By Mark Alford
Entrepreneurism is now more prevalent than ever before, growing at an all-time high rate and expanding into virtually all areas of industry. Regardless of the current health status of any economy, true entrepreneurs recognize that opportunity awaits those willing to knock. This illustrates one of the most poignant marks of success for an entrepreneur where those with the right vision are able to detect a need or gap that can be filled and exercise the persistent attitude necessary to develop that virtually non-existent, outlying area into an entity or enterprise that is eventually considered the norm.
From this, we can see that a major component of entrepreneurism is vision, possessing the ability to see where a positive difference can be made, especially where there is little to no current level of activity or competition. Once the need has been identified, follow-through is just as important if not more so. A majority of small businesses will fail within the first year or two of starting up because they fail to follow through on their original initiatives, essentially losing sight of why they started.
If you fail to plan, plan to fail. Successful entrepreneurs live by goal generation and the implementation and accomplishment of those goals through the development and execution of clear strategies. Creating timelines of your intended success and maintaining proper goal management are processes commonly associated with the most successful businesses. Creating timelines and goals will also help you firm up your capital generation strategy (e.g. Angel, Venture, Equity, Loans). Proper money management and budgeting often begins before there’s any money to count. Plan your cash allocation before you begin spending (e.g. allocating funding for the areas of greatest need and growth potential, which may not necessarily be the most interesting or exciting areas of your industry).
In addition to persistence, it’s critical for entrepreneurs to harness their pride to some degree and acknowledge that they will be able to build their businesses bigger and faster through the incorporation of outside help. Otherwise, entrepreneurs who insist on taking on the entire business world by themselves frequently find that they’ve become spread too thin. Taking on tasks that an individual isn’t completely qualified for and taking on more projects than they can devote a sufficient amount of time towards causes many entrepreneurs to simply tread water instead of moving towards their intended destination, eventually sinking to the bottom.
An ideal means of staying afloat is to identify a mentor. Working on your business under the influence and inspiration of a mentor is an ideal way to stay sharp and focused, building with precision and purpose in order to accomplish more goals in less time. Find an individual who has already experienced what you’re going through and take advantage of learning from their mistakes so you can avoid making the same ones. Having survived the most difficult part of being an entrepreneur, starting, a seasoned entrepreneur will be able to provide you with confidence-boosting reassurance and motivation. You will need to work very long hours and a total exhaustion of resources is sometimes a necessary part of the process before your venture is able to leave the ground. Every additional degree of support you can get will have a significant impact and help prevent you from giving up.
A mentor can also come in the form of a collective spirit, surrounding one’s self with other like-minded people to: share ideas (keep the knowledge pool fresh), feed off each other’s excitement (enthusiasm is contagious and it fuels success), and create a vital support network (the simple ability to vent frustration to others who understand what you’re going through helps rejuvenate business-growing focus). A mentor creates accountability which also helps keep entrepreneurs moving forward towards their goals.
This is commonly where we see the formation of corporations and the development of operations standards. Although entrepreneurs typically enjoy a certain degree of rogue status, able to accomplish a great deal through their lightweight and mobile-ready status, there still exists the vital necessity of protecting one’s assets, intellectual property and much more. Therefore, an essential part of entrepreneurial growth involves researching one’s options for liability protection (e.g. Limited Liability Company (LLC) and S Corporations(S-Corp).
Truly successful entrepreneurs find out how to tap into the areas that they’re best at and stick to them, seeking out the help of others to fill the gaps. This also allows an entrepreneur to stick to their highest income producing areas, maintaining the most efficient and powerful approach to doing business. While a can-do attitude is an excellent catalyst for success, it can also be dangerous without the right controls, direction, or parameters applied. Focus, endurance and the ability to pool resources will see you reach previously unfathomable heights of success.