Recently, I had an opportunity to sit down with Naveen Jain, founder of VIOME. What blows you away with Naveen is not just his intelligence or even his track record of success. It’s his humility and perspective.
Naveen is a serial entrepreneur and a power philanthropist. He’s disrupting multiple industries from healthcare to space. His most recent company, VIOME is using artificial intelligence to improve customer’s health.
I had the privilege to interview Naveen and here are four lessons I learned from him that you can apply to your business today. Read on for gems from this amazing man.
1. Entrepreneurship isn’t about starting a business; it’s about becoming a problem solver.
Entrepreneurship is the act of doing something in response to a need you want to address. Truly it’s first about helping others or the greater good than it is about monetizing transactions. Be clear on the problem you want to solve. For Naveen this is about providing much needed healthcare at scale, where his solution is Viome, an AI solution to helping create a healthy micro biome for millions of people. What problem are you solving?
2. The journey of being an entrepreneur is an ebb and flow.
The pursuit of entrepreneurship is a like a heartbeat, when it’s smooth you’re dead, the up and down tells you you’re alive. There is no moment of cruise control, there are points of digging in and around the corner you will catch the wind in your sails. However, the path to growth will be back and forth of solving new problems, facing new challenges and celebrating those victories in between.
3. Get comfortable at failing to succeed more, you only fail when you give up.
Thomas Edison did not discover the right formula for the light bulb until 1,000 attempts that failed. When your idea doesn’t work, see it as a a stepping-stone to a new idea or a bigger one. Don’t take the failure personally, use it to get comfortable with the process. Learn to love the process. Embrace the process without fear, and you will impress yourself and others with what you build. As an entrepreneur, you only fail when you give up.
4. You are in control of who influences you.
There is a saying that you are the average of five people you spend the most time with. Really what it breaks down to is that you choose who influences you and what your environment is made up of. Choose wisely. This is one of the main reasons why I created Fownders, a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who support each other and grow together through the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.