In today’s world, almost everyone wants to be an entrepreneur; but not everyone has what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur is more than running a private business successfully, it is also about leadership and single-handedly excelling at what groups of professionals do. There are certain initial factors that influence guaranteed entrepreneurial success, and these are discussed hereunder:
1. Be personally motivated to succeed
It takes personal motivation to succeed as an entrepreneur, and you mustn’t ever forget this fact. Remember you chose to become an entrepreneur out of personal considerations and volitions, so it will also require personal motivations and perseverance to get you to where you are going. Self-motivation in the face of business challenges is what sets effective entrepreneurs apart from business quitters; and you can’t ever be a quitter to become a successful entrepreneur.
2. Be passionate about your chosen business niche
The main joy of being an entrepreneur is that you get to do whatever you choose to do without any compulsion. You get to turn your personal hobbies and passions into a thriving business that generates sustainable incomes. You monetize what you naturally love doing, and make a living from what ordinarily brings you personal joy. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you must do what you are naturally passionate about – it is the passion that will guarantee your success in the long run.
3. You must be a natural leader
You must be a natural leader to succeed at private business. You must possess strong leadership and communication skills to lead others and make them do your bidding without seeming to demand for it – meaning that you must be able to channel the energies and efforts of people around you to achieve your objectives with mutual consents. Your management and decision-making skills must be out of this world, and people must be willing and happy to be managed by you.
4. You must have a thick skin to distracting issues
The walk to becoming an entrepreneur will be a solo one. People will shut the door in your face and say your ideas aren’t going to work. Others will say no when you ask for help, and others will simply mock you for being short-sighted and heady. But you must have a thick skin and develop immunity to rejections to be able to move ahead and succeed where they say you’d fail. If Apple and Google had allowed initial rejections to discourage them, they wouldn’t have gotten to where they are today.
5. Identify opportunities for making money off people
The ability to read people and tap into what makes them tick will be needed to succeed as an entrepreneur. You must be able to harness the needs and wants of people into a money-generating venture. You must understand people’s emotions and desires and capabilities to be able to create a product that will siphon money out of their hands into your pockets. Your business creativity and natural sales abilities will help in this regard.
6. You must know when and where to ask for help
Not everyone excels at everything, so you must be able to determine when and where external help would be necessary for you to move ahead. Although an entrepreneur does most things himself or causes others to do it for him, he must know when and where to ask for help when needed. You are not Robinson Crusoe who sewed his own clothes, grew his own food, built his own house and raised his own livestock on a deserted island; so it’s better to know when and where to ask for help and then to do so when it’s necessary.
7. Always plan ahead and foresee contingencies
The ability to foresee things and plan accordingly is what sets entrepreneurs apart from ordinary businessmen. Always plan ahead and always have a Plan B as a function of business foresight and preparedness. Sometimes it is good to cross the bridge when you get to it and at other times it is best to foresee the problem and have a solution in place. People around you will not always see what you see or be privy to your plans, and that is why you must believe strongly in yourself and in your business objectives to succeed and be assured of success.
3 comments