| 1s | Many of us want to become entrepreneurs. |
| 4s | Starting your own business is one of the biggest dreams of our times. |
| 8s | But how do you get to be an entrepreneur? |
| 10s | Most of the advice focuses on the practicalities: |
| 13s | writing a business plan, raising money, finding staff, marketing and PR. |
| 18s | We'll go down a different route. |
| 20s | In our eyes at the heart of successful entrepreneurship lies something oddly more abstract: |
| 27s | an accurate insight into the causes of human unhappiness. |
| 31s | To be an entrepreneur means, essentially, to become an expert in the things that make life difficult for people. |
| 38s | That's because every properly ambitious business is in some way trying to fix things for other people. |
| 45s | And the bigger and more original what you're trying to fix happens to be, the more successful your business can be. |
| 52s | Because consumer society is now well developed, |
| 55s | it may be easy to think that all the big problems out there already have thousands of fixes anyway. |
| 62s | Think of all those car companies, or pizza outlets, or news websites. |
| 66s | We surely have enough of everything. |
| 68s | What could we possibly add to what's already out there? |
| 71s | But to get a sense of the vast opportunities that still remain in capitalism all you need to do is ask yourself: |
| 77s | where and in what areas you're unhappy in the course of an average day? |
| 81s | Every unhappiness is really a new business waiting to be born. |
| 86s | Your frustrations are a nearly inexhaustible source of raw materials out of which the businesses of the future can be built. |
| 94s | So while there may already be plenty of breakfast cereals, and t-shirts, and cell phones, and cab rides for sale, |
| 100s | there's so much more that frustrates and depresses us: |
| 103s | think of how difficult it is to get on with one's partner, educate children, cope with anxiety, |
| 109s | discover what you want to do with your life, find a nice place to live, calm down in the evening. |
| 114s | |
| 116s | Our griefs and irritations are endless, thankfully for the budding entrepreneurs. |
| 122s | The biggest first step to take towards entrepreneurship |
| 125s | is therefore to learn to study your own unhappiness and what might possibly heal it for you and others. |
| 132s | When profits decline in businesses it's really the result of too many people throwing themselves at trying to fix the same area |
| 140s | 'cause they can't think of anything more innovative to do rather than start a new airline, mobile phone company, or supermarket chain. |
| 147s | And by contrast, healthy profits are a reward for understanding and mastering |
| 152s | an area of human distress ahead of anyone else. |
| 156s | Of course ideas aren't enough on their own; you need to take care of practicalities and money |
| 162s | but they won't help you if your original psychological insight into human unhappiness isn't sound. |
| 168s | And by the same token, if your insight into what makes people unhappy is razor sharp, and your solutions bold, |
| 175s | then however difficult the journey, |
| 177s | your business will stand a high chance of making money and benefiting humanity too. |
