Want to Be a Successful Entrepreneur? Do What You Know. Going into an industry unfamiliar to you could be detrimental.
By Jay Glauser
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Everyone wishes they started Facebook, but not everyone would have found the same success as Mark Zuckerberg.
One of the reasons he was able to scale Facebook to having more than a billion active users is because he had a passion for programming and coding. He knew the ins and out of the technology behind the social platform and was able to grow Facebook. Not everyone could have done that.
Successful entrepreneurs build companies in industries they understand. For our Main Street Entrepreneur tour -- a road trip across the U.S. in which we interviewed founders from all walks of life -- about one-third of the entrepreneurs we interviewed worked in the industry in which they started their business. Another third worked in a related industry. The remaining third were serious and frequent consumers of the products, so they understood the industry from the customer's perspective.
This podcast delves into these three areas of experience and shows how the more you know about your industry, the greater your chances for success.