What makes a successful business owner? You might be picturing the stereotypical cutthroat entrepreneur. You might be thinking of someone who works all hours of the day and night, abandoning all concepts of friends, family, or fun, until one day, they finally get lucky, and their business takes off. But, building a successful business does not have to mean sacrificing everything that makes life worth living, or the people in your life that made you want to start a business in the first place. These seven essential traits will enable you to build a successful business from the ground up.
1. Have an Inquisitive Nature
The longer you’re in business, the easier it can become to feel convinced that you know everything about your industry, and like you don’t need to keep expanding your mindset. But there are always new things to learn and new ways to do things. Staying inquisitive will help you stay on top of new developments in your industry and avoid falling victim to the struggle of holding a fixed mindset. You might consider taking out a student loan from a private lender by clicking this site here to help make college possible financially. A class in a business relevant subject can help you stay active in your journey as a business owner.
2. Persistence in the Face of Adversity
Despite the best laid plans, there will inevitably be times when things go wrong, and you find yourself facing failure. It happens to everybody, but a new business is at an especially crucial juncture. How you handle failure is the most important aspect of facing adversity. If you cave, your business will stall before it ever can thrive. On the other hand, learning to adapt and push forward, no matter what, is an essential skill for becoming a successful business owner. Being persistent in your approach to running a business will serve you exceptionally well.
3. Don’t Be a Lone Wolf
As the owner of a young business, it may be that you do need to go it alone in most, if not all, aspects of your business. This doesn’t mean, however, that you should reject help. In the early days especially, small offers of help from friends and family can help get your business off the ground, or even just give you a rare day off. You will need time away from your business to recharge your mind and accepting help is a great way to get it.
Later, when the time does come to bring employees into your business, it can be tough to hand over the reins. You need to trust your staff to care for business and let them contribute to the success of your company. Trying to do absolutely everything yourself will end in an overwhelming to-do list and possibly failure. Even outsourcing a few small but important tasks to experts (like accounting) can save you from severe business problems further down the line.
4. Be Generous to Your Employees
Along with this, remember not to stint your employees. People are the backbone of any successful business and treating your employees well will provide increasing returns. It’s your business, but the people working for you contribute to it significantly – the better they’re compensated, the happier they’ll be. Happy employees are efficient, productive employees.
That doesn’t mean you have to bankrupt your startup in order to pay them a huge salary – in the early days, employees will appreciate any benefit you can give within your budget. It might be free coffee and Friday afternoons off, or you might be able to offer a good employee health insurance plan. Regardless of what it is, try to find something to offer to keep your staff feeling happy and fulfilled.
5. Let Your Passion Shine Through
It’s easy to feel passionate about your business when it’s a brand-new idea and you’re all excited. When you get your first customer, or your first big order, that passion can flare up again. But it’s much harder to keep fanning the flames of your passion when things are going wrong. In fact, you might feel sorely tempted to give up at the first sign of failure. The key is finding a reason to recommit, knuckling down and refusing to give up on your dreams. Get a solid idea of why you’re passionate about this. Write it down and keep it somewhere visible and easily accessible. That way, when you’re tired and unmotivated, you’ll have an easy source of motivation close at hand to get you back up and running again.
6. Be a Driven Self Starter
Along the same vein, you must be able to put that passion to use to succeed. All the passion in the world won’t do you any good if you aren’t able to drag yourself out of bed and knuckle down. You need to be able to force yourself to turn off Netflix and pay attention to the work. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but it’s a skill that can be learned over time. Start by setting yourself a small, manageable schedule that you can stick to. It might be spending 30 minutes or an hour on your business plan each day. Over time, slowly build up your routines until you’re able to sustain your work at a pace you’re comfortable with. Then, when it’s time to go live with your business, you’ll have already developed a habit of self-discipline and it will be much more likely that you’ll sustain your efforts in the long term.
7. Be Reflective and Receptive to Feedback
As a business owner, you can and absolutely should be proud of what you’ve accomplished by starting a company. But, when you care about something as deeply as a personal passion project, it’s easy to get defensive when people offer feedback or in some cases, criticism. It’s very important that you learn how to reflect on the successes and failures of your business so that you can continue to develop it in the best direction possible. Refusing to acknowledge genuine feedback will inevitably lead to your business crashing and burning. Instead, try to be gracious and use the feedback as a springboard to take your fledgling business to the next level.
