Learn Entrepreneurship from Quran

Young people run from pillar to post trying to find mentors who can barely help them become
Entrepreneurs. They spend hours upon hours reading books and articles on how to pitch their ideas
to the investors. They spend less time on learning “What are the qualities” of an Entrepreneur and
more time on “Short cuts to becoming an Entrepreneur.”

Entrepreneurship is not about funding. It is not even about an idea. It is not about marketing. All
these are relevant but the main secret to becoming an Entrepreneur is the secret of developing
those qualities in your personality that make you an Entrepreneur. No matter what the product is,
no matter how small or big the marketing budget is and no matter how much your idea is opposed
in the beginning. It is your personality traits that will lead you to success.

World corporate history is filled with people whose ideas were ridiculed, whose pockets were
empty when they started, and the same people forged ahead with resilience and positivity and later
on the same people who opposed them earlier were the ones praising and singing the songs of
appreciation for them. Why? Because the person who they opposed did not take their opposition to
heart, did not become negative, did not dwell upon the fact that the world has rejected him or his
idea, but he smiled and kept his focus sharp and hope alive. And keeping your focus sharp and hope
alive are personality traits not business ideas. And the best guide for you to develop personal traits
is the Holy Book.

No other book teaches you more about positivity, Umeed, Belief in yourself, Yaqeen, not giving up,
Koshish, being resiliently optimistic, Sabr, and the list goes on and on. The more you read and
understand Quran, I recommend reading the translation in the language of your best
understanding, the more you realize that Allah SWT addresses human beings on how to become a
person of their choice. And becoming a person of their choice relates to personality development
techniques. Quran constantly gives examples of motivation that we miss, motivational stories about
even the Prophets who did not give up and succeeded later on. It teaches you about risk
management, Aitedaal. It teaches you about humility by constantly giving you examples about
people who suffered because of their Takkabbur.

You name it and it is in the Quran what you need to be an Entrepreneur.

An Entrepreneur is nothing but a person who is constantly evolving as a human being. He evolves,
his ideas evolve and then evolves the company and the service or the product that he is offering.

Quran teaches you about money management by giving you instructions on what is yours, what is
the HAQ of poor people, what is extravagance spending, Israaf, what is being a miser, Bakhaalat.
What is future money management even after you are gone from this world, Waseeyyat. You name
it and every topic of life that makes you a great Entrepreneur is discussed in Quran.
It talks about management by telling you the Huqooq of other human beings on you. The ones you
will be managing as their boss. It discusses how impossibilities become possibilities by telling you
that HE is Mussabeb Al Asbaab, The doer of possibilities.

So the next time you look for guidance for becoming a great Entrepreneur, read Quran with
translation so you understand the mechanisms of how the universe works and who you are a
particle in that universe. I wish I had read Quran with translation right after I finished reading it as a
child in Arabic. It took me years and it took me to fall on my face in order to understand that the
best guiding book in my life is the book that I gave least importance to when it came to
Entrepreneurship. I have no shame in saying that I only looked at Quran as a religious book until I
had faced the worst times of my life in my mid 30’s. When the world rejected me, I fell into severe
clinical depression, when I had lost everything and had to rebuild my life, when I wanted to crawl
into a corner and die, when all that happened, I realized that Quran was the guiding light. I started
reading it with translation to gain strength from Allah and it ended up guiding me in every facet of
my life. Including Entrepreneurship.

Author: Mir Mohammad Ali Khan