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So, What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur?

Russ-O-Matic
Business & Entrepreneurship
34 Comments

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photo credit: seeveeaar

Everyone wants to be a success. Whether it is career related or something else, it’s a nice feeling knowing you are at the top of your game. If you’re wondering what makes an entrepreneur successful or how to become a successful entrepreneur, you’ll find the following quite an interesting read!

How to be a successful entrepreneur:

First and foremost, just do what you love. It is rather cliché but that’s because the simplest truths usually are. A large amount of success comes to many people in the form of not simply just financial gain, but also in feeling like they provided a needed or worthwhile service.

Successful entrepreneurs focus on customer satisfaction. Both Zappos and Amazon are testament to this (check out the videos below). It is vitally important to ensure an excellent customer satisfaction rating with your customers as failure to do so could likely manifest itself in the form of negative online reviews or loss in revenue. Excellent customer satisfaction is the essential ingredient in creating a demand base for your business. In doing so, it also helps build personal relationships with your customers. Personal relationships translate directly into customer loyalty which mitigates the probability that a given customer will stop doing business with you. Just talk one-on-one with any small business owner in the country and they will tell you that is their secret to a successful start up.

A key activity in maintaining these close business relationships is constantly following up with your customers. You must also actively strive to make yourself available to customers. It often helps to create a section to your company website that visually details the positive feedback your service has received. Becoming visibly accredited and generally known as an expert (or at least an industry heavy weight) is a mark of success in business. The number one person who can provide you with accreditation is yourself by projecting your ethos in your customer interactions. This is one simple way to invest in yourself and in your business’ future.

Work on your people skills and learn effective methods of achieving the results you want from a dialogue. These skills are often “looked over” because at first, they do not seem to create an overpowering edge. The art of negotiation will never lose its lustre in business. It is important for a successful business leader to master this ability. It is surprising how much people are willing to yield in order to achieve a margin of the results they want. This is because the art of negotiation is not always focused on by many and can even be a skill that people actively put off due to a feeling of insecurity about their current negotiation ability. Funny how that works, right?

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A successful entrepreneur understands the potential benefits and pitfalls of technology today. In this day and age, your business needs a website; don’t even think about attempting to avoid building a web presence. Websites are essential in providing information and services to (potential) customers and as such they are very important investments. As mentioned above, one negative review online is all it takes to be stamped as poor quality and then forever passed over by potential customer traffic on that page.

A successful entrepreneur has built up their ‘presence’. You must be able to grab and keep your potential customer’s attention. There is an over-abundance of self-promotion these days, and you will probably not be able to convince somebody who wasn’t interested in the first place to purchase your product. However, for those who may be interested, planned and well-considered self-promotion might just be what it takes to draw them into a purchasing dialogue. Just be careful and focus your self-promotion on times/environments that are more likely to yield positive results. Too much, and it becomes annoying flak that will generate negative public relations.

Online marketing presence does not take a very long time to research and implement but it can potentially yield enormous (cost-effective) benefits. We currently inhabit a world filled with apps, but there are handfuls that have actually been observed to help businesses organize, expand and profit. There are many lists and articles online highlighting the best of these and it is important for entrepreneurs to access the tools that are available to them in order to make their work more efficient, more lucrative and more successful. It also never hurts to invest in good quality anti-virus software products in order to protect your business and your client’s information (if you store it locally on your computer).

Make a plan and stay organized. Try to avoid haphazardly jumping from task to task as this will cause a decrease in coordination and you will lose efficiency. Make sure that you communicate well with your (carefully picked) team in order to make sure that they are doing exactly what they need to be doing. Make your plan clear, concise and visible to all of your employees. This will make them feel more secure and included, which in turn makes them feel more personally invested and they will work harder for you. Employees really like bosses who keep them in the loop as much as possible. Also, it is important for a successful entrepreneur to de-clutter from time to time. Keep a tidy and organized workspace so when you’re looking for those important meeting notes before heading out…you’ll actually find them quickly.

Always remember to take time off so you do not get burnt out. Successful entrepreneurs do not run themselves ragged; they go for a run outside instead. Stay happy and healthy so that you are more productive in the time you do decide to commit towards your business. One of your top investments will always be in your personal health. Pack lunches the night before if you start your day early. If you are not healthy or energized properly then your whole business will feel the impact. Also, remember that it is important to keep your family happy, allocate enough time to spend with them.

People believe that a successful entrepreneur is somebody who works all day and then sleeps under their desk – in many cases, this is actually true, especially when you are just going through the start-up and growth phases of your companies. Thing is, this is exactly how people burn out. People are more susceptible to losing focus and generally become distressed this way. Go home, take a vacation and actively relax…you’ll be a better entrepreneur for it. 🙂

So, do you have any other points to add to the list?

34 Responses

  1. Sherry

    Hi, my name is Sherry…I really enjoyed reading your article. Thanks for the tips.

  3. PatriciaTaug

    An outstanding share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a co-worker who was conducting a little research on this. And he in fact bought me dinner due to the fact that I stumbled upon it for him… lol. So let me reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending the time to talk about this subject here on your website.

    • Russ-O-Matic

      Thanks a lot Michael, I hope it helped. 🙂

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  10. Tony

    I like your posts, very informational and inspirational.

    • Russ-O-Matic

      H Sourav, you will need to elaborate on what you need help with. Please send me a quick message via the contact page and we’ll take it from there. 🙂

  13. Tiffany

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  15. Natalia

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