 million US dollars, and in 1999 it reached 5 million US dollars. Klaus is a natural businessman. He said: "I grew up hating commonplace occupations, so I have never had a job." After entering the University of Pennsylvania, Klaus made ice cream in his dormitory.Soon, two schoolmates, Cohen and Hilton, also joined Krause's career.As a result, Claus sold most of the bonds he held, and took out the $60,000 he earned from selling water purifiers door-to-door in high school, and partnered with them to start the company. At the beginning, Klaus was very worried that he would not succeed and was afraid of failure. However, after market research, Klaus found that the taste of ice cream on the market had not changed for 20 years. a nice space.So, he adopted the suggestion of the beer merchant Samuel Adams, using beer brewing technology to make strange ice cream, and he also contacted the local cheese factory, asking them to provide special cheese. Due to the novel taste, this small ice cream company quickly won the favor of venture capital institutions, and the new products were in short supply as soon as they were launched, and soon became a food fashion. Like them, working hard to overcome entrepreneurial fear is a necessary process for successful entrepreneurs.For most entrepreneurs, from the moment the entrepreneurial idea flashes, the fear is hidden in the heart, which is normal, because people always feel insecure about uncertain things. Most entrepreneurs admit that their fear of starting a business stems from distrust of themselves. Whenever they start a plan, they can't help but ask themselves: Do customers really need my product?Can my company survive until the day it makes money?Is my marketing approach right?Will my hard work pay off?How big will my return be?How can my business be successful?If I fail, what will others think of me?What will relatives and friends say?These fears linger, lurking in the depths of the entrepreneur's heart, making them sweat, feel sick, and even depressed. Although the fear that everyone faces is the same, the difference is that some people are knocked down because of this, and since then they have been honestly working as wage earners, and have been doing nothing for this life; Fighting spirit, because they have mastered the method of overcoming fear: a good idea, coupled with a good attitude. There is such a group of people who stick to a belief, will not give up, are not afraid of setbacks, and only want to do one thing well in their lives.They are paranoid, obsessed, crazy, and may suffer repeated failures, but they persevere and persist.They are a group of paranoid people, but they are also often successful entrepreneurs. The founder, former president and CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, once famously said: "Only the paranoid can survive." The real meaning of the sentence is: a person can only be successful if he is persevering, persevering, and persevering tenaciously in the process of pursuing his ideal; Only when it is set to an extreme point can we not be blinded by the superficial phenomena in life and work, can we truly find the best solution to the problem, and can continue to innovate and strive for excellence. In every successful entrepreneur, people can almost find the gene of "paranoia".From Jiang Nanchun, the founder of Focus Media, to Shi Yuzhu, the "red star" in the Internet game industry, to Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba's board of directors, all these successful entrepreneurs have the characteristics of paranoia. Do not give up easily.So, like these successful people, if you can be an unwavering paranoid, it will give you more perseverance and less failure in the process of starting a business. Of course, you also need to notice that the advantage of paranoia is that it is extremely tenacious and will not be overwhelmed by any difficulty, but the biggest problem with paranoia is that it often insists on the wrong direction, which is fatal to entrepreneurs.Therefore, entrepreneurs must realize that whether they should persist is sometimes more important than whether they can persist.Undoubtedly, entrepreneurship requires persistence, and it also needs to persist in industries and fields where you have advantages. However, what kind of business model to choose specifically requires entrepreneurs to constantly reflect and adjust. But in any case, for entrepreneurs with dreams, they must have a strong ability to resist setbacks. You must know that only those who persevere can win in the end.If you are sure that your entrepreneurial direction is correct, then be a complete paranoid! Entrepreneurship must persevere The industrialist Ludwig Mond worked with the famous chemist Brensen at the University of Heidelberg when he was a student. By chance, he discovered a method of extracting sulfur from spent caustic soda. He always believed in this method able to create value.He later moved to the UK, brought this method to the UK, and went door to door looking for collaborators willing to adopt this method, but was always rejected.After many twists and turns, Mond found a company willing to cooperate with him in the development, and it turned out that his patent was of economic value. From this, Mond came up with the idea of ​​starting his own chemical company. So he bought a method of converting salt into sodium bicarbonate by the action of ammonia, which he had co-invented and which was not very mature at the time.Mond bought a piece of land in Wennington, Cheshire, and built a factory.Meanwhile, he continued experimenting to perfect the method.After the experiment failed, Mond simply lived in the laboratory and worked around the clock.After repeated and complicated experiments, he finally solved the technical problem. The factory building was built in 1874. At the beginning, the production situation was not ideal, and the cost remained high. The company suffered a complete loss for several consecutive years.At the same time, local residents refused to cooperate with him because they were worried that large chemical companies would destroy the ecological balance. Mond