5 Tips for being a successful entrepreneur

Learn what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from London Business School professor John Mullins.

Mary ·

Before You Start

Goal: Leave having reframed your own offering around a specific problem and a narrower audience — the two mindsets with the clearest, most immediate payoff.

Watch: 6 Tips on Being a Successful Entrepreneur (TEDx, John Mullins) — Members are encouraged to watch beforehand, but a quick recap at the meeting works too.

London Business School professor John Mullins studied what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs, and found a handful of mindsets that run directly against standard big-company advice. This guide focuses on the two most actionable tips: starting from a real problem instead of a product, and narrowing your target audience instead of broadening it.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Activities · 20 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Describe what you offer as a problem you solve, not a product or service you sell. How different does that sound from how you normally describe it?

🔑 5 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

  • Say yes to opportunities outside your core competencies. One entrepreneur built a major services company by repeatedly saying "yes, we can" to requests far outside his original expertise — from satellite broadcasting to in-store advertising — reinventing the business four times along the way.
  • Start from the problem, not the product. A medical device entrepreneur built a business by solving a specific, painful problem (surgical tools sticking to tissue) — and grew it further by finding an even more acute version of that same problem in a different specialty, rather than starting over with a new product.
  • Target a narrow market to get to a broad one. Nike's founders didn't start by serving all athletes — they built specifically for the unmet needs of elite distance runners, then expanded from that narrow, well-served base.
  • Get customers to pay early. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo allow customers to pre-pay for products and can fund some of your production costs, rather than needing savings, a loan, or outside investors first.
  • Borrow existing resources instead of building everything from scratch. A UK adventure-course business grew to 30+ locations by partnering with a national forestry agency for land access, rather than buying and building on their own property.

🏋️ Activity 1 · 10 mins

Start From the Problem, Not the Product

Write it down:

  1. Set aside your current product or service description for a moment.
  2. Think about your customers, clients, and competitors. Write down all of the real problems and needs that they're struggling with that you can think of.
  3. Note down which of these problems you could solve with your current offering, a modified version of your current product, or with other skills or resources you have.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Share whether you identified any new problems you might be able to address for profit.
  2. Could you adapt your current offering to meet one of these new problems? (Sharing your ideas with the group helps, since fresh epiphanies often come from exchanging information.)
  3. Does this activity change anything about how you'll design or pitch your products?

🏋️ Activity 2 · 10 mins

Target a Narrow Market to Get to a Broad One

  1. Write down how you'd normally describe your target client or customer.
  2. Then narrow the description down: what are the slices of your target group who need your product most intensely?
  3. Of these slices, which of them can you capture market share from, and get a lot more of them to pay for your product?
  4. Brainstorm some changes to your product, pricing, or marketing that would appeal more strongly to the narrower group.

Discuss as a group:

  1. Share what your narrower target group looks like.
  2. Does your narrower group feel like customers you can capture market share from and get a lot of them to pay for your product?
  3. If you shift your marketing or product to appeal to the narrower group, how can you make those changes so that you don't lose your broader audience?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Rewrite a piece of your marketing (a website line, a pitch, a LinkedIn headline) using the narrower audience and/or problem-first framing from tonight. Come back ready to share what changed.

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between