What makes an entrepreneur successful?

What makes an entrepreneur successful?

To Be a Successful Entrepreneur

There are many things, but these four are always very important:

1. Follow the Golden Rule.  Provide value.  Solve real problems.  Treat your customers as you would like to be treated as a customer.  Be fair to your co-founders.  Treat you investors as you would like to be treated as an investor.  Maximize their return on investment.  Be frugal.  Be efficient.  Work hard.  Treat your suppliers as you would like to be treated as a supplier.  Negotiate deals that benefit both parties.
2. Patience is essential.  Take the time needed to get it right, whatever "it" might be.  Test your product very carefully before release.  You don't have to be the first.  It is more important to be the best (which is part of rule 1).
3. Perseverance is absolutely essential.  Things will go wrong.  There will be set backs.  You must keep going.  Have a vision and keep following it no matter what.
4. Get positive cash flow as early as possible and maintain it.  Revenue is even more valuable than raising investment funds, especially recurring revenue.  Keep expenses as low as possible.  Make sure that investments in development and market growth pay back a very high ROI.

Create as long a runway as possible.  This is not a separate rule because it is achieved by following rules 2 through 4.  If possible generate enough sustainable revenue to be self-sufficient even without outside funding.  That gives you an essentially infinite runway.

Whatever happens, stay inspired by your vision.  That helps you maintain rules 2 and 4.

1. Salesmanship.

The ability to sell something is absolutely necessary to knowing how to run a business at any stage.

Whether you're starting out on the floor like I did, selling a physical product, or you're the CEO of an agency placing talented employees, you need to know how to make a sale.

2. A chip on your shoulder.

This can come in two forms. Either you were born with nothing, zero, and you're just hungrier than the average human.

Or, it's the reverse: You born into a lot of wealth and opportunity and you want to prove that you don't need it, and can do it on your own.

In either case, some kind of chip can push you a long way, especially for the amount of hours and energy you'll need to put into your business.

3. An independent spirit.

Being an entrepreneur means you rely on yourself and no one else. At the end of the day, you need to be 100 percent comfortable with making the final call, being able to trust yourself and your intuition.

4. Understanding consumers and consumer attention.

Zuckerberg is a fantastic example of someone who truly understands and trades consumer attention. He got it with his product: Facebook.

He held onto it by identifying and acquiring Instagram. And he saw it with Snapchat too, but that deal didn't pan out.

In any case, the lesson is that not only knowing where the consumers are, but also where they are going, is crucial.

5. Patience.

It can be a slow and lonely climb to the top. If patience is a trait you don't currently possess, but you want to play in this world, I recommend developing it as much as you possibly can.