Founder Vishen Lakhiani shares 5 Lessons Learned Bootstrapping a $15M Lifestyle Business

After reading this article, I just can't stop myself from looking at office images of Mindvalley and you know what I wish I could have been working from that office. Mindvalley offices are among one of the unusual and coolest office I had seen.

Mindvalley Office (source: http://www.mindvalley.com/careers#prettyPhoto)

 Founder and CEO of Mindvalley Vishen Lakhiani shared 5 lesson he learned which look like travelling the tough road which I found is must for every person who want to be an Entrepreneur. As me many of you who visualize themselves wearing a hat of future Entrepreneur must by-heart these lessons.

5 Dumb Startup Mistakes

1: Your college degree is meaningless (and sometimes a liability): College degrees are just an evidence for world to identify you as a qualified resource. Degrees are good to get you in JOB but to get JOB done you may need many things beyond your degrees.

2: Don't quit your day job too soon: People often think that to start their own business they had to quit Job and to focus to nurture their business idea. True, but for that you should have a hefty pocket with lot of $ to allow you to try, as each start-up has equal probability of success and failure. Being in a day job not only give you liberty to have continuous cash flow but also provide a fall back bed.

3:  Business plans are mostly unnecessary: Plans are necessary but when they can be easily aligned and mapped to present. Many companies failed in their business even though they have carved out detailed level of plans tracking each and every small thing they need to do successful business and the reason is they spend too much time in planning and the plans they built are far away from commuting world. Plans with either 1-2 year of horizon or less are good enough to guide team, but if you are all alone just an tangible pecuniary objective should be more then enough to get you going.

4: Control you equity: Its visible that many start-up in their initial phase distribute its equity either to attract contributors or to raise money. A tricky thing in business but sometime may lead to problem when vision of decision makers skew. When we give equity we don't give ratio of profit or loss but we give away our ownership. Instead of giving away equity one should look for alternative way like performance-based bonus scheme etc. It's not "NO" to distribute equity but always measure it against what you are getting in.

5: Forge networks and learn to connect:  The half truth in business is that networking is always important to get you business, other half is it is only possible when you had a substance. The other advantage you get mingling with people is you get continual inspiration, motivation, creativeness and ideas which are essential especially when "time goes tough".

Reference

Source:  5 Lessons Learned Bootstrapping a $15M Lifestyle Business

Author: The YEC

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: The above content is just a summary of author understanding of original article. All rights of original content belongs to Author  mentioned in summary.

------------------------------------------------------------------------