037 Executive Coach’s One Question Quiz for Incipient Entrepreneurs • PODCAST [Refresh]

Hello. I’m Tony Mayo, the Business Owner’s Executive Coach … with one quick idea you can use in your business …today. When the people I meet socially learn of my background starting companies and coaching business owners, many of them admit that …they’d love to have their own company. I offer my one question quiz… that shows whether he or she is an entrepreneur. I ask, “What is the -one- most important element for starting a successful business?” I hear answers like… a clever concept, a solid business plan, adequate capital or –at least– months of living expenses, a strong team, clear vision, and so on. I have never gotten the correct answer from anyone other than a business owner. Maybe that’s because most people are unclear about what entrepreneurship is, what business owners fundamentally do. Here’s my favorite definition …of an entrepreneur, from Harvard Business School Professor …Howard Stevenson. “Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” That definition works for me because it gets causation right. Resources don’t create opportunities. Opportunities attract resources. So, “What is the -one- most important element for starting a successful business?” The most desirable single thing to have when starting a business is… a paying customer. …Why? Because without paying customers, you don’t have a business –you have a money pit. If you do have a paying customer, you could buy or build whatever else you need. If you don’t have a paying customer, you shouldn’t be buying anything —you should be out selling. I call this … “customer-centric entrepreneurship.” Thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it, that you apply it, and …share it. Much more at: http://www.TonyMayo.com ---------------------------------------------- Thanks to MusicOpen for providing public domain recordings of Beethoven.