Starting a business is tough.
It takes guts, commitment, hard work… and constant development.
In the words of Marshall Goldsmith: “What got you here won’t get you there.”
So, where do you start? What do you need to do to succeed? What will see you through?
Thanks to our friends at Oberlo, this quick-fire post shares 10 of the best TED Talks for entrepreneurs starting a new business.
The lessons shared in these TED Talks are powerful. So, bookmark this post now.
And, make sure you don’t miss out on learning these valuable lessons.
1. 5 Ways to Kill Your Dreams – Bel Pesce
So many people dream of building a successful business. And yet, so few entrepreneurs manage to achieve it.
Why? What really holds us back from accomplishing our dreams?
Brazilian entrepreneur and author Bel Pesce has spent years trying to understand how people manage to achieve their dreams.
The result? Five dangerous beliefs that will hold you back and kill your dreams. In this TED Talk for entrepreneurs, Pesce shines a light on the powerful ways you may self-sabotage your dreams, and crucially, what you can do instead to succeed.
Key Takeaways:
There’s no such thing as overnight success.
So, take it one step at a time. You’re in this for the long-haul.
You must make your own decisions.
“No one else has the perfect answers for your life.” Find the courage to go with your gut.
Always step up your game.
If things are good, don’t settle, “okay is never okay.”
When you find yourself nearing a peak, “you need to work harder than ever and find yourself another peak.”
Always take responsibility.
“If you have dreams it’s your responsibility to make them happen. Yes, it may be hard to find talent.”
“Yes, the market may be bad. But if no one invested in your idea, if no one bought your product, for sure, there is something there that is your fault.”
“Life is not about the goals themselves. Life is about the journey.”
“Achieving a dream is a momentary sensation. Your life is not.”
“The only way to really achieve all [of] your dreams is to fully enjoy every step of your journey.”
2. The Skill of Self Confidence – Dr. Ivan Joseph
Starting a business often goes hand-in-hand with personal development. Often, you must first move past your own limitations before you can move your business forward.
So, what personal skill do you need most? In Dr. Ivan Joseph’s opinion? Self-confidence.
This athletic director and coach believes that without self-confidence, it doesn’t matter how good your other skills are. Why? Because as Joseph shares, “No one will believe in you unless you do.”
This is a great TED Talk for entrepreneurs. Dr. Joseph deeply explores self-confidence and its ability to help us achieve success and fulfillment in our lives.
Key Takeaways:
Self-confidence is vital to success, and it’s a skill that can be trained.
Self-confidence is, “the ability or the belief to believe in yourself, to accomplish any task, no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty, no matter the adversity.”
Practice and persistence build self-confidence.
“Practice, practice, practice, and do not accept failure.”
Be careful of who you let influence you.
“Get away from the people who will tear you down. There’s enough of that.”
Deliberately improve your positive self-talk.
“Stop the negative self-talk.” And, create your own self-affirmation to reaffirm your self-belief: “I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate!”
3. Keep Your Goals to Yourself – Derek Sivers
Setting goals for ourselves is exciting. And so, we often tell everyone within a 10-mile radius about our incredible new venture. Unfortunately, as Sivers says: “Too bad, you should have kept your mouth shut.” Why?
In this TED Talk, entrepreneur Derek Sivers presents research to show why telling people about your goals and plans will make you less likely to achieve them.
Key Takeaways:
“Telling someone your goal, makes it less likely to happen.”
“Ideally you’d not be satisfied until you’d actually done the work, but when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it … your mind mistakes the talking for the doing.”
“And then because you’ve felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.”
So, avoid telling people your goals.
Resist the temptation to announce your goals and learn to delay the gratification that social acknowledgment brings.
But, if you do need to talk about your goal, do it in a way that gives you no satisfaction.
4. The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything – Josh Kaufman
How long is your to-do list? If you’re starting a new business, chances are it’s pretty long. So, you’re strapped for time already. But, starting a business often requires you to learn lots of new things. Which takes even more time…
So what do you do? Days aren’t getting any longer. Here’s the fix: Learn to learn fast. Which is why this is such a valuable TED Talk for entrepreneurs.
Author Josh Kaufman shares how having his first child inspired him to approach learning in a whole new way.
Key Takeaways:
You need just 20 hours of deliberate practice to learn the foundations of a new skill.
Deconstruct the skill.
Learn enough to self-correct.
Remove barriers to practice.
Practice for at least 20 hours.
5. Try Something New For 30 Days – Matt Cutts
Achievements take time. It’s not the short burst of energy, but the long burn that’ll see you to the end. So how do you get started?
Well, computer scientist Matt Cutts, has improved his life in many ways with one simple thing: 30-day challenges.
In this short, lighthearted TED Talk, Cutts shares a neat way to think about setting and achieving your goals.
Key Takeaways:
It takes just 30 days.
“30 days is just about the right amount of time to add a new habit, or subtract a new habit.”
30-day challenges can make you more present.
During these 30 day challenges, “the time was much more memorable.”
30-day challenges can improve your self-confidence.
“As I started to do more and harder 30-day challenges, my self-confidence grew.”
Keep your challenge small and sustainable.
