10 Things Successful Entrepreneurs Say
To be a successful entrepreneur, we must think like the successful entrepreneur. There are specific characteristics that the successful entrepreneur tends to have and many entrepreneurs struggle to build their business in their early stages because they fail to hone in on these characteristics. Some entrepreneurs fail and never try again; others understand where they failed, and begin changing their behavior to make things work the second time around. Whether your business is thriving or barely making it from client to client, you may want to consider reciting some of these phrases in the mirror. Or you may already be the perfect candidate for a successful entrepreneur and not even realize it!
Here are 10 things that Successful Entrepreneurs say:
1. “My Bad.”
The Successful Entrepreneur knows how to swallow her pride and take accountability (Even when it may not be exclusively because of her). When a business fails, or an initiative bombs, or a sale doesn’t close, there are always so many variables involved that it is easy to put the blame on any number of other factors. If you’re not comfortable with failure, it may feel uncomfortable to admit you were wrong. To avoid feeling bad, you may search for reasons why something went wrong, but the fact is that pointing fingers only slows you down!
When it comes down to it, if you had a goal in mind and that goal was not reached or has become farther out of reach than when you began, then you have failed at attaining that goal. Whether it was because of unforeseen circumstances or someone else’s shortfall doesn’t matter in the long run of making it happen. When you make yourself accountable as the entrepreneur, and take on all the responsibility of success and failure, two things happen:
- You become even more motivated to succeed
- You learn from your past mistakes and use them to foresee future mistakes
It’s okay to fail and mistakes are going to be made, but without accountability, we may repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It’s easy to make excuses. It takes a real leader to ignore excuses and let everyone point their fingers at them.
2. “Let’s Make It Happen.”
The successful Entrepreneur has made a life decision to pursue something important to himself and pursue it blindly. Failure can be a very strong motivator to stop what you’re doing and never try to do it again, but the most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that fail to see failure as failure. The most successful entrepreneurs have failed so many times that success was simply inevitable. We can find successful people in all walks of life, but no matter how different their industries, one of the characteristics that binds these souls are their ability to persevere through their failures. You can search Google and find endless lists of successful entrepreneurs that failed at first. Here’s one of those lists right here.
Some of the names on this list include Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Walt Disney, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Harrison Ford;
I could go on for days.
Fail to see failure as failure. Strive to see the big picture and your desired end result. When someone says you have failed, correct them and say, “Actually, it’s just another speed bump on my road to success.” It may sound too cliché for them to accept. They’ll probably just laugh you off. Be okay with being the cliché that happened and you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
3. “I Love My Job.”
The life of an entrepreneur is an unconventional one. Often times instead of a 9-5 work day, you might work until 3 am only to get up for a 6 am meeting. You may encounter rough patches where you are pulling out your hair just to make things work. Some days, you might even wish you had some stability and a boss that knows exactly what the next move is, but most successful entrepreneurs push through all of these things because they enjoy the ride.
Passion is a very strong motivator and if you’ve found a way to make a living doing something you’re passionate about, you will work through the night, you will sacrifice what you have to in order to make it work, and you will love every minute of it. If you don’t have a passion, begin to define it. It won’t find you. Decide where you want to put your focus and then FOCUS!
4. “How Can We Move Forward?”
As an entrepreneur, you are selling a product or service to your clients. Unless you have a unique product (hard to establish) with no competition (virtually never going to happen) and can make a decent profit margin off of a cheap retail price, your products will not sell themselves. Not all salespeople are entrepreneurs, but all entrepreneurs have to know how to be salespeople.
You have to ask for the sale! You can spend your life savings on marketing, advertising, and promotions, but all of these initiatives will be pointless if you do not ask people to buy your product or service. You cannot assume that everyone who needs your product is going to realize it and come running for your business. Find the people who need your product, make them understand why, and then ask for the business. It sounds simple, but simple is not always as easy as it is straightforward.
5. “I Thought this Might Happen.”
Successful entrepreneurs have done enough market research, planning, and analysis to understand the risk involved. Most successful entrepreneurs have already foreseen possible shortfalls and have planned appropriately. Have you ever heard of having a back-up plan to your back-up plan to back up your back-up plan? That’s what I’m talking about.
It doesn’t hurt to know what can go wrong and how you will react in such a situation. A good plan beats blind luck any day of the week.
6. “Let’s go at this Together.”
