Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Let’s make failure less costly for entrepreneurs with another legislative change. This can happen by making bounced cheques civil rather than criminal offences.
We have a system where people who fail as entrepreneurs often end up in prison because they are unable to meet their payments and so their post-dated cheques start to bounce, which in the Arabian Gulf is a criminal offence punishable with prison time.
This is not only unfair, but it also discourages people from becoming entrepreneurs.
The end result is that many capable entrepreneurs who have the ability to create jobs and generate economic growth, end up closing down their businesses, or never pursuing their business ideas in the first place. In Silicon Valley there are many successful businesses that were started by entrepreneurs who started and failed at their earlier businesses.
In the Gulf, it is possible that such people are currently in our prisons, serving sentences for bounced cheques or other corporate offences that are often over-penalised by our systems.
In addition to the shift at the institutional level with funding and legislative easing, we also need to see a shift at the cultural level. We should not look down on people who have failed as entrepreneurs.
We should give them opportunities to try again, rather than penalise them. We should respect them rather than vilify them. Banks should fund them again, because they have the experience to know what not to do the next time they try.
We also need to see a shift at the family level. While the husband or wife of the entrepreneur may see starting a company as a risky proposition on their part, they need to also recognise that the rewards could be great over the long term.
They might see a negative impact on their wealth for one, two or three years but if they succeed, they could create some real wealth in 10 or 20 years, that could secure not only their own future, but also the future of their children. Similarly, fathers and mothers out there wondering why their daughter would want to quit her stable 9-to-5 job to open up a restaurant, or why their son would leave his banking career to start an IT company, should recognise that it’s because they want what everyone-else wants: A better life.
And, they should recognise that the ripple effects of what they are doing will justify the temporary instability if they are able to succeed.
Entrepreneurship is not a profession for the faint-hearted. It is really tough. It is not for someone who cannot take responsibilities because an entrepreneur is required at all hours of the day to be available to make difficult decisions that impact lives.
An entrepreneur also needs to be brave enough to have difficult meetings to close deals, lay people off, or ask for money.
It is also an unstable profession where you have to learn to get used to the ups and downs and to not allow them to bother you. Ironically, if you really care about money, it will be tough to succeed as an entrepreneur because you will be too afraid to lose it, or too upset when you do, and so you will not have the courage to take the big risks on a regular basis that are essential if you want big successes over the long term.
I remember very clearly a speaker at one of my entrepreneurship classes at Stanford University giving me some useful advice. Stanford is at the centre of Silicon Valley, and the lady in question was a well-regarded Silicon Valley executive whose name I don’t recall. She had taken the afternoon off from work to give us all a lecture on entrepreneurship.
I remember she said that if you decide to become an entrepreneur, you should remember not to be too nice. Everyone will want you to be nice to them, she said, but you should always remember that being nice to yourself is more important.
The advice sounded selfish to me then, but I have come to learn that she was right.
Selfish determination is the necessary ingredient in this entrepreneurship game. Entrepreneurs who recognise this and hold these values dear are the ones who will succeed.
If you are nice to your employees and give them their salary increases whenever they ask; if you are nice to your investors and accept a low valuation for one of your companies; if you are nice to your customers and give them discounts whenever they ask or never follow up with them for payment; if you are nice to your landlords and your suppliers and never squeeze them for better rates or never delay payments when you need to; then you will always be in a situation where you are either losing money or low on cash.
To make it, you need to roll up your sleeves and fight the battles to get what you want. To succeed at this entrepreneurship game, you need selfish determination. That is the long and short of it, and that’s what you need to do if you want to make it.
