Entrepreneurship is about commitment to being curious to your ideas, to see if one can build on these ideas and with a combination of grit and luck present a useful thing or service to the market that is needed. Do you have awareness to exploit your luck? Take your luck and make something of it, for example, recognizing a new communication revolution to communicate with pictures such as Instagram. Take the risk and go the opposite direction and be ready to be resilient, persistent and persevere; this is grit. Resilience, persistence and perseverance weren't just words they are part of your skills to hone on for the overall attribute of having the mental agility to make your own luck which is when “preparation meets opportunity.”
Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger with no sleep for two days launched their App Instagram in 2010, after abandoning another app idea and eight weeks later watched Instagram stall in processing data due to amount of users from international users. The problem was that Instagram was not scaled in capacity handling of so much data. The business concept is known as scalability which is a characteristic of a system, model or function. Instagram’s capability to cope and perform under an increased or expanding workload from international users quickly demonstrated to both Systrom and Krieger they had more work to do, so that Instagram can increase its level of performance and meet the operational demands of the social media market.
Systrom and Krieger are faced with the challenge to fix their app immediately and they’re ready to do this because of their previous personal experience. A year before launching Instagram both Systrom and Krieger are both in Silicon Valley working their day jobs at startups and at night they were teaching themselves to code so that they can build their app ideas. Instagram’s scalability challenge was forgiven by users which allowed Systrom and Krieger to keep working on the Instagram app for the next year, working every bug in the app to include additional all-nighters. Their learning continued and they felt like they did five years of college in one year while working on the Instagram challenges.
As an entrepreneur, one can re-purpose the Instagram experience by analyzing your own level of mental agility. As an entrepreneur your habits shape your conceptual abilities such as flexibility to let go of good ideas and move on to better ideas for the market; the ability to break through habitual thought concepts and try new ways to solve challenges such as the concept of Human Centered Design that teaches one to think through challenges; and continue to build on your expertise.
Personally, when following your passions, sleeping in your same clothes from the day before and going without sleep to reach your objective is a passage that you may well come upon on your journey as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship also includes Non-profit businesses that are just as challenging in business design and function. Understand, non-profits require partners. For example, I’m a co-founder of my own non profit business, Global Aid Consultants at www.globalaid.us. If you haven’t experienced that journey yet, that’s okay because by preparing your mental agility you will be prepared to make your own luck when the opportunity is presented to you.
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