“When I made small, sustainable changes … they were more likely to stick.
“There’s nothing wrong with big crazy challenges. In fact, they’re a ton of fun, but they’re less likely to stick.”
Anything is possible!
6. What Consumers Want – Joseph Pine
What do consumers want? If you knew the answer, your business would surely be destined for greatness. But, what if you’re unsure? What if you get it wrong? Now, there’s a scary thought.
So, how do you make sure your business provides exactly what your target market wants? Well, start with an understanding of the current consumer mentality.
In this TED Talk for entrepreneurs, author and consultant Joseph Pine explains what consumers want, and how to make sure your business gives it to them.
Key Takeaways:
The world is constantly developing.
There were commodities, then goods and then services. But now, “services are being commoditized as well.”
People now buy based on experience.
“We’re shifting to an experience economy, where experiences are becoming the predominant economic offering.”
People want to buy an authentic experience.
Authenticity is now, “the buying criteria by which consumers are choosing who are they going to buy from, and what they’re going to buy.
“You have to get your consumers … to perceive your offerings as authentic.”
There are three basic rules to be perceived as authentic:
“One, don’t say you’re authentic unless you really are authentic.
“Two, it’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you’re authentic.
“And three, if you say you’re authentic, you better be authentic.”
7. How to Get Your Ideas to Spread – Seth Godin
Get a product, and then market it — that’s how successful businesses work, right? Not anymore.
The age of generic products sold to a mass market is over. In a world with so many options and so little time, people simply ignore ordinary stuff. So, it’s only the remarkable businesses who achieve greatness.
In this TED Talk for entrepreneurs, marketing guru Seth Godin shares why being ‘safe’ is dangerous, and why being extraordinary is best.
Key Takeaways:
People don’t care about your business.
Consumers have more choice and less time.
Bottom-line? Consumers are thinking along the lines of, “me, me, me, me. My favorite person — me. I don’t want to get email from anybody; I want to get ‘me-mail!’”
Create and market products that inspire passion.
The way to make an impact is to be remarkable.
Every one of us is in the fashion business.
Today, things move fast, and people love new. “No matter what we do for a living, we’re in the fashion business.”
8. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance – Angela Lee Duckworth
Building a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. And inevitably, at some point, you will face hardship.
Maybe your cash-flow will dwindle. Or you’ll have a legal problem. Or there’ll be a problem with your supplier.
But whatever happens, there’s one thing you must never run out of: Grit.
This is an inspiring TED Talk for entrepreneurs, where Angela Duckworth shares research showing that talent isn’t everything. And, that grit is actually a far more reliable indicator of future success.
Key Takeaways:
Grit is vital to success.
Duckworth references studies showing that grit is the most significant predictor of success. “It wasn’t social intelligence, good looks, physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit.”
“Grit is passion and perseverance for our very long-term goals.”
“Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality.
“Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
Talent isn’t as important as grit.
And, “talent doesn’t make you gritty.”
Duckworth notes that “grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.”
9. How to Make Stress Your Friend – Kelly McGonigal
Stress is bad for your health, right? Not necessarily. But although it’s long been regarded as a public health hazard, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you think it is. Good news if you’re starting a new business.
In this TED Talk, psychologist Kelly McGonigal shows how stress is actually a good thing — you just have to believe it is.
Key Takeaways:
Stress is not bad for your health if you believe it isn’t.
If you view stress as bad, it’s bad for your health. But, if you view it as good, as a chance to grow, stress can actually be good for you.
Learn to interpret stress as positive.
Changing your view of stress can make you live longer.
But if you view stress as positive, your body’s reaction changes. Your heart rate will still go up, but your blood vessels won’t constrict.
Stress makes you social.
10. Secrets of Success in 8 Words, 3 Minutes – Richard St. John
Is there a formula for success? According to Richard St. John, yes. He spent ten years researching what makes people successful. His research included interviews with Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Robin Williams, Steven Spielberg, five Nobel prize winners and over 500 other super successful people. And from his research, he found that there are 8 traits that all super successful people have in common.
In this unmissable TED Talk for entrepreneurs, St. John condenses years of research into 3 minutes of value-packed lessons on achieving success.
Key Takeaways:
You must create passion in your work.
Work hard, but find a way to enjoy your work.
So, don’t be a workaholic. Be a ‘workafrolic’!
Focus on one thing and get good at it.
Keep pushing forward.
You need to build momentum and keep pushing forwards.
Focus on serving others.
Work to develop great ideas.
Listen
Observe
Be Curious
Ask Questions
Problem Solve
Make Connections
Always persist.
There’s a lot to think about when starting a new business. But you may have noticed that a lot of the points in these TED Talks for entrepreneurs are similar or overlap. And that’s the point: Successful people share the same few traits.
So:
Create a personal affirmation to build your self-confidence.
Start a 30-day challenge to learn something that will help you grow your business.
Find a way to create a business that’s authentic and remarkable.
Learn to embrace stress…
Whatever else you do, pick just one thing, do it well and move your business forward.
Remember, small steps add up to long journeys.
Are you buzzing yet? Good! Which TED Talk for entrepreneurs inspired you most and why? Let us know in the comments below. We read every one!