Driven– Book Summary

In Driven, Robert Herjavec says that earning a business degree is not an assurance of success for entrepreneurs, but practical experience is more valuable, especially when it involves launching, building and managing a business.

Without the ability to visualize a goal and believe it will be reached, nothing of substance will be achieved.

Money travels to two places: to where it is wanted and appreciated, and to where it is likely to return with an acceptable profit.

Successful businesspeople retain a quality most others not only lack but often fail to comprehend, and that’s the unrelenting drive to convert a vision into reality.

Appreciate What It Takes to Succeed

I admire start-up for theirpassion anddetermination to take risks and their preference to play the role of entrepreneur over that of employee. It takes tossing aside the appeal of job security in favour of entrepreneurial success.

One of the least acknowledged essentials to success in business is the ability to communicate your concepts effectively to a wide range of people, including investors, employees and customers.

Explore the idea of creating your own business and pursue a dream of wealth and independence.

Things That People Do Well When Pitching a Deal

• Engage us quickly.
• Maintain a pleasant demeanour.
• Bring us a great idea
• Know how to make a good presentation.
• Have recorded actual sales or have a realistic plan to generate them.

Dreams and expectations are wonderful things, but you cannot cash them at a bank or even trade one for a cup of coffee. The only criteria that count in business are sales and profits.

Greed combined with a lack of understanding of basic business principles has destroyed many dreams of business starters.

Your business value can be improved through judicious use of comparables and forecasts. Look at similar companies, some of which may be your competitors, and try to get a handle on their size and growth record. Can you make a reasonable case for duplicating their success with the added benefit of a unique improvement in quality or price?

Believe in Yourself

You must have the determination to handle obstacles encountered on the road to success, either by destroying them completely or simply walking around them.

You need only one reason to succeed, and that’s the conviction that you are capable of doing it- the ability to imagine a goal, and believe in the likelihood of reaching it.

No one will believe in the idea as strongly as you, because, if they did, they would launch it on their own.

Successful entrepreneurs suffer from hypomania, which is described as a psychological condition—marked by high energy and boundless self-confidence—falling just short of bipolar disease, it is also known as a manic-depressive state. Unlike people suffering from bipolar disorders, those with hypomania rarely collapse into suicidal despair. Instead, after suffering a major negative event in their life, they pick themselves up and resume their battle as confident as ever.

In Driven, Robert Herjavec like Daymond John in The Power Of Broke they unanimously agree that if you don’t believe in your dreams no else should.

Five Commandments for Budding Business people

1. Identify your passion. Passion keeps you going when others, who may doubt your ability, are attending parties, watching television or sleeping.

2. Do your research. Having a great idea is not sufficient reason alone to start a company. You must identify and quantify a real need. While you’re at it, you should determine who your competitors are and whether it is wise to challenge them for the same dollar.

3. Hold off on expansion. Early successes may launch even bigger dreams.

Ignore them in the beginning; starting small enables you to more effectively deal with problems (and problems are inevitable). Remaining small also enables you to change the focus of your business if necessary. Consider expansion only when your core business is running smoothly and profitably, and your assets permit you to fund the growth.

4. Set fixed goals. Write down no more than five or six goals for your business and consult them on a regular basis. Reviewing your goals enables you to prioritize what must be done and when; if the problems do not relate directly to your goals, their importance is diminished, along with their urgency.

5. Have an exit strategy. Do you plan to sell it for a capital gain? Share management duties when it reaches a defined size? Close the doors and walk away at some point? Each alternative may influence your operating decisions differently.

Having One Good Idea Is Never Enough

More than the flash of a great idea, you need the sweat and skill of proper execution, which involves taking your idea—any idea—and executing it better than others.

Feeding Creativity

If you lack a creative sense, you may be a highly effective manager, but you will never be a successful entrepreneur.

To succeed in business, you have to do three things: work your butt off, be extravagant with your dreams but practical with your expenses, and avoid thinking about failure.

No one should launch a business before collecting as much information about the process as possible. But you will never gather all the information you need, or plan to handle all the problems you’ll encounter. No matter how well prepared you may be, especially when it’s your first business launch, you can never foresee all the stumbling blocks, disasters, betrayals and detours you are bound to meet on the way. And thank goodness you don’t.

All first-time entrepreneurs should be a little naive, because if they were truly aware of all the dangers facing them, they might forget the whole idea. You simply cannot anticipate every source of danger and every hidden trap between here and whatever goal you set for yourself when launching a business. The best thing you can do is underestimate the dangers they represent and remain convinced that you can handle them. The stronger your vision, the more pain you can stand on the journey towards realizing it. This is a healthy ignorance.

Six Rules for Driven Entrepreneurs

1. Your idea needn’t be totally original. It should simply be distinctive and deliver unique benefits.
2. Ideas that can be easily duplicated by others may have no value. As soon as you achieve a notable degree of success, someone else with deeper pockets, more experience or an existing production/distribution system will, in Kevin O’Leary’s favourite phrase, squash you like a cockroach.
3. If it is not patentable, the opportunities for success are limited.
4. The odds are against you. If this alone deters you, you are not sufficiently driven to succeed.
5. Prepare yourself for the unexpected and unanticipated.
6. Unless you can’t wait to get started on building your business each day when you wake up, reconsider your goal.

Embrace Chaos

Chaos breeds life. Order breeds habit.

If one of your primary goals is to enjoy an ordered, predictable life, I suggest you abandon any plans to become a successful entrepreneur or launch a start-up company right now. In many ways you should be prepared not only to accept chaos in your life, but to embrace it. Welcome it. Thrive in it. And even profit from it.

Don’t challenge giants. No matter how promising the opportunity, if your business concept puts you in competition with established industry leaders, you are more likely to profit by joining them instead of competing against them.

Appreciate the value of exclusivity. The more easily your idea or concept can be copied, the less value it has.

Hurdles that businesses must overcome to survive.

1. Undercapitalization.
2. Lack of industry experience. Every year that your competitors have been around longer than you is another year in which they’ve learned how to do things correctly and avoid doing things wrong.
3. Lack of management experience.
4. Poor record-keeping and financial control. You may believe your company is doing well, but until you can gather the necessary data and know how to evaluate it, you are driving blind through a blizzard.
5. Ineffective planning.
6. Inadequate education. A college or university degree doesn’t guarantee success, but it tends to reduce the incidence of failure.
7. Poor staffing.
8. Unwise economic timing.
9. Lack of marketing skills.
10. Lack of partners.

Your Customers Always Come First

The most important person to improve customer service is the person serving the customer. Most customers with complaints don’t want to make a fuss over it, such as by dealing with the restaurant manager. They want to focus on someone who understands their concern and can solve it on the spot. The buck stops at the customer service person.

Become Your Competition

I’m all for copying whatever the competition comes up with that is successful.

If I discover that my competitor is scoring points at my expense, however, by using an approach that hadn’t occurred to me, I won’t just determine what it is, I’ll figure out a way for my firm to use it, abandon my old idea by the side of the road and score points of my own. There is no such thing as a totally original idea. Besides, why create mediocrity if you can copy genius?

The passion to succeed in business may be labelled in a number of ways— stubbornness, obsession, bullheadedness, persistence or determination.