With entrepreneurship becoming an increasingly popular career choice, it comes as no surprise that there is now a strong demand for startup related advice.

However, entrepreneurs should remain vigilant when seeking advice. Not all advice is correct or well informed; more often than not it can be completely irrelevant or downright wrong. Entrepreneurs need to be able to recognise what’s valuable and what isn’t by evaluating their sources of advice and understanding their situation. Below are three misleading ‘tips’ that starting entrepreneurs should remember to ignore.

You must have a new, fresh or original idea
‘New’ ideas rarely succeed. This is because for an idea to succeed, it must have a market, which new ideas rarely have. Entrepreneurs should keep in mind that their target market needn’t be a large multi-million one, just one that is big enough for a business to remain sustainable and profitable.

Instead of having a ‘new’ idea, entrepreneurs should adopt the mentality of making a product 10 x better than it already is. Being successful means you cannot simply operate like everyone else; you need to take an idea and do it 10 times better than anyone else.

All you need it passion
Passion is simply not enough to run a successful business, even though it is helpful to keep you going when things get tough. Passion is important, but there still needs to be substance behind what you’re doing. Combining passion with a strong business model is an almost sure way of bringing you success.

Embrace your failures
Failure can be a valuable experience, but it is important that entrepreneurs don’t give up and move on to something else if their first idea is a failure. If there is evidence that you can succeed, do not give up.