Many people dream of starting their own business, new business venture or product. Budding entrepreneurs are often full of excitement and passion for their idea intermingled with moments of uncertainty.
Let’s face it, starting a new business (or venture) can be daunting especially with it being well documented that 95% of new businesses will fail within the first twelve months of opening their doors.
Recently, we participated in a conversation led by internationally renowned strategist Tony Robbins who pointed out that “success leaves clues”. This got me thinking.
What are the five key success disciplines of successful entrepreneurs?
1. Clarity of success and constant review of goals
Highly successful entrepreneurs are incredibly clear, specific and honest about their goals and their definition of success. They also review their goals on a daily basis – developing their focused discipline towards their success.
Your starting point is to get honest with yourself, your business partners and stakeholders. You need to be clear on your common goals and WHY you are actually wanting to go into business or start your new business venture in the first place. As in crystal clear as to your purpose and what you believe is success.
Success is a slippery concept because it means different things to different people. When you have business partners, you need to be clear on how you both define success.
Perhaps you want location and time freedom – where you can work on your business anywhere in the world any time of day.
Or a $1,000,000 business.
Or to build a product or event that will help change the world.
What ever your belief of success, you have to be clear up front as to what that looks like so that you can be clear on your end game. Being clear on your ultimate outcome will not only bolster your courage to carry on through tough times but also to find your necessary inner strength when needed.
Before GPS, you wouldn’t have jumped in your car to go to a meeting without first checking your road map to make sure you got to where you were going.
It’s the same with your business. You need to know where you are going in order to get there – or else you’ll end up someplace else.
Remember – just because you’re starting out small doesn’t also mean that you need to think small.
Summarise these key indicators of your success definition (your “success criteria”) on a piece of paper, and put it in your wallet, on your bathroom mirror or computer – and make sure you consider these indicators at the beginning of every day.
2. Surround yourself with like minded, successful people
As successful entrepreneur and business philosopher, Jim Rohn says, you are the “average of the five people you spend the most time with”.
Having people in your social and business network that are driven, successful people in the same way that you define success is important. It is also important to “mix it up” and have a few people in the level above where you want to be in that network as well.
You need to have people that will support you, inspire you, help you grow and keep kicking goals when things get tough or rough. That is positive, energetic and
3. Perfect your Product or Service
Kids know best. They always ask that dreaded question “yeah but WHY?”
It’s the most difficult question to answer about any subject, but it is the RIGHT question to ask.
If from this moment on, in everything you do, embrace the kid in you and ask “Yeah but WHY?”. Put it on a post it note or somewhere you see every day (your bathroom mirror). Being focused on WHY will not only ensure you have a powerful product or service, but you’ll also have a powerful reason for your customers to love your product or service.
If you don’t believe me, check out Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle on TED TV and if you want even more, check out his book “Start with WHY?“.
Once you’ve got a strong handle on your WHY, you need to continue your research on your product or service. We all know there’s no use starting a “how to surf” school 100km away from the nearest wave so you need to find out:
+ Is there demand for my product (or service)?
+ Do I have the skills to make / deliver it?
+ Who are my closest competitors and how am I different?
+ What laws should I comply with?
You might even want to review other similar business models / products in other locations that are truly successful (in the same way that you hope to achieve). Be careful here though – to make sure you are looking towards success not from another person’s looking glass, but yours that you truly believe in. It would be no point for example, looking to Amazon’s website as a model if you want to be a boutique book store you sells your stock online with a goal sales value of $200,000 per year. You’d be better off for example, looking at say, Ariel booksellers who you would imagine to have a similar turnover to you. A classic example of this is Meg Ryan competing against mega bucks Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail“.
4. Make a Plan and market your butt off
Nobody has a crystal ball – but we can plan our next three, six and twelve months.
Your plan will answer:
+ How will I represent my product or service to my customers (i.e. what is your brand)?
+ How will I get my product or service to my customers?
+ How will I advertise and measure the success of that advertising?
+ How will I measure my success (eg number of customers, sales or something else)?
+ How will I build my list?
The last one is the diamond encrusted key.
Your list of contacts to email market towards is your key to success in growing your business. Relying upon third parties like Facebook, or LinkedIn can be detrimental. Not only do you have to pay to get in contact with people who are engaging with your brand but they change their algorithms without consulting you on a regular basis. This could mean that one day your brand / engagement strategies are being seeing by a whole heap of your “fans” and the next, you have to work out how to do it all again.
5. Money!
You need to know how much money you’ll need to get started and when you’ll recover your initial outlay.
Write down your expected sales less any ongoing costs (like rent) and up-front costs (eg computers) and be sure to compare this budget to your actual expenditure on a weekly basis!
Having goals and not checking in on them on a regular basis is like saying you want to lose weight, join a gym and then never going to the gym – but at least you’ve made a start (we’ve all done that at some point in our lives – right?).
Those who kick their goals are constantly reviewing their goals. One little exercise we promote to our new clients is to write down three things at the end of each day that have gone towards kicking their business goals. Whether this be reconciling your Xero file and reviewing the P&L against your budget or selling your product to a new customer, or if personally, you are saving for a big purchase (house, car etc) – to write down every single piece of expenditure you have made that day so you can hold yourself accountable for kicking that goal.
Remember, that once your immediate goal has been kicked, you will then stretch forward with another goal and keep repeating the process until you’ve met your ultimate goal – success (as you’ve previously defined it). Bite sized targets are much easier to manage (and avoid overwhelming thoughts) than to think you need to achieve everything in one big foul sweep.
Got any questions comments or feedback? Jump below and add some comments. We’d love to hear all about your strategies and how you got started!
[A shortened version of this article has been published in Belle Vie Magazine, Summer 2014]