Entrepreneurship Lessons From American Millionaire, Sean 'Diddy' Combs

American entrepreneur and Rapper Sean Combs also known as P Diddy, who heads a Multimillion dollar Clothing Line, shares some business tips;

1.If you are going to run a business, make sure you have a way to make money. Combs says there's truth in the saying "If it don't make money, it don't make sense." To run a business, revenue has to come first...

2. Be deliberate, but jump when the time is right. As a business owner, you have to take care of your employees. If you have received outside funding, then you are also the caretaker of somebody else's money. Don't be foolish, says Combs.

"When you are in a business, you are really responsible -- especially if you have a staff -- you are responsible for your investment and you are responsible to the people that work for you and so sometimes you gotta make the hard decisions. Sometimes you gotta make more of the conservative decisions," says Combs. "But also, any true entrepreneur knows that at some point you have to make that gamble."

3. Be the master of your domain. Inherent in taking a risk is the possibility of loss. The way to be sure that you are taking a smart risk, and not a foolish risk, is to know the market you are working in, backwards and forwards, inside and out.

"Make sure the odds are in your favor. And to do that, make sure that you are a master of that category that you are investing in, or you are trying to start a business in," said Combs. "Any business I get into, I go and I do the proper studying and I do the research to make sure I thoroughly understand that business."

As a record producer, rapper and now founder of a music cable network, Combs follows his own advice. Most of his entrepreneurial ventures have all been in the music industry, a field in which he is an unabashed expert.

4. Give people what they want. Know your market and use common sense. You can't sell to consumers who don't want what you are offering. "What do people need? What do people want?" asks Combs. "That is the start of a great businessman or woman -- just understanding what people need and people want."

5. Don't try to do it alone. Individuals who are attracted to entrepreneurship often have exceptional levels of ambition. That can sometimes spill over into a level of perfectionism and desire for control that can be ultimately restrictive. Combs had to learn, throughout his career, that to grow his ventures he would have to be able to step back and let others help him.

"When you start out as an entrepreneur, it is a lonely place. You start out with a dream yourself, and the first person you hire is yourself. And so it took a while for me to be able to start to train and give up some of the power to other people in order to enable myself to continue to grow," he says. "I used to be a micromanager, and I still am some time. But I am more of a macro-manager now." 

Posted by Yetunde.

Credits- Entrepreneur.