Being a successful entrepreneur is not just about having money, ideas, or connections. It also involves another critical element — mindset. A weak mindset can not only hold you back from realizing the full potential of your business, but it can also block you from even taking the first steps to finding fulfillment.
How to become a successful entrepreneur
Have the intention to be a successful entrepreneur
First of all, believe that you can succeed in your venture and become a successful entrepreneur. If you start your business with thoughts like: “Let me try it and see if it works,” you are basically setting yourself up for failure. A slacker attitude won’t get you far ahead. You have to be absolutely sure that you can be successful in your business and must carry a go-getter attitude. A mind that constantly thinks about playing it safe will be drawn to taking actions based on avoiding risk. And an entrepreneur who avoids risk will never explore the opportunities that might truly make them great. Plus, having a success-oriented mindset is so infectious that even your employees will get inspired by it and give their best at work.
Type of business
Be extremely clear on the type of business you want to establish — one that focuses on profit or one that focuses on long-term growth. A business that puts profit as the top priority will take some high risks. Such risks can end up in failure and force the business to shut down. But if the plans succeed, the business will be cash-rich in a short period of time. In contrast, a venture that focuses on long-term growth will sacrifice high-risk opportunities no matter how profitable they appear. Such businesses seek to exploit moderate-risk opportunities so as to develop a stable income stream that lasts for several years.
If you do not know whether you want a profit-oriented or growth-focused company, you won’t be able to develop a proper business plan. Your mind will always be confused and you will try to do everything all at once. Having a mind that knows exactly which types of opportunities to exploit will play a big role in becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Bonus Tip: Stick with one industry for at least 10 years to achieve stable success, influence, and growth. Jumping around means starting at ground zero each time.
Attitude toward employees
So many entrepreneurs make the mistake of wanting to be loved by their employees that they forget some fundamental stuff. You have set up a company to earn money and create influence (power to fulfill an objective). That’s it. Your role as leader of the business is to develop plans, inspire workers, discover new opportunities, and manage the overall operations. If, in the process of doing these, the employees come to love you, it’s simply a bonus.
If you focus too much on “being loved,” you might end up overlooking mistakes, low productivity, and so on. These are factors that will damage the growth of your business. Be strict with employees. But always remember to be fair. Employees will respect such a leader more than someone who bends over backward to make them feel good. Even their productivity will increase because of their respect for you.
Failure is not the end
Finally, remember that no matter how hard you fall, it is not the end of the road. Learn from your failure, find out where you went wrong, and change your tactics and approach. If you decide to cut back on the business goals just because your first project failed, you are never going to be a big shot entrepreneur. So always see failures as an opportunity to learn from and not as a final judgment on your destiny.
Bonus tips: Always keep in mind that business is an experiment, a hypothesis of profitability. You need to keep testing and testing to uncover where the actual demand can be easily fulfilled with your resources and create profit. Also, be mindful of your cash reserves. Almost 90 percent of all businesses fail due to a shortage of cash. Hence, we can safely conclude that business success is actually about experimenting and discovering the success formula before the money runs out.