Successful entrepreneurs understand the value of building a strong team. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs were not experts in anything, but instead are average in many realms, but have found a way to recruit a strong team of experts that know how to communicate and collaborate. As a business owner, you may feel like you have to do it all because when you accept accountability like mentioned above, you feel that you are responsible for getting the job done. Life will be much easier if you can recruit a team you trust to have your back and get the job done in the same manner you would. Successful entrepreneurs build a culture around their team based on individual strengths, but allowing those strengths to work together as one cohesive unit. I just thought of another cliché!
Two heads are better than one!
The catch is finding two, three, or five heads that work as one; think as one. That’s when a strong team and support system fosters business success. Henry Ford said it best, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”.
7. “We Have What They Don’t.”
If your business isn’t different than Joe Blow next door, why buy from you? I’m Sorry Joe Blow, but the truth is, you’re not cutting it. Successful entrepreneurs know how to differentiate themselves from the competition. Without a unique selling proposition, a business can easily become lost in the sea of other businesses out there. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why 50% of small businesses fail. This goes back to planning and analysis. Do a competitive analysis. Know your competition. Look at what your competition is doing and then be different. Get creative. Find a way to be different. Change your business model. Don’t just sell a product. Find a way to give your customers an experience. Successful entrepreneurs have learned that people will buy an experience that comes with a free product more often than they will just buy the product. Successful Entrepreneurs don’t live inside the box given to them. There are no rules. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, start breaking and bending some rules and create your own box.
8. “Let’s Put it Back into the Business”
Successful Entrepreneurs keep a strong eye towards the big picture. They want their business to succeed more than they want the luxuries of a status driven life. They bootstrap their way through the first couple years of business growth giving up some of life’s little luxuries and finding ways to save pennies here and there. The big picture is not passing up a penny on the ground because it’s only 1/100 of a dollar. The big picture is picking up that penny on the ground because 999 more of them and that’s ten dollars that only cost you 1,000 squats to pick it up! Get paid while you work out! Of course we want to make money and be paid for our hard work, but just like how they say to pay yourself first when saving for retirement, successful entrepreneurs consider their business before they consider themselves. Pay your business first. Reinvest in the business and it is bound to succeed. You can take a hefty salary later on down the road when cash flow is growing on the trees in your spacious back yard.
9. “Oh! I Know a Guy!”
Successful entrepreneurs are essentially successful networkers. In hard economic times, your network will keep your business alive. Successful Entrepreneurs make friends easily, go to networking events and exchange contact information. They find ways to connect the dots and help people succeed even if it does not directly benefit themselves. Successful entrepreneurs maintain contact with a strong network of friends and business partners. They follow up with lunch; follow up with a card; follow up with an email; follow up with a phone call; follow up with another lunch. Did I mention that successful entrepreneurs follow up? Who you know is always more important than what you know and sometimes the most important things you know will come only from who you know. Don’t underestimate the power of networking!
10. “You Can Sleep When you’re Dead”
Here’s another cliché that deserves a second look. Dreams are certainly a fantastic mystery, but successful entrepreneurs would rather be making their dreams happen than to have to wake up from them only to realize they haven’t happened. It’s not that successful entrepreneurs don’t like sleep, but instead they have found something they want so badly that they are energized more by what they are working towards than by the sleep they can get at night. It is said that 8-9 hours of sleep is a good nightly goal, but that’s like an entire workday! A business article in the Times interviewed some of the top CEOs around the country and found that one thing they all had in common was that they didn’t get more than 4 ½ to 5 hours of sleep every night. Most of them were going to bed at 11 PM and waking up at 4 AM. If you really want to beat your competition, you will wake up earlier than they do and go to sleep after they’re already dreaming. I am by no means advocating the sacrifice of your health for your business, but successful entrepreneurs find a happy medium between the sleep they need and putting in the work to make a business successful. See power naps.
Maybe you’ve already failed a few times as an entrepreneur. Maybe you haven’t yet started your entrepreneurial adventure. Or perhaps you just want to rock the boat within the company you’re already working for. In any case, thinking like an entrepreneur can only do you good. Successful entrepreneurs create opportunities, meet new and interesting people, are happy about the life they are pursuing, and know what it takes to make it work. By shifting your perspective and adopting these phrases into your daily conversations, you may just take your business to the next level.
Go out there and Make it happen! No Excuses!