The way of the successful entrepreneur is to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Business success is like cooking. Building a successful business is similar to cooking something delicious. A great entrepreneur is like a scrappy chef who finds substitute ingredients when he or she doesn't have everything he needs to make the dish. Being able to use your knowledge, skills, or connections when you don't have the time or cash to get what you need is like substituting yogurt and water for milk when cooking.

 

Focus on what is to be done rather than what has happened or who is to blame. Concentrate all your attention on finding a solution to any obstacle that is holding you back from the sales and profitability you desire. And the more you think about solutions, the more solutions you will think of. You will actually feel yourself getting smarter by focusing all your energies on what you can do to continually improve your situation.
 
The biggest decision an entrepreneur can make is getting help such as a virtual assistant or personal assistant. This one task will give you so much clarity on what the important tasks are to move your business forward. You stop treating your business like a hobby, eliminate all useless tasks, free yourself from busy work and only work on higher level tasks only you can do.

Time Management

"Focus on things that are important rather than what's urgent"

Time management is organization, "the ability to structure your life and keep tasks and information in order" (The Young Entrepreneur's Guide to Starting and Running a Small Business by Steve Mariotti). The golden rule for full-time small business owners is the 3000/500 rule: no more than 3,000 and 500 hours per year should be spent working and taking part in community and other activities, respectively. Typically, if these hours are exceeded, both family life and health will suffer. The similar rule holds true for the part-time business owners (those who have a full-time job or are starting a new business) if they exceed the 1,000/750 rule: working more than 1,000 hours per year if under age 40, and 750 hours per year if over age 40. Timely planning is the key to balancing job tasks with community and extracurricular activities. According to several small business owners, here are the top three planning strategies:

• Set aside time each day for planning, 
•  Focus on tasks and activities that are important -- in other words, focus on the $10,000 decision rather than the $10 decision,  
• Delegate tasks to employees. 

Learn from everything

We can learn from success. We can learn from failure. We can learn from our own experiences and from what happens to others. We can learn from what we see and hear today as well as from history. The title of this paragraph really says it all. But just because we can learn from everything doesn’t mean that we actually do.

As an educator, I am passionate about learning. Most of the successful entrepreneurs and business leaders with whom I work share that passion. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence. When we stop learning, the world moves past us. Ask yourself what really new thing you’ve learned in the past 24 hours or the last week. And if you can’t, watch a TED talk, pick up a magazine you’ve never read before, or find a blog that sounds interesting. It might not help, but it’s hard to imagine how learning something new will do you any harm.

"Article continues after Advertisement"

Get a Free Payoneer MasterCard® [Apply Now]
Make Money with Payoneer Affiliate Program and Earn $25 Cash Per Referral. Learn More Here >>

One thing leads to another.

Investors are fond of saying they’d rather bet on an “A” team with a “B” idea than a “B” team with an “A” idea. They know that business models change, technologies evolve, and customer tastes are in a constant state of flux. Those same investors will tell you that most business plans are obsolete the second they come off the printer.

Simply put, there’s no substitute for being part of a market (launching your product or service without exhaustive market research). There’s tremendous value in simply getting started and learning as you go. Accept that the first (or first 10) version of whatever you’re selling won’t be perfect. The process of trying, fixing, and trying again is how entrepreneurs figure out what their customers really want and what it will take to deliver against those expectations.
Netflix is an online entertainment company. It began life when CEO Reid Hastings mailed some DVDs to himself to see whether it would actually work. The simple act of doing something triggers a reaction – sometimes good, sometimes not so much. But the difference between a dreamer and an entrepreneur is that only one of them takes action. Businesses can’t grow if they never start in the first place.

Competence

To be truly successful and happy, you must be very good at what you do. You must resolve to join the top 10 percent in your field. You must make excellent performance of the business task your primary goal and then dedicate all your energies to doing quality work and offering quality products and services.

To be successful in business, according to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don't, you must find a field that satisfies three requirements. First, it must be something for which you have a passion-something you really believe in and love to do. Second, it must be an area where you have the potential to be the best, to be better than 90 percent of the people in that field. Third, it must involve a product or service that can be profitable and enable you to achieve all your financial goals.

According to the Harvard Business School, the most valuable asset a company can develop is its reputation. Your reputation is defined as "how you are known to your customers." And the most important reputation you can have revolves around the quality of the products and services you offer and the quality of the people who deliver those services and interact with those customers.

Networking

"People just need to talk to each other"

Small business owners suggest that networking with other owners and having a "professional team" are essential to the continuing success of a business. Having and utilizing fellow business people as contacts helps a manager to stay abreast of industry happenings and changes. A professional team composed of the banker, lawyer, insurance agent, and accountant is crucial to the continued profitability of the business. Some advice from fellow entrepreneurs on viable networking is as follows:
Choose a lender with the following criteria:

• Knowledge of the industry, 
• Willingness to work with you during good and bad times,  
• Visible and available.
  

Insurance is critical. Most of the small business people have more than $1 million in liability, health, and disability insurance. The cost of insurance for one small business even exceeded $7,000 annually.

Utilize the accountant's report to analyze and monitor success and to identify adjustments that must be made within the business.

Failure Is A Source Of Motivation

Failure is never the end. In most cases, it is an integral part of the process. It is a lesson everyone should learn. A failure shows that you cannot succeed due to the lack of knowledge, skills, and expertise. Meanwhile, it does not mean you should give up. It does mean that you should become better to excel yourself next time. The failure is where the motivation is.

Difficulties Is Where Opportunities Are

Everything worth doing takes years, effort and talent. Everything worth doing is neither easy nor fast. The greatest accomplishments is where the greatest risks and obstacles are. While the majority of people always turn its attention to difficulties that are likely to occur along the journey towards new accomplishment, successful persons consider the opportunities first. The more difficult the task, the more profit it yields.