Being a successful entrepreneur is no candy-coated, sweet-cake walk. It’s often more like a grueling marathon. If it were an easy ride the unemployment rate would be less, fewer people would be upset about capitalism and they wouldn’t occupy streets in America being the 99% frustrated over the economy. Instead they’d be focused on finding 99 solutions to grow their business. Nothing against the protest, that’s a great American freedom, it just seems like no mission, no message, no plan.
We all make choices and if you’ve made the choice to be a successful entrepreneur and love life with all its ups and downs, do read on.
Entrepreneurship is a highly challenging game. To win you’ve got to be fit and possess a sustainable, sharp, entrepreneurial competitive edge to thrive.
Here are 5 tips that have made a difference in my journey.
1) Confidence and positive attitude are 95% of the drill.
Anyone who says you are too confident or too positive is either jealous, fearful of you beating them out or fearful of you succeeding and then leaving them behind. If I look back at my life and greatest achievements, these attributes were game changers.
I’m sure you’ve read this tip in many entrepreneur blogs and magazines, so to make sure you get hard meaningful value from this post, I’m sharing a real world example of how this works for me.
(Actual event) Recently, a client asked me for my fee to re-brand their company. With extreme confidence, I proposed double my historic fee, absolutely believing I would exceed his company’s expectations and deliver solid value to their event. The client agreed to the fee and I did hit a home run.
2) Go out on a limb, stick your neck out and take risks.
It is a heck of a lot riskier to do nothing or consistently play it safe. Often the key here is to re-frame a situation. Change your story from scary and dangerous to intentional, certain and positive outcome.
(Actual event) I often invest in business expenses, like: research, expert insight, staff and coaches before my compensation comes in from the project. By doing so, this extra expense actually adds pressure on me to perform at a higher level and 90% of the time, I do. On my last book deal, I had over $2500 in hard costs and over $5,000 in my time just on my proposal creation, way before I was insured a contract and an advance.
3) Network and play up.
This means don’t be hanging out with peers that are your equals all the time, but you must put yourself in situations where there are people much smarter and more successful than you. The trick here is in order to pull this off, you must master tip #1. This move may take some sacrifice (skipping another expense) because to play in this league, many times it costs a lot more. That’s why you often won’t see your medium competitors at these (more expensive) situations and events.
(Actual event) When I travel I never stay at medium hotels. Why? Because if I did the chances of me meeting a new quality business prospect are statistically beyond low. Same goes for buying tickets to seminars, like when I went to see Tony Robins, if they have premium seats, that’s where you will find me, not within the section of “wannabes”.
For more on how to become an entrepreneur, view:
The ageless entrepreneur.