Five Rules Entrepreneurs Should Follow To Achieve Success Building and growing a business requires you to give your best inside and outside your business.
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As an ambitious entrepreneur, you want to see your business growing, whilst at a personal level it is essential to continually evolve. Still, there is no secret formula to success in a lifestyle choice riddled with careers peaks and challenges. Building and growing a business requires you to give your best inside and outside your business.
Here's five rules entrepreneurs should follow to achieve success.
1. Learn continually and constantly
Today's challenges come from the entire ecosystem around you. Cultivating curiosity and taking the time to read and learn something new helps to connect the dots and identify what the world's biggest problems, or opportunities, are. There are famous techniques used by successful entrepreneurs and innovators to achieve this. One example is 'info-sponging', which consists of setting aside 10 minutes every day to learn something new. You must observe a broader world than just your own. Educating yourself doesn't mean that you are not smart, it just means that you are smart enough to know there's always something new to learn.
2. Building leaders is the game
Leadership starts at the top of an organization but it doesn't mean that leaders necessarily come from positions of power– you can find them at all levels within an organization. The responsibility of a truly great leader is to build more leaders. If you, as a leader, do not invest in building the next generation, you will find yourself in a stagnating organization that fails to grow. Quite likely, you would end up doing mainly operational work and would not be able to take your skills one level up. Hence, you must always consider the importance of transferring knowledge through mentorship to help build the future leaders. You stand out as a great leader once you have truly a great culture and organization around you.
3. Don't let anything in your professional life excuse any lapses at home
As an entrepreneur, you put all your blood, sweat and tears into what you are doing and might sometimes find that you are compromising your home life to prioritize your business. There are moments that are more turbulent than others, such as the launch of a new product or service with a period of high volume of activities. In those circumstances, think about splitting up your work day. Even the most celebrated athletes achieve their best performances with breaks and a work-life balance. This allows their muscles to rest whilst waiting for the right moment to release all their energy. Taking the time to unwind is crucial to work more efficiently and your professional conscience should not take over your private life. Performance involves balance and in order to achieve that balance, you need to take care of yourself and your home.
4. Giving back should be everyday
As an entrepreneur, you are in a position where you can actually be successful, employ a team, and live / work flexibly. It is crucial to give back. This does not always involve material things and can be done in many ways. For example, you can give back within the company by investing your time in coaching your employees to become future leaders. You can also give back outside your organization and within your community- by providing potential employment opportunities for fresh graduates, or by setting standards for sustainability.
5. Trust your team and focus on the bigger things
No matter how brilliant your mind might be, it is very difficult to make it on your own. You have to be willing to trust. Entrepreneurs are by nature driven by ambition and a solid work ethic. However, when it comes to their organization, they are often convinced that nobody else can do better, and might be overprotective of their businesses. Successful entrepreneurs are those who recognize that they can't fill in the roles such as CEO, CFO, Directors of Marketing and Sales all at once. They share, delegate and reinforce the autonomy of their teams.
One of my favorite mantras is, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.' It might be hard to embrace all these points everyday but a little self-awareness and discipline will help you achieve success on all levels.
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