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Be Cautious About Business Advice That "Feels Right" For Your Startup Let's look at five pieces of entrepreneur advice that you have certainly heard before, and examine whether they should be taken as golden nuggets, or discarded completely– or somewhere in-between.

By Neil Petch

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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There's a lot of "wisdom" going around. Especially when we're talking about entrepreneurs.

For all the startling statements we see, is there in fact business advice that may "feel right," but could actually be damaging?

Every year, millions of new businesses are launched around the world. And with this tidal wave of entrepreneurship comes an even bigger tsunami of advice from books, magazines, consultants, self-styed business gurus and university professors.

But it's important that an opinion is not mistaken for best practice. In reality, every business is different, and every businessperson has his or her own style of decision-making. Problems arise if a founder bases their whole set-up on one piece of advice, without questioning its appropriateness to their specific company.

So how do we cut through the noise?

Let's look at five pieces of entrepreneur advice that you have certainly heard before, and examine whether they should be taken as golden nuggets, or discarded completely– or somewhere in-between.

1. "It's okay to keep your day job." No, it's not. True, starting a business is scary. And yes, Patrick McGinnis wrote a book about being a part-time entrepreneur and stated it was possible to be in business with only a commitment of 10% of your working time. And of course there are the blog businesses, mumpreneurs, garage-run businesses, and so on.

But in reality, for most businesses to succeed it will take full-time commitment. And then some.

Clients, customers– they need to see you are a real company in order to take you seriously. Having an office that is reachable for the full working day (and the full working week) will put you on the map. Giving up full-time employment and the buffer of security that goes along with it is definitely scary. But bravery is needed if you truly want to reshape your life as a serious entrepreneur. By keeping your day job, it's like accepting defeat before you start.

Want an example? Okay, this is a little extreme but look at the routine of Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and CEO of Square. It's reported that every day he gets up at around 5am and works for about eight hours for Square, followed with eight hours at Twitter, sticking to strict schedules each day. While you don't have to emulate the workaholic ways of Mr. Dorsey, the point is that people don't succeed by being part-timers.

Make your business full-time and fully commit.

2. "You have to meticulously plan out your first few years." Nope. The reality is that a business is a more organic, more evolving beast than many a founder would care to admit. While a plan is good in order to sketch out your direction, from day one there will be unseen challenges and the need to adapt and change so you can stay on track.

A study by Babson College that focuses on entrepreneur education analyzed 116 businesses, comparing success factors such as revenue, number of employees, and net income. It found that there was no statistical difference between those who had formal written plans and those who didn't. What to take from this? Simply: don't waste time, get on with business. You don't know what is around the corner, so agility is key. Writing down your intentions and looking at them isn't doing business. One phone call to a prospect is worth more than an hour on your business plan.

As the sixth century BC Chinese poet, Lao Tzu said: "Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge."

Related: Business Takeaways From Four UAE Startups That Raised Serious Venture Capital

3. "Simple hard work will get you there." Yes, it sounds nice but it's just not helpful. While you do need to put in the hours, hard work in isolation is not enough for success. What we're talking about here is intellectual capital– whether it's the know-how of you and your staff, your client relationships, or non-physical infrastructure such as your databases. All put together, this is the real value of your company and this is where its success lies.

Dave Ulrich from the University of Michigan argued in the Sloan Management Review that intellectual capital is "competence multiplied by commitment." While everything else in your company depreciates in value like machinery and equipment, your intellectual capital has to be an appreciable asset and grow if your firm is going to prosper. When you provide a service, as a manager you need to make "knowledge productive to turn intellectual capital into customer value."

4. "Get a great sales and marketing team and you're there." Not useful either. Why? Sales, marketing are cornerstones to any business but if the product or service is not good in the first place, people will find the glaring flaws. Coca Cola didn't get successful due to great marketing; it found success because people liked the product.

The Harvard Business Review article entitled Why Most Product Launches Fail listed some classic errors made by companies. Notable inclusions were the product falling short of claims made about it, or the product being too revolutionary, and hence there being no market for it. (Apple's entire modus operandi is to make products that the market doesn't yet know it wants, so right here is a great example of advice that should be questioned: how does this advice apply to your specific business?)

