Mentors Magazine: Issue 3

64 | MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 3

books and other sources. We discover

things that have worked for other people in

other industries and we see the opportuni-

ty to apply it in our own business. We also

find that we connect information that we

have acquired from books with ideas that

we have had in the past allowing us to reig-

nite something that we may have given up

on in the past.

The never-ending hunger for knowledge

will ultimately result in us making fewer

mistakes as an entrepreneur in business.

We will get new ideas about how to do

things and how to avoid getting it wrong.

Reading the books will give tips on the

right way to do things.

One of the questions I often ask entrepre-

neurs in my The Entrepreneur Way Podcast

is given the knowledge they have now how

would they have shortcut of the learning

curve. There seems to be quite a bit of con-

fusion among entrepreneurs about the

right answer to this question. When I say

shortcut, I don’t mean missing out essen-

tial things that need to be learnt but learn-

ing to do them properly quicker so we can

increase the momentum of our business

growth quicker. I believe that reading does

allow us to shortcut the learning curve and

accelerate our progress along the success

curve. It allows us to avoid taking the

knocks and learning the hard way; it helps

to reduce the risk of ignorance and costly

mistakes and ultimately may help us thwart

the possible collapse of our business. Read-

ing also provides us with potential

shortcuts, new ideas and new approaches

and possibly the recipe for success that has

worked for other people dealing with simi-

lar things.

I have not written this post purely from a

theoretical point of view but with the ben-

efit of my own introspection and reflection

of my entrepreneurial journey so far. Dur-

ing the early years of my entrepreneurial

journey I read a very small number of qual-