Being a successful entrepreneur requires more than understanding the business, it needs vision, fortitude and perseverance. Before you decide on a name for your company and go looking for an office on rent in Mumbai, you should know that 90% of all startups fail within the first 5 years. While nobody can plan for economic shifts, regulatory pitfalls and changing market dynamics, you can always rely on experience to push you through tough times. Professional experience at a full-time or part-time job teaches you the art of dealing with people, customers, clients and other professionals. Here are some ways in which professional experience is essential to becoming an entrepreneur.

Critical thinking

Professional experience sharpens your critical thinking and allows you to identify the issue. As an employee, you get the invaluable experience of handling failure and learning from it. Such failures teach you to analyse your process to discover the root cause of the issue and come up with alternatives. As an entrepreneur, you will face multiple setbacks that show up all at once. Professional experience allows you to focus on accepting the mistake, finding the source of the issue and addressing it instead of being overwhelmed.

Creativity

Entrepreneurs are often faced with business situations they never planned for. A good example is when one of the most successful start-ups - AirBnB, was under threat of shutting down. Their revenue refused to go up or down and they could not pinpoint the cause. The simple non-scalable solution was to go to the homes on rent and replace the amateur images on the website with professional images. While this took time and effort, it immediately doubled their revenue per week! Be creative in the way you approach the business and how you handle setbacks to make the most effective use of your resources. For startups, this could mean finding an office on rent in Powai through flexible office space providers instead of going the traditional route and being stuck with long-term leases. Armed with research and creativity an entrepreneur can accomplish whatever he or she sets their mind to.

Professional connections

As an entrepreneur, a coworking office is your best bet when it comes to meeting and interacting with other professionals in the field. On the other hand, most professions naturally allow you to meet and interact with others regularly. At your profession, employers, employees, clients and collaborators are all potential assets that could help you in your business endeavours. With professional experience, you can simply reconnect with these people and get the task done instead of building a new relationship from scratch.

Entrepreneurs are not risk-takers, they are calculated risk-takers. Professional experience does not just help when times are tough, it also allows you to anticipate challenges and prepare for them in advance. It teaches the value and importance of working through the good and bad days to reach your goals. The road to success is rarely ever a straight line, mitigating the risks through experience and resources is what differentiates between the successes and failures in business.