Successful entrepreneurs are by definition unique. As Apple put it in the 1990s, they think different. Still—there are some rules that even the most original thinkers follow when starting businesses.
In her new book, The Creator’s Code, former White House Fellow and current Stanford Business School lecturer Amy Wilkinson breaks down what it takes to be the next Elon Musk. Wilkinson knows what it takes because she spent the last five years interviewing and following Musk along with other entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Kevin Plank, Elizabeth Holmes and more.
Wilkinson joined Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman to break down the rules for successful entrepreneurship that she found over the course of 200 interviews.
Find the Gap
You don’t have to be Mark Zuckerberg to start a company, says Wilkinson. “You can, as the Chipotle (CMG) founder did, love burritos and scale a big company there. You can as the Under Armour founder did be a sweaty football player and solve your own problem.” Creators, says Wilkinson, tend to identify an opportunity to start a business in three ways: “you can see something in one place and fly it over to another place,” like Howard Shultz who saw coffee culture in Europe and created Starbucks (SBUX) in the U.S., “you can build something absolutely from the ground up,” like Elon Musk with SpaceX, or “you can be an integrator,” by remixing ingredients like the Chipotle founder.
Fail Wisely
You don’t want to strive for perfection, says Wilkinson. “In the old economy, we did want to scale businesses to be perfect and replicate models. In the new economy, we want to be failing wisely.” Making the same mistake again and again will get a business nowhere upon but testing, experimenting and honing resilience can lead to greatness. “Failure is a requirement,” says Wilkinson, every CEO and founder she spoke to for her book described failures.
Avoid nostalgia
“You can’t be nostalgic about your idea,” if all market feedback is coming back negative, creators of ideas and companies are non-emotional and are willing to change or nix ideas quickly. Creators must set a quick pace, and always look towards the future—getting stuck on an idea that is past its time or just doesn’t work is a setup for failure.
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