Running a one-person business is a creative, flexible, and challenging way to become your boss and chart your future. It is about creating a life, as it is about making a living. It takes courage, determination, and foresight to decide to become an entrepreneur. From the relatively safe cocoon of the corporate world, where paychecks arrive regularly, you will be venturing into the unchartered territories of business.
Is there a way to determine whether you can be a successful entrepreneur, or you are better off working for somebody else? Alas, there is no formula for success. However, most successful entrepreneurs share these ten characteristics. Check if you possess any one of them:
* Think success
* Be passionate about what you do
* Focus on your strengths
* Never consider the possibility of failure
* Plan accordingly
* Work hard
* Constantly Look for Ways to Network
* Willingness to Learn
* Persevere and have faith
* Discipline yourself
Think success
To attain the kind of success that you want, you need to dream big. Every success story starts with big dreams. You need to have big dreams for yourself – which you want to be somebody rich, famous or fulfilled. You need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. But it doesn’t stop in dreaming alone. You should actively visualize success in your mind that you can almost feel it, touch it or it is within your reach.
Be passionate about what you do
You start a business to change any or all parts of your life. To attain this change, you need to develop or uncover an intense, personal passion to change the way things are and to live life to the fullest. Success comes easily if you love what you do. Why? Because we are more relentless in our pursuit of goals about things that we love. If you hate your job right now, do you think you will ever be successful at it? Not in a million years! You may plod along, even become competent at the tasks, but you will never be a great success at it.
Focus on your strengths
Let’s face it; you cannot be everything to everybody. Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses. To be effective, you need to identify your strengths and concentrate on them. You will become more successful if you can channel your efforts to areas that you do best. In business, for example, if you know you have good marketing instincts, then harness this strength and make full use of it.
- Never consider the possibility of failure. Ayn Rand, in her novel The Fountainhead, wrote, “It is not like a man – nor of any living entity, to start by giving up.” As an entrepreneur, you need to fully believe in your goals, and that you can do them. Think that what you are doing will contribute to the betterment of your environment and yourself.
Plan accordingly
You have a vision, and you have enough faith in yourself to believe that you can achieve your vision. But do you know how to get to your vision? To achieve your vision, you need to have concrete goals that will provide the stepping-stone toward your ultimate vision.
Work hard
Every successful entrepreneur works hard, hard and hard. No one achieves success just by sitting and staring at the wall every single day. Brian Tracy puts it out this way, “You work eight hours per day for survival; everything over eight hours per day is for success.” Ask any successful businessperson and they will tell you immediately that they had to work more than 60 hours per week at the start of their business.