Ultimately, mediocre products have mediocre appeal and that is lethal to a business. No amount of marketing can fix it. Plenty of businesses get great visitor traffic to their websites but fail to convert to a sale and that's got to set alarm bells ringing for business owners about the very nature of their offering.

5. "Just do what you love and everything will be fine." Run away from this one. Yes, there has to be some love in what you are aiming to do as otherwise the commitment required would be torture without it. However, to imagine that you can get away with just doing the nice stuff (the things that don't even feel like work) is a dream.

Running a business, especially when you're "swapping hats" every moment of every day (accountant, salesperson, inventor, marketer, team manager) means a lot of unpleasant or at least more boring tasks have to get done.

But your productivity in these areas is important: a Stanford University research paper Why Bosses Matter revealed that the average boss is 1.75 times as productive as the average worker. So you naturally have to get stuck into everything to some degree and take responsibility for making it all work.

So what should we take from these pieces of advice, or rather non-advice? Only what works for you personally. Engage critically with any business advice offered. Question it. Because in the end, it's important to remember that some advice sounds right (even feels right) but isn't a reflection of the realities of your business. After all, reading an essay on "how to run marathons" won't make you an athlete. And in the same vein, when it comes to building your enterprise, you need to get out in the real world, work, adapt and perfect your business methods, to see what works and what does not.

Related: The Five Rules Of Long-Term Business Success

Neil Petch

Founder and Chairman, Virtugroup

Neil Petch actively assists over 300 entrepreneurs and startups to conceive, plan, and build their businesses on a monthly basis.

After launching Virtuzone as the first private company formation business in the region over 10 years ago, Neil has led the company to set up more than 16,000 businesses, making it the largest, fastest-growing and best-known setup operator in the Middle East.

As the chairman of the holding company, Virtugroup, Neil also leads VirtuVest, an in-house angel investment vehicle; Virtuzone Mainland, a provider of directorship services, corporate sponsorship and facilitator of local Dubai and Abu Dhabi company setups; and Next Generation Equity, a citizenship-by-investment firm. Virtugroup has invested in and supported the growth of multiple companies and delivered passports in over 10 different jurisdictions. Virtugroup also enjoys partnerships with Dubai FDI, the Chamber of Commerce, Dubai Holdings (ARN), VFS, Regus, Etisalat, KPMG, Aramex and Beehive, and has received awards from Arabian Business and Entrepreneur Magazine, among others.

In addition to starting up businesses, Neil has held leadership roles in several companies. He helped establish ITP, the largest media publishing house in the Gulf, which he oversaw growing from two to 600 employees. At ITP, he spearheaded the launch of over 60 digital and print titles, including Time Out, Harper’s Bazaar, Arabian Business, Ahlan and Grazia.

As Managing Director of ENG Media, Neil launched the Coast FM radio station and numerous magazines, including MediaWeek. For the last seven years, Neil has also served as Chairman of GMG, the world’s first interbank financial brokerage based out of Dubai, with offices in DIFC and London. Due to his extensive knowledge and expertise, Neil has been appointed a member of the ‘Ease of Banking’ panel organised by the Chamber of Commerce.

Having lived in over a dozen countries and with a career spanning over 25 years in the UAE, Neil has the ability to merge astute cultural insight with fresh thinking, leveraging his seasoned business acumen, intuition and black book to repeatedly bring ideas to living, breathing success stories.

Neil has appeared in BBC (Dubai Dreams) and ITV (Piers Morgan) features on Dubai, as well as programmes on BBC World and Sky. He has participated as a judge on the radio programme Falcons’ Lair, an entrepreneurship reality show loosely based on the BBC production Dragons’ Den, as well as a similar TV competition hosted by MAD Talks. He now hosts Starting Up on Dubai Eye 103.8FM, the only national weekly show for the startup community in the world’s startup capital.

Neil also lends his in-depth market insight to fellow entrepreneurs and helps cultivate Public Private Partnerships as a Task Force Member of the Advisory Council, a coalition of key decision-makers and prominent movers of the UAE business landscape, led by EMIR and the Ministry of Economy.

He is also a regular speaker, panelist, and economic commentator, specialising in the SME sector.

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