I've been an entrepreneur most of my adult life.
Recently, on a long business flight, I began thinking about what it takes to
become successful as an entrepreneur--and how I would even define the meaning
of success. The two ideas became more intertwined in my
thinking: success as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial success. I've given a lot
of talks over the years on the subject of entrepreneurship. The first thing I
find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that entrepreneurial success
is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas. I've found that
entrepreneurial success usually comes through great execution, simply by doing
a superior job of doing the blocking and tackling.
But what else does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how should an entrepreneur define success?
Here's what I came up with, a Top 10 List:
But what else does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how should an entrepreneur define success?
Here's what I came up with, a Top 10 List:
10. You must be passionate about what you are trying to achieve.
That means you’re willing to sacrifice a large
part of your waking hours to the idea you’ve come up with. Passion will ignite
the same intensity in others who join you as you build a team to succeed in
this endeavor. And with passion, both your team and your customers are more
likely to truly believe in what you are trying to do.
9. Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where
others see nothing.
This focus and intensity help eliminate wasted
effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than
starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time
rather than doing too few things very well. Stay focused on the mission.
8. Success comes only from hard work.
We all know that there is no such thing as
overnight success. Behind every overnight success lie years of hard work and
sweat. People with luck will tell you there’s no easy way to achieve
success--and that luck comes to those who work hard. Successful entrepreneurs
always give 100% of their efforts to everything they do. If you know you are
giving your best effort, you’ll never have any reason for regrets. Focus on
things you can control; stay focused on your efforts, and let the results be
what they will be.
7. The road to success is going to be long, so remember to enjoy
the journey.
Everyone will teach you to focus on goals, but
successful people focus on the journey and celebrate the milestones along the
way. Is it worth spending a large part of your life trying to reach the
destination if you didn’t enjoy the journey? Won’t the team you attract to join
you on your mission also enjoy the journey more? Wouldn’t it be better for all
of you to have the time of your life during the journey, even if the
destination is never reached?
6. Trust your gut instinct more than any spreadsheet.
There are too many variables in the real world
that you simply can’t put into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results
from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security. In most
cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide. The human brain works as a
binary computer and can analyze only the exact information-based zeros and ones
(or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses
fuzzy logic to analyze information that can’t be easily defined in zeros and
ones. We’ve all had experiences in business where our heart told us something
was wrong while our brain was still trying to use logic to figure it all out.
Sometimes a faint voice based on instinct resonates far more strongly than
overpowering logic.
5. Be flexible but persistent--every entrepreneur has to be agile
to perform.
You have to continuously learn and adapt as new
information becomes available. At the same time, you have to remain persistent
to the cause and mission of your enterprise. That’s where that faint voice
becomes so important, especially when it is giving you early warning signals
that things are going off track. Successful entrepreneurs find the balance
between listening to that voice and staying persistent in driving for
success--because sometimes success is waiting right across from the
transitional bump that’s disguised as failure.
4. Rely on your team. It’s a simple fact: No individual can be
good at everything.
Everyone needs people who have complementary
sets of skills. Entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch, and it’s very hard for
them to believe that they are not good at certain things. It takes a lot of
soul searching to find your own core skills and strengths. After that, find the
smartest people you can who complement your strengths. It’s easy to get
attracted to people who are like you; the trick is to find people who are not
like you but who are good at what they do--and what you can’t do.
3. Execution, execution, execution.
Unless you are the smartest person on earth (and
who is), it’s likely that many others have thought about doing the same thing
you’re trying to do. Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough
innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game
or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling. All of us have
seen entrepreneurs who waste too much time writing business plans and preparing
PowerPoints. I believe that a business plan is too long if it’s more than one
page. Besides, things never turn out exactly the way you envisioned them. No
matter how much time you spend perfecting the plan, you still have to adapt
according to the ground realities. You’re going to learn a lot more useful
information from taking action rather than hypothesizing. Remember: Stay
flexible, and adapt as new information becomes available.
2. I can’t imagine anyone ever achieving long-term success without
having honesty and integrity.
These two qualities need to be at the core of
everything we do. Everybody has a conscience, but too many people stop
listening to it. There is always that faint voice that warns you when you are
not being completely honest or even slightly off track from the path of
integrity. Be sure to listen to that voice.
1. Success is a long journey and much more rewarding if you give
back.
By the time you get to success, lots of people
will have helped you along the way. You’ll learn, as I have, that you rarely
get a chance to help the people who helped you, because in most cases, you
don’t even know who they were. The only way to pay back the debts we owe is to
help people we can help--and hope they will go on to help more people. When we
are successful, we draw so much from the community and society that we live in
that we should think in terms of how we can help others in return. Sometimes
it’s just a matter of being kind to people. Other times, offering a sympathetic
ear or a kind word is all that’s needed. It’s our responsibility to do “good”
with the resources we have available.
Measuring Success
I hope you have internalized the secrets of
becoming a successful entrepreneur. The next question you are likely to ask
yourself is: How do we measure success? Success, of course, is very personal;
there is no universal way of measuring success. What do successful people like
Bill Gates and Mother Teresa have in common? On the surface, it’s hard to find
anything they share-;and yet both are successful. I personally believe the real
metric of success isn’t the size of your bank account. It’s the number of lives
in which you might be able to make a positive difference. This is the measure
of success we need to apply while we are on our journey to success.
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