Twelve (12) Important Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know

It is obvious that in this 21st Century many people want to be entrepreneurs. Fortunately, some achieved their dream while others failed or still aspiring. As an entrepreneur, the best way to predict the future is to create it. You create your future by equipping yourself with the knowledge and skills require for your dream. If a career person is busy getting better to fit into the labour market, you as an entrepreneur or aspirant should be building yourself too.

Get rid of the common mentality that as an entrepreneur you are the boss of yourself and can do things as you like. This is nothing but poverty and loser’s mentality. As an entrepreneur you should be accountable to yourself even when there is nobody to be accountable too. As to that dream, you owe yourself to be accountable and responsible. If you ain’t ready, just don’t bother because if you do, you either end a failure or a mediocre.

Here are the 12 essential things an entrepreneur should know if you want to be a successful entrepreneur:

1. There Is No Such Thing As Work-Life Balance

   I am not advocating that you spend a disproportionate part of your life working on your company.  (I am also not advocating against it.) I am simply reporting that is what the most successful entrepreneurs do. I have never found an exception. There are times that your business take all your time, don’t try to stop it, just go with the flow so far it is for the growth of the business. There are also times you will have much time to yourself anyways.

2. The Best Entrepreneurs Don’t Come Up With Great Ideas, They Solve Market Needs

   You and I can come up with wonderful ideas all day long but unless they satisfy a large enough needs, one that can support a business, they don’t do anyone any good. To become a successful entrepreneur start looking for a problem around you to solve and you will be rewarded afterwards for problem solving. Focus on letting your products solve problems.

3. The Desire To Make Your Idea A Reality

   What entrepreneurs need most of all above are, motivation, focus, hope, financing, marketing skills, etc is because of the will to bring their idea into existence. Unless you truly want to make something happen, the odds are nothing will. Without that desire, nothing else matters or occurs. Your life will be filled in other ways.

4. Creativity And Innovation Must Be Linked To The Business Objective

   Creativity is wonderful; it will give your business an outstanding result. Note that creativity that isn’t tied to making money is just a hobby. It isn’t a viable business concept

5. Learn To Take Action After Thinking

   Take small, smart steps towards your goals. Don’t just be thinking, it will only remain a thought until you work it out. Take strategic steps to work out your inner plans