British Entrepreneur Alex Proud on His Advice for Success
If you’re someone who’s interested in starting your own business, or if you’re just someone who loves to read about the lives of entrepreneurs, then you might be familiar with Alex Proud. Alex Proud, a British entrepreneur who started his first business at age 19, shares the advice he’d give to anyone looking to follow in his footsteps with their own business ventures. Alex says that,
at the beginning of your career, working in an unrelated field first will help you better understand the world of business and allow you to figure out whether or not it’s truly what you want to pursue before jumping into it with both feet. In addition, staying positive and not taking success or failure too personally are also essential skills any entrepreneur must develop along the way.
Alex Proud’s advice
Don’t ever take a job that you don’t like. I have so many friends who said they had to take their dream job when really, if you don’t love what you do you will hate your life and won’t perform well enough.
Find what works for you and go with it. Don’t listen to anybody else about how your business should be or how much money you should be making or anything like that — it is yours after all!
Follow Your Gut Instincts
While a lot of things in business have changed since I started out, some things haven’t. You still need to have a great idea and be willing to take risks to make your business a success.
You also need guts: sometimes you just have to listen to your gut instinct rather than overthinking everything. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it! There are plenty of other opportunities in life — you only get one chance at most businesses so you have to think long-term.
Don’t Let Obstacles Stop You
If you want to be an entrepreneur, then do it. Don’t let anything stand in your way. You never know what opportunities might be out there or what you will discover about yourself if you just go for it. So don’t overthink things — just get started and learn from each experience along the way.
Stay Focused on the Big Picture
One of my favorite mantras is stay focused. I feel that entrepreneurs and small business owners can sometimes get bogged down in minutiae, or lose sight of what it is they really want to achieve. When you are running a small business, it’s easy to get caught up in how long things take (or how hard they are) rather than looking at them from a bigger perspective.
Take Risks
When I started, I wasn’t sure whether it would last six months or six years. That was a huge risk to take and something that I don’t think many people are willing to do. But you need to really put yourself out there to be successful. If you want to achieve your goals, you have to go after them in a very proactive way.