Lessons Learned From Successful Entrepreneurs

Succeeding in business, no matter how big or small, isn't like rolling the dice or winning the lottery, it really in the end always comes down to a combination of talent, hard work, and the humility to always keep learning.  Even for the most wildly successful companies of our time (the Apple's and Microsoft's of the world) while there was certainly an element of 'right place/right time' what allowed their businesses to succeed when so many others were competing in the space was largely due to the skills and abilities of their CEO's.  As a small business owner, you're the CEO (and often, the only employee when you're starting out) so it's important to understand that no matter how good of an idea you have; how strong your business plan is; in the end, the success or failure of your business is going to fall squarely on your shoulders.  With that in mind, here are a few quick insights for the budding entrepreneur.

Do What You Love or Love What You Do

That statement might sound a bit recursive, but what I’m getting at is that if you cannot, for one reason or another, do 'what you love' then you have to learn to love what you do.  Countless studies have found that the affectivity and productivity of people doing what they love to do skyrocket and that should make perfect sense.  Think about the subjects in school that you got the highest marks in; now think about your favorite subjects, are you seeing a correlation?  Now, if you find yourself in the situation where you are stuck doing a job you don't love, your goal is to try and figure out how to love it. 

Fail Harder

A giant mural comprised of over 100,000 thumbtacks sits in the lobby of the immensely successful advertising firm Wieden and Kennedy and greets guests with the somewhat cryptic phrase, "fail harder".  If you start a business and never make a wrong move, hit a brick wall or feel like you're in over your head, then you're either oblivious or incomprehensibly lucky.  Failure, in one form or another, is often the best way to win, and while some may say that you don't have to fail to learn, and I would tend to agree, chances are that over the course of your business, you will make at least one wrong move, or make the right move at the wrong time, and this is where you have an incredible opportunity to learn from the failure, make the necessary adjustments and keep pushing forward until you succeed.

Ultimately, no business startup will pan out the exact same way, but there are definitely trends that you can pick up on if you look at the successful (and even if you look at the unsuccessful) businesses out there.  Learn as much as possible, put the knowledge into action and be sure to keep trying, even when it gets tough. 

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How To Grow Your Small Business

Many small businesses are created with the goal of eventually becoming large businesses. Growth should be an integral part of nearly any business, because like it or not, businesses that plateau, soon begin to decline. Much of growing a business will come naturally, however there will be certain points in your business where you “hit the wall” and knowing some practical ways to get over the wall can be the difference between keeping your business healthy and letting it decline and become just another statistic.

Steps Not Leaps
Growth in a business doesn’t necessarily have to look like some of the biggest success stories out there for you to still be a success. While a success story like Google, Facebook or Microsoft may be the desire of most entrepreneurs, don’t let big aspirations rob you of the joy of small victories. For a small home business, a five or even two percent increase in profit year over year will keep your business healthy and continually push you one step closer to your ultimate goals.

Net Growth Is The Best Growth
Many small businesses can make the mistake early on of thinking that by bringing on more employees, this will exponentially increase the amount of revenues coming in and therefore increase profits. In actuality, for a lot of small businesses, having too many mouths to feed early on can be the death of the business. Whether your plan is to eventually exit the business through its sale or if you want to run it for the rest of your life, make sure that every hire you make is absolutely essential, because increasing revenue is pointless if your net profits stay the same; it just ads unnecessary complexity to the business.

Keep An Open Mind
Ultimately, the best and easiest way to continue to grow your business is to try new things and don’t be constrained by your preconceived notion of what your business should do. Many companies in the technology sector encourage their employees to spend 20% of their work week coming up with new ideas that have little or nothing to do with their day-to-day jobs, and this is where much of the innovation in the company comes from; so experiment with new products, marketing ideas or even a whole new business model, because growth doesn’t always have to be linear, or follow a pre-set path.

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