We learn a lot of things in schools and universities. But there is no diploma that attests to the maturity of a project leader or an entrepreneur. It is well known that the only thing that is permanent is change. However, for the creation and long-term management of a business, you will have to make the effort, day and night, if necessary, to launch your start-up and then ensure its development.
1/ Forget your school report cards
I would like, for once, to provide a personal testimony: I attended the Free University of Brussels for a few months. One day, I was applauded by the lecture hall for having received the maximum score. But the same year, at the age of 20, I had not had any interest in tax law, a subject in which I therefore experienced failure. Yet today, not a day goes by without me having to think about tax issues, to satisfy my clients. In reality, the mention ” Alright “ or the mention “fair” no longer means anything to someone who has gone from student status to that of a pragmatic and thrifty entrepreneur, who strives to always do “just enough” And “just in time”.
2/ Show your confidence, that’s the job!
It is not only to be up to date with his own to-do list that the carefree student turned business manager must impose iron discipline on himself. Always putting on a good face and displaying unwavering confidence in all circumstances (at least in appearance) is part of the job. The entrepreneur must set an example for his team and reassure third parties: customers, suppliers and investors scrutinize key people. It is so true that business angels and bankers are as much, if not more, interested in “good man” than your innovative business model, in which they have difficulty projecting themselves.
3/ Jump from rooster to donkey with ease
At school, lessons are sequential. The subjects follow one another and the student’s educational program follows a logical and reasoned progression. For the business manager, nothing at all. The tasks, the appointments, the decisions that must be made constantly shake up the young boss’s neurons. The entrepreneur is expected to arbitrate and decide constantly. He will rarely have long sequences to work and think in peace. And his priorities can change at any moment.
4/ Get out of your comfort zone
A one-man band, the young entrepreneur is inevitably confronted with subjects he does not like. For example, accounting. With a little luck, you know how to draw some lessons from a tax return or a balance sheet. And.. this will help you in the management of your young business! Unfortunately, simple economic notions will not be enough to make you a manager. You must also be able to measure your strategic risks and optimize the company’s cash flow or taxation. You will also have to find time to read unfunny books, money to pay for accelerated accounting courses or work with a coach to overcome the shortcomings that put a leader’s credibility at risk.
5/ Move from a group of friends to a professional network
On a daily basis, the young entrepreneur is less likely than others to be at the bistro during happy hours, just like during student life. Suffice it to say that anyone who aspires to become an entrepreneur before his youth is over must demonstrate early maturity. Solely responsible for his destiny, the young boss will sometimes have to defy nature. For example, when, returning from a night on a dance floor, he discovers in his mailbox that instead of going to sleep, he will have to spend his Sunday working, to deal with an unexpected event. The young entrepreneur has new expectations in his relationship with others.
The beers on the terrace with good friends and the schoolboy conversations will have to give way to the need to position oneself in network relationships. If you studied, it’s the same people who took you back to your room on a day when you were partying too hard who will one day be able to provide you with a useful service for your business. Giving a professional inflection to a relationship with comrades is an exercise that requires tact. As a representative of the company, the young manager will also have to be accepted into the circle of new relationships.
Creating essential links with key contacts in your sector of activity is not an easy task. Your elders and all those who are already “installed” look down on you and yet you have to make contact: some of them can do a lot for you. We will have to show modest audacity. This is what we call an oxymoron!
6/ Conceal your intimate convictions and your excesses
The youth are enthusiastic and quick to defend their opinions vehemently. The business world requires that the manager knows how to maintain a façade of neutrality on social issues and political debates. In fact, taking a position on these subjects means building a segmentation. Those who do not share your opinions risk distancing themselves: prospects and customers, first of all, and your employees and your banker who may be in the mix. You can’t afford it: when you need everyone, you have to know how to keep quiet. We must also address the unfortunate consequences of the broadcast on the internet of a video, taken 5 years ago, and in which, while still a student, you brandish your fist while shouting slogans hostile to a cause which, today, you are promotion, because business circumstances pushed you to do so.
7/ Embrace solitude
As a young entrepreneur, you carry your business at arm’s length. Alone ! The time when classmates handed you their course notes so you could catch up on skipped lessons is over. Entrepreneurial success depends on your enthusiasm alone, the one that pushes you to explore avenues and to persevere even where others would have given up. Provided you accept being alone, in the position of a leader who assumes all the responsibilities, you will paradoxically manage to be a little less so, since you will make people want to collaborate with you.
