EMULATING BILL GATES; HIS ENTREPRENEURIAL TRAITS AND SUCCESS STRATEGIES

It is generally known that behind every successful business, there are some factors that have served as strategies to growing the business. This post will be stating some notable entrepreneurial traits shown by Bill Gates which has in turn helped him to becoming the iconic billionaire he is today.

The first trait that is worth emulating with Bill Gates is that the considered failure to be an option. After dropping out of his pursuit for a college degree, Bill Gates and his pal, Paul Allen founded Microsoft, it however started off on a shaky footing. Although the software program they developed then brought back financial returns of fees and royalties to the company, it was sadly not meeting their overhead. This was due to the fact that the software was making its rounds with computer hobbyists who were obtaining pre-market copies and were into the reproduction and distribution of this software free of charge. This scenario and many other challenges are examples of instances when Gates could have called it quits but he stuck to his beliefs and fought through this phase up until growing and placing Microsoft on a more solid foundation.

Being a visionary is a trait that helped Bill Gates in his strives to build his business. Bill started his business based on his vision that sometime in the nearest future, the use of a personal computer would be paramount in every office and home. As a reason of this dream, Bill Gates was prepared to forge on this journey despite the bleakness and purposed in his mind to do whatever it takes to succeed. At a particular point in time, Bill had to stand up to Steve Jobs and at no time was it a threat to him in copying or borrowing useful ideas and tips from other tech companies and great innovators. This strategy was of good advantage in the end when Gate’s company grew into a tech giant with worth running in billions of dollars.

Although Gates had established himself as a visionary, he initially classified his networking skills as low when he described that for quite a number of years he had paid little attention to the business networking potential of the internet. However, in the year 1995, he retraced his steps by redirecting the efforts of his company in the area of networking. The measurement of his success was from the fact the Internet Explorer Web browser by Microsoft became the leader of the industry by the millennium year.

Gates was also team-oriented as he understood the effect of teamwork and unionism on the growth of any business. His initial pairing up with Allen to start up Microsoft showed his understanding that as a team they could both produce better results. Also, as 1978 was coming to an end, Gates transferred the operations of his company to Bellevue Washington. Despite the fact that Gates was glad to be home again in the Pacific Northwest, he immediately buried himself back in his work. His idea for implementing team work came to play when he assigned to all his twenty-five employees of his infant company with wide ranges of duties and responsibilities in all areas of operation, development of product, development of business, and marketing. Likewise, Bill did not slack behind as he also showed great team player spirits with his intelligence for the development of software and likewise his enthusiastic business sense.

One notable quote that showed the proactive side of Bill Gates was when he stated that "Sometimes, I think the major area of my position as a Chief Executive Officer is to put my ears on the ground for bad news. And if one fails to act on such news, with time your people will ultimately stop passing these news to your notice and this is not a good sign as it could mark the beginning of an end". Gates understood that his journey as an entrepreneur is a lifelong process and to be successful, he needs to understand that there is a very rapid way things and events change, especially in the business world, as today an individual could be innovative but by tomorrow is obsolete. Hence, in a bid to remain on the course he needed to keep himself up to date with the news going around and also keep up with the update on all trends.