inspired an extremely persevering character in the face of adversity. He was not discouraged, and finally made a major breakthrough in 1880, six years after the establishment of the factory. The output increased by three times, and the cost also fell. The product lost money per ton. £5, turned into a profit of £1.Later, the enterprise established by Mond became the world's largest chemical enterprise producing alkali. You see, the determination to persist in entrepreneurship and never give up is the prerequisite for the success of entrepreneurs.If you often pay attention to the interviews of successful people in their careers, you will find that they have different experiences, but they have the same secret of success, which is persistence.Those successful people often say: I have a belief in my heart, I will succeed!Stubbornly sticking to their beliefs, they may even be crazy in the eyes of others.If you plan to start a business or are starting a business, can you achieve your ideals?Do you really have the confidence to keep going? No matter how good the choice is, as long as you give up halfway, everything will be for naught.You might as well calm down and ask yourself, do you really have the courage to risk everything for your dreams?If not, then you might as well give up starting a business as soon as possible. We encounter all kinds of things and problems every day, so we have all kinds of thoughts every day.These ideas may be your motivation for starting a business, or it may be the starting point for you to bid farewell to mediocrity and go to extraordinary.So, when you suddenly have a new idea, please continue to think about it and try to make it a reality, maybe this is a gold mine in your heart. Thirty years ago, American Fred Smith founded "FedEx" by venture capitalists based on an idea - overnight delivery.Today, "FedEx" is the world's largest express transportation company, operating in 211 countries around the world.When many people are still struggling with lack of capital and technology, there is a group of dreamers who, with their keen sense of the market and novel business ideas, have turned from ordinary entrepreneurs into entrepreneurs who are making money every day Home: The first online bookstore Amazon, the first search engine website Yahoo, the first auction website Ebay... These successful cases have brought "conceptual entrepreneurship" to the surface and made more and more entrepreneurs realize that one by one The fleeting inspiration can become the place where dreams begin. Concept entrepreneurship, as the name suggests, is to start a business with creativity, ideas, and ideas.Of course, these entrepreneurial concepts must be unconventional, at least in the industry or field they plan to enter. Only in this way can they seize market opportunities and attract the attention of venture capitalists.At the same time, these unconventional ideas must also be operable, rather than fantasy.Concept entrepreneurship is suitable for entrepreneurs who do not have many resources themselves, and need to obtain various resources through unique ideas, including funds and talents. From the perspective of entrepreneurs, concept entrepreneurship is a bit illusory because it involves creativity, ideas, etc., and even thinks it is impossible to start.In fact, conceptual entrepreneurship is just a brand-new formulation, and as an entrepreneurial model, it has long existed in many successful entrepreneurial cases. whimsical The Frenchman Pey used his own unique idea to change the fate of old newspapers, and even changed his own fate. In Bailey's view, everyone is very sensitive to their birthday and hopes to receive special gifts, while traditional gifts such as flowers and cakes cannot reflect the particularity of birthdays well due to their ephemerality and universality.So he founded a "Historical Newspaper Archive Company" that sells old newspapers as gifts to people whose birthdays coincide with the publication date of the newspaper.On the surface, what Bailey sells is just a "day", but it captures people's psychology of pursuing individuality and at the same time seizes unique business opportunities.Today, Bailey sells 250,000 used newspapers a year at a low cost, but at a high profit. There are many opportunities for success in the whims of human beings. For example, the invention of the airplane originated from the Wright brothers' idea that "humans can fly like birds", and David H. Crocker's bizarre ideas created the "flying world". mail" - email.The same is true for entrepreneurship. Odd ideas can sometimes become a kind of venture capital, which has the magical effect of "walking with the sword".Of course, unique ideas will be doubted or even ridiculed by others at the beginning of the business. If the entrepreneurs themselves waver, these ideas will be short-lived.And those who stick to their ideas and actively transform their ideas into reality often have the advantage of taking the lead. problem solving Mallett, who is currently in the business of sterilizing milk bottles, was inspired by an outing. One day, the Mallets took their baby on a trip, and when they were feeding the baby, they found that they hadn't brought a bottle.So they bought a baby bottle from a nearby store, but were unable to sterilize it.After this experience, the idea of ​​making sterilized baby bottles came to Mallett.After arduous research and development, Malet launched a recyclable sterilized feeding bottle in 2000.The product was very popular as soon as it was launched. In the UK and the US alone, the annual sales volume exceeds 4 million. Everyone will encounter annoying problems, big or small, in daily life. Some people will settle down after a few complaints, while others find business opportunities from their own experience or the plight of their friends.For example, some people were almost hit by a car while walking their dog at night, so they launched pet reflective clothing; some people found that children could not use adult straws, so they started to produce curved straws, etc.If this type of entrepreneur can catch the problem straight away, and is willing to spend time thinking and come up with a wonderful solution to the problem, then his probability of success in starting a business will be very high.Of course, the premise is that these problems must have a certain degree of universality. Cross-industry replication Ma Huateng was originally just a "super worm", but now he owns an Internet service company - Tencent with more than 200 million registered users.Such a huge change was only due to his whim: "paging" friends online.This is the most popular communication method today - QQ. Its function is like a pager in daily life, but with the network as the carrier, it is more convenient to use, and it can roam around the world, so it is called "network pager". .A "copied" idea has changed the communication habits of hundreds of millions of people, led a new network culture, and created a new profit model. Successful entrepreneurs are not necessarily the first to "eat crabs" in new fields. Sometimes their entrepreneurial ideas come from mature fields, but they have innovated in certain aspects.If you are not an idea king, but you are good at inferring other cases from one instance and have rich associations, then you might as well try to copy the original concept of one industry to another industry.The advantage of cross-industry replication is that there is a model to follow, and there is no need to fumble blindly. However, whether the business models of different industries can be properly grafted is a test of the wisdom of entrepreneurs. Foreign transplant type Above we talked about the birth of the "network pager" QQ. After QQ became popular all over the country, Guangzhou Donglixing Company saw business opportunities from it. They signed a 7-year paid use agreement with Tencent for the QQ image logo.At that time, many people wondered how much profit a little penguin wearing a red scarf could bring? He Zhijun, general manager of Donglihang Company, saw business opportunities from the success of Disney: QQ has more than 200 million registered users, and the users are mainly young people, who have a strong purchasing power for fashion products.Therefore, "Donglihang" put forward the cartoon fashion life concept of "Q human beings Q life", developed about 1000 kinds of products with QQ penguin logo in ten categories, such as comics, high-quality toys, watches, clothing, bags, etc., and opened them all over the country. More than 100 chain stores. Disney is the world's largest production company for cartoon programs and products. Cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Snow White have become an inexhaustible source of income for Disney.Donglihang Company has transplanted the "Disney" business ideas and profit model, and it has become successful. If you often travel abroad or browse foreign information, and you are well-informed and insightful, you might as well try to bring back fresh ideas from abroad.This is the most convenient way to start a business, because there are already mature models abroad, you just need to study and learn from them.But you also need to pay attention to cultural differences and localize foreign entrepreneurial concepts. Only in this way can you avoid good ideas from being unacceptable. Entrepreneurship is like a huge magnet, attracting many investors.However, not everyone who wants to start a business finally turns their dreams into practical actions, and not every entrepreneur can really succeed.Every successful entrepreneur must use persistent perseverance, tenacious perseverance and timely change of mind to find the key to open the door to success.But all of this must be based on self-confidence. Why is "self-confidence" so important to entrepreneurs?A quote from Shabir Badiya, India's first "technological entrepreneur" can exactly answer this question: "Entrepreneurship is a single-plank bridge. It is a difficult choice. You are often alone, and only the power of thought is with you. Together. That's why confidence is the most important." success comes from self-confidence Dell was born in Houston in 1965, home of the Rockets, a famous NBA team. His father was a dentist and his mother was an agent.Therefore, they got acquainted with many upper-middle-class people, which also gave Little Dale the opportunity to have frequent contact with those confident and successful people, thus cultivating his self-confident character.Through interacting with those people, Dell Jr. learned many new things, including computers. In order to live up to the expectations of his parents, Dale entered the University of Texas in 1983 as a pre-med student.But in fact he was only interested in the computer industry and wanted to make a big splash.He firmly believes that he will work hard to create his own field in this field. So, he bought some overstocked and obsolete IBM PCs from a local computer retailer at a low price, and resold them after refitting and upgrading himself. first income. The success of his first venture into the business world not only allowed Dell to have a considerable amount of savings, but also gave him great confidence.After the first year of university, he plans to drop out and concentrate on starting a business.Undoubtedly, this idea of ​​his was firmly opposed by his parents. In order to break the deadlock, Dell proposed a compromise plan: if the sales of his computer business were not satisfactory that summer, he would continue to read his medicine.His parents took his advice because they thought Dale couldn't win the fight.But they were wrong. Dell's performance gave his parents no chance to discuss this issue, because in the first month alone, he sold $180,000 worth of modified PCs.Since then, he never went back to school. The success of an entrepreneur, of course, depends on many factors.But when you take the first step, the most important thing is self-confidence. You must believe that your choice is correct and that you can succeed.Self-confidence based on rational analysis is the foundation of success in life and career, as well as the foundation of entrepreneurial success.When you unswervingly say "Yes" to yourself, the door of entrepreneurship will open for you.