Have you ever had an idea for a business to launch but worry that you don’t know how to be a successful entrepreneur? There are so many entrepreneurs out there filling the internet with photos of yachts and pools that having the ability to work for yourself, earn an uncapped income, and have the world as your playground sounds appealing.
I’m not going to lie to you, it’s pretty great. I wouldn’t choose any other lifestyle.
The best part is, stepping up into the league of great entrepreneurs is really easy. Today I’m giving you a helping hand by showing you how you can be the successful entrepreneur you’re dreaming of in six easy steps.
When you read through my strategies you will see really quickly just how easy these success lessons are, and the massive benefits you will be able to access if you follow them. Being successful isn’t about your resources, it’s about your resourcefulness! Now, make sure you follow these steps in order if you want to become a successful entrepreneur…
1. Follow Your Passion
Your passion is your compass, money follows passion! Make no mistake, you are going to be working hard, harder than you ever worked in your 9-5 job, to get your business going and to be successful.
When you invest in a business you are passionate about, it doesn’t feel like work!
Loving what you do creates a blurred line between business and play that will allow you to tap into more energy for longer working hours, engage with people on a more genuine level and attract clients, business partners and staff who are just as passionate as you are.
It’s not just for getting started, this is how you will be a sustainable entrepreneur as well. You will want to see your business model succeed just as much as you want the cash flow. That means your return on investment will continue to have a positive impact on your success as an entrepreneur, making you, and your business an unstoppable force.
You are going to be living and breathing this for hours on end, so pick the thing that inspires, motivates and intrigues you and you will learn the industry inside out, giving you edge, flexibility and choices no one else has had the stamina or drive to uncover.
2. Commit To One Idea
A lot of people think that being an entrepreneur means having multiple businesses and income streams, and when you look at the success stories of the great entrepreneurs out there, it certainly seems that way.
This isn’t how they started though, their real story started a long time before. No one starts out with eight companies and three brands in 17 countries, you have to build to that. What I constantly see is people who want the seminars and the books and the celebrity status before they have any runs on the board. No. Business just doesn’t work that way.
The reality is, entrepreneurs are out there doing amazing things right now, while there might not be a media hype, they are living their dream life and earning the right to grow and expand.
How to be a successful entrepreneur starts at step #1, then being REALLY good at what you do. This is where you will learn your greatest lessons, success lessons that can be applied to other areas, other products and other streams.
You need to learn those success lessons and learn them well before you branch out. That’s where you will really see rapid growth, your successful blueprint will be quickly and easily be applied to everything else, enabling you to climb multiple ladders and take on massive new challenges. Remember, always be the student. Your business will teach you so much about yourself, if you’re open to the lessons!
3. Attract The Right Customer
The customer is always right on the condition that you have the right customer.
If you try to be all things to all people, you will attract chaos. You will jump from one thing to the next, trying to please. This is why I tell my clients to offer people what they think they want, then give them what they really need.
Great entrepreneurs know who their right customer is and create a product or service that solves the problem their customer is experiencing.
Don’t do anything else until your avatar is locked in and aligned with your passion and your product. Once you have perfected your customer avatar and have attracted a credible database, start asking questions, get those success lessons.
Where are they dissatisfied? What do they want? When you know their problems and challenges you can deliver a solution. Attract > Deliver > Test, over and over. Be the student!
Being a successful entrepreneur means getting to know your customers deepest wishes and fears, and matching what you have with those needs. When you deliver what they need, how they want it, word will spread faster than butter on hot toast. When your customers are coming to you, that’s when you know you’ve nailed being an entrepreneur.
4. Take Action Quickly
This is the mindset that sets great entrepreneurs apart from the common masses. Successful entrepreneurs take action quickly and change their minds slowly, time and time again. Fail fast, fail quickly, get the learnings, and implement them quickly.
While everyone else is weighing up the risks, analysing the multiple outcomes and calculating the emotional costs, the true entrepreneur has taken the leap, gained valuable information and leapt again. True success as an entrepreneur happens in the real world, not on paper.
The key to this one is HAVE FUN! Love taking action and love moving forward, no matter what.
This is where what I call the ‘University of Life’ really works. While others are reading yet another business book and getting caught up in the pain of What-If’s, the successful entrepreneur is already busy getting straight As in how to do (or not to do) something.
The truth is you can analyse strategies and watch every Gary Vee video ever made, you are never actually going to know what happens unless you do it. So do it and figure the rest out along the way. My favourite saying is ‘Make a mess and clean it up later’, so get out, follow your gut and do what needs to be done. Action is the fastest way to learn and grow.
5. Accept Feedback
Mistakes are going to happen on your road to being a successful entrepreneur. The way to make those mistakes valuable is to see only feedback. This is a key, not only to being a successful entrepreneur, but successful in life in general. I say this at Live it Now all the time: there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.
When you believe this you will love feedback. You will love making mistakes and really see the positives from turning those mistakes into strengths.
Take feedback from success lessons learned through your rapid action steps, complaints made by your perfect client, drops in your sales or uptake, what your mentors are telling you, as well as the way you are feeling.
If you look at someone playing a video game, they never complete the game the first time they play. They get killed at least three times on every level. Imagine if the first time they lost they put the game down and said, ‘I failed’. No one does that when they are playing, because it’s fun learning.
So much fun they’ll spend hours and hours learning and getting better. Getting killed means you know what to do next time, overcome that and face the new challenge, building a skill set of moves, techniques and talents.
Business is no different. If you focus on having fun and getting to your goal you will come to see the ‘setbacks’ as success lessons around a challenge and move on to the next exciting thing, at the same time building a skill set of tools you can use when the challenges get tougher.
Every single time you learn, no matter what the initial teacher was, you move closer to your goal. Keep moving, keep taking action!
6. Under Promise and Over Deliver
Out of all the steps on how to be a successful entrepreneur, this one is my favourite. I love seeing the look on people’s faces when they got so much more than what they paid for. It’s such a good feeling. It’s also your best advertising.
You’ll keep a loyal customer base who become raving fans, attracting referrals via word of mouth, which means lower advertising costs and higher conversion rates.
If people are coming to you because a friend or family member has told them they HAVE to do this, you don’t need to warm them up, they already trust you and your product!
This is going to sound easy but some people find it tough to do. Firstly, don’t list everything your program or product does on your website or when you have your initial meeting. Leave room for pleasant surprises, and relax, your product or service will still sell. The key here is to believe in yourself and your service enough to let it speak for itself and for the results to quietly reveal themselves in time.
Secondly, never sell people on what they need. Of course you know what they need, but they have no idea, your client only knows what they want. Sell them what they want and in your delivery also get those inner needs met. This is the WOW factor that will have them over the moon in love with what you do and back for more with friends.
Become The Successful Entrepreneur You’re Dreaming of in 6 Easy Steps
So that is how you become the successful entrepreneur you’re dreaming of in 6 easy steps! The only thing I might just add in here is that you will learn a lot more from sharing your experience. Not just sharing your accomplishments, but your mistakes and learning as well.
Sharing is not just more fun, it’s more rewarding. You get to be a teacher and student at the same time, with volumes of feedback on both fronts. There are endless unique angels and more flexibility when you pool your ideas and knowledge.
Be courageous enough to send your ideas, thoughts and emotions out to your network as this also holds you more accountable to the goal! See what others are doing, learn and grow from their mistakes and get inspired by their creations, become a Troublemaker now.
Kindest regards,
Matt Catling
