There are a lot of great reasons to become an entrepreneur. From self-fulfilment and independence from bosses and the corporate world, to a second income or having more control over your work-life balance.
While the choice to become an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone for those that decide to press forward there are principles that top performing entrepreneurs seem to almost universally live by. By understanding and adopting these fundamentals you can drastically improve your odds of success.
The Rules For Success
I can attribute the difference between all of my previous failed ventures and my successful ones to the understanding and implementation of these basic rules.
Looking back at each failure it’s almost painfully obvious why they failed as they were all missing at least one of these points, and sometimes more.
On the other hand, my successful ventures all followed these principles, and the degree of success they experienced is almost directly proportional to the degree with which the fundamentals were applied.
1. Love What You Do
What’s the point of becoming an entrepreneur if you’re not going to love what you do?
Not much.
If the sole reason to become an entrepreneur is to make a living, than there are many other ways to create a decent income. A simple search on Google or a discussion with a career planner can help you find many other jobs or careers that you simply have to show up for, and get to go home everyday at 5pm.
Now that said, the path to true financial freedom and abundance goes primarily to the “owners”. I can’t remember where I heard this concept but it rings true. To be incredibly financially successful you need to be an owner of a business, stocks, or real estate. Entrepreneurism helps you become an owner.
The road to success as an entrepreneur is long, challenging, and requires a significant amount of sacrifice and hard work. You’re going to need to be passionate about what you’re doing so you can convey your enthusiasm to your customers, and maintain your motivation when the going gets tough.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. -Confucius
2. Get Clients. Make Money.
This was a key point in my previous failed ventures. I focused solely on the technical aspects of the business and almost completely ignored the entire point of owning and operating a business – to make money. To sell. To add value to others.
This is one of the most important steps in being a successful entrepreneur. If you’re not getting clients and making money than you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.
Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of focusing 80% of their time on improving their product or service, and 20% on marketing it. Until you have a sizeable business your goal should be to market your business 80% of the time and focus the remaining 20% on improving it. You need sales, and you need them quickly to justify the business concept, create cashflow, and provide the motivation to continue.
Without customers you have no business.
3. Hard Work
Nobody said this was going to be easy. It’s not uncommon for a new entrepreneur to put in 12, 14, or 16 hour days.
I’m not saying you need to maintain this breakneck pace throughout your entrepreneurial career, nor should you, but there are certainly going to be times that long days and a limited social life are required.
Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard -Kevin Durant
Over time you should definitely make a plan to scale back to a reasonable work schedule or your performance and productivity will suffer, but in the beginning, be prepared to put in the hours.
4. Action
Ideas are useless without action.
I get pitched new ideas quite frequently. Occasionally I even get asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement before someone will tell me their idea.
The sad thing is that ideas alone aren’t that valuable.
Want proof? Search the internet for “1000 free business ideas” or “Easy new business ideas”. You’ll find millions of results.
The key is the ability to translate ideas into action. This is the skill that so few people possess, and the real key to entrepreneurial success.
The best advice I was ever given was to start today. There is never anytime but today, and you need to start building momentum as soon as possible.
I’ll say it again. You need to start now. As in, as soon as you’re done reading this article take an action that will move you closer to your goals.
5. Manage Your Money
I spent most of my early entrepreneurial career not knowing exactly how much money my businesses were making. I had a decent ballpark figure but couldn’t tell you exactly what was made in the last month or the last quarter, or if the business was moving forward, or backward.
By not knowing this information it delayed my decisions to either change course, pick up the pace, or design an exit strategy. These were costly mistakes.
If you’re just getting going then the best thing to do is to get started on the right foot.
Get a separate business bank account and credit card, track and record every expense and invoice, and be vigilant about how many dollars are coming in and how many are going out. If this is too much work then hire a bookkeeper.
My businesses began to drastically improve when I finally had a solid financial team in place to help me track, record, and review my financials.
6. Know your product/service/self
You need to have a clear value proposition (VP) and a unique selling proposition (USP).
- Why would a customer choose you over your competitors?
- What makes you standout in the marketplace?
- What can you do better than anyone else?
When you have the answers to these questions then ask yourself.
Do my customers care about these?
Being different just for the sake of being different isn’t an effective differentiation strategy. You need to be different in a way that your customers care about.
Make sure you clearly understand yourself, your product or service, and your target market so you can effectively position your business in the market in a way that your customers will care about.
7. Study
Learn from others.
The fastest way to business success and expertise is to not only learn from your experience, but also to leverage the experience of the thousands and thousands of successful entrepreneurs who have gone before you.
You can do this by:
- Reading daily for 30 minutes
- Finding a mentor
- Hiring a business coach
- Listening to audiobooks whenever you’re in your car
- Taking online classes
- Attending seminars
- Reading some more…
We live in an amazing time where you can read and study almost any person, subject, or topic in the world thanks to the internet, and online retailers like Amazon http://amzn.to/1gmqM1w
Personal education and growth is one of my largest expenses but it’s returned on it’s investment so many times over I couldn’t possibly imagine stopping.
8. Delegate
Eventually – but sooner then you think.
The thing with entrepreneurs is that they tend to want to take on everything themselves. At first this is a necessity to ensure quality control and to keep costs down. Sooner than later however there will be a time to delegate. You don’t need to hire full-time or in house staff as you can outsource many tasks to local, or overseas companies, and you can start small with only a little bit of help in a few areas.
Things to consider delegating include:
- Bookkeeping
- Social media updates
- Prospecting
- Design work
- Proofreading
- Copywriting
- Web design work
- Marketing
And the list goes on. Try to find the things that you’re either not very good at, or don’t enjoy doing, and then find a way to let others help with these tasks.
9. Network
Not only do we become the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with, but our network also helps determine our level of success.
Look at any successful entrepreneur and the odds are good that they have a valuable and healthy network of other successful people.
The beauty is that you can start to build up your own network right now, simply by looking at your existing connections.
- Odds are that you know at least one successful businessperson or entrepreneur. Could you buy them lunch? Offer to help with a task? Or bring some other form of value to them?
- Can you find any networking groups in your city that meet to discuss business, exchange referrals, or simply share ideas and how things are going in their lives?
- Lastly, can you search online for mastermind groups, mentors, or other networking groups that meet online. By doing this it really doesn’t matter if your city has 2 million people or 2000. You can now connect with other entrepreneurs from all over the globe.
I personally continue to use a combination of all of these and it’s opened doors that I never even knew existed before.
10. Planning and Goals
You need to have a plan, and you need to have goals.
A goal allows you to start with the end in mind and gives you a clear target to shoot for. Once you have this you can start to work backwards to create the plan that will take you there.
A business without a plan is doomed before it even begins.
Take the time from the start to lay everything out and plot the direction you want your new business to go.
The plan doesn’t need to be a 40 page manifesto detailing every single aspect of your business and market – a single page might do – but the key is to put some serious thought into what you want to achieve and the best way to achieve it.
If you take the time to prepare yourself for the road ahead and follow these principles for success you’ll find the journey is not only much more productive, but also a whole lot more enjoyable.
