My Advice: Stay Curious

New entrepreneurs get a lot of unsolicited advice. Here’s mine: Never lose your curiosity. Your business depends on it.

Too often, new entrepreneurs are forced into a box of their original idea. Asked repeatedly to defend it to funders, detractors, partners, they may become rigid -- resistant to change.

But true success in entrepreneurship comes when you launch your original idea and as you’re following that path, keep your mind open to new things.

Curiosity can be challenging to hold onto. People work single-mindedly to enter university, pass difficult tests, and achieve goals. These acts in themselves are not bad. The problem is that in exchange for all this effort, people sometimes lose their ability to see the full breadth of the world and become inflexible in their beliefs.

But the world is full of surprises. As long as you never give up trying to experience these surprises, your heart will continue to overflow with curiosity. It is because humans are inherently curious that we can make the effort to move forward in life and in business.

At Rakuten, we are constantly curious – about new technologies, new products and services, new countries and markets we can explore. No matter where we are in our goals, we continue to wonder what is beyond the boundaries of our current experience. What else is out there that we can try?

I believe that when people say they are “burned out” they are really saying they have lost their curiosity. When you launch a business, burnout is a huge danger you face. Combat that by holding fast to your curiosity. It is the drive that will power your forward.