2 Simple Ways to Ensure Entrepreneurial Success

While she was growing up, she was labelled a freak, an outcast that was not worth paying attention to. People said she was too eccentric and provocative so she started to tone her personality down.

Her passion was music and arts. While in high school, she played lead roles in high school musicals like Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

At 17, she gained admission to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she improved her songwriting skills. In 2003, her second year at Tisch, she dropped out of high school to pursue her career in music. Her father could have scolded her and threatened her to go back to school but he decided against it. He agreed to pay her rent for one year making her promise that if she wasn’t successful, she would go back to Tisch.

Fast forward to 2008, after going through a bad relationship with a boyfriend that told her she was too crazy to amount to anything, she released her first album.

The album called The Fame saw it’s first single “Just Dance” shoot up to the top of the charts in six countries. The second single “Poker Face” was number one in all major music markets of the world including the United States, UK, Holland and Germany.

The lady in this story is called Lady Gaga. You will agree with me that she is as eccentric as she is successful and there so many lessons we can learn from her story in how to start and build a successful business.

Tone it down? Hell no

Lady Gaga is… well she is gaga. From the way she dresses, she loves being seen as crazy and eccentric. I am willing to bet that if she kept herself toned down just like she was in high school we would never have heard of Lady Gaga today. She would have ended up as just another obscure, wannabe and hungry artist.

You don’t have to be crazy and eccentric to make it work for you but you must know what you stand for and not be shy to proclaim that from the mountain top.

You will always have critics but at the same time you will connect more strongly with the ones that bond with your message. You cannot please them all.

Surround yourself with people that build you up

As an entrepreneur, you will always have ideas and when you tell some people about it, they will look at you with a face all wrinkled up and say “That’s crazy, that will not work in the real world”.

I am sure there were people Sergey Brin told that he would start the largest, most influential online company and call it a funny name like Google and they laughed at him. If he surrounded himself with these people, he and his partner would have given up at some point.

Lady Gaga could have believed her boyfriend that said she was too crazy to amount to anything and given up on her dreams.

To be successful as an entrepreneur you must surround yourself with people that think like you and will encourage you and not tear you down, people that will not fail to give you constructive criticism when they see something wrong.

Lady Gaga’s songs are mainstream, but what makes her stand out and be successful is her personality. Put your personality in your business and you will be successful because you nw have a unique selling factor even though there might be hundreds of others producing the same products or offering the same services.

As I always say on this blog, this advice directed to me as much as it is to you. These are changes I am making to myself and I share them with you with the hope that you it will also help you.

Do you have another lesson we learn from the Gaga Lady? Leave a comment and let me know.