The term ‘entrepreneur’ is enticing and to many people implies, ‘doer of anything that makes money’ and in a large sense is a correct implication. However, what is often missing from the general understanding of the term ‘entrepreneur’ is that each endeavor of an ‘entrepreneur’ requires continual focus, nothing is ever truly on ‘auto-pilot’. I have seen too many entrepreneurs fail because they tried to be everything to everyone; they tried blogging, then on to marketing, then on to affiliate sales .… all within a few months!
To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to apply laser focus to your venture to get it off the ground, then you have to continually apply oversight to keep it in the air. As you progress and advance inentrepreneurialism you can explore outsourcing and Virtual Assistant options to help you manage but in the early-stages of a venture, it is all about you and your personal drive.
We could spend hours upon hours of our time and pages upon pages of text that all talk about the do’s & dont’s of entrepreneurs and marketing. While all of that would be valuable information I think that being ‘straight and to the point’ is always an effective mean of communication. In my own career I have come to find that if I adhere to the 5 laws of entrepreneurs I can assure my venture the best possible chance of success.
5 Laws of Entrepreneurs:
- Law of Focus: In the early-stage development of your venture, product or service you must remain focused and resist temptations to become distracted.
- Outline specific times during your day that you will dedicate to working on the venture and nothing else.
- During the times you are working with your venture, turn off your phones, email, Twitter … etc. This is quality time for you and your idea only.
- Law of Goals: It is imperative that you document the goals and objectives of your venture. You have to have something to hold yourself accountable to.
- If you do not have highly specific goals and objectives you can easily become distracted and lose focus (a violation of the first law!).
- Having specific goals allows you to measure the progression of your venture; without achieving goals you have no way to determine if your venture is progressing.
- Law of Motivation: In the early-stage of your venture it is easy to stay motivated because of excitement and novelty. You must keep that enthusiasm because you can’t expect customers to be excited about your venture if your not.
- Law of Integrity: You must vow to never misrepresent or overstate your venture’s value or benefit. Nothing will sink a venture quicker than an overstatement or misrepresentation.
- Do not ‘make’ your venture fit into a market, find the market that fits your venture by conducting focus groups and product research.
- Law of Perseverance: If success were easy then there wouldn’t be such a thing as failure. Success is the 100th attempt of 99 failures.
- You must commit to never giving up on your venture until you achieve your goals that you have outlined. YOU CAN NEVER GIVE UP!
Being an entrepreneur is not easy, nothing worth having ever is. The difference between your venture’s success and being the next idea tossed to the way-side is you! You are the only responsible for your own success, so go make it happen! Go be a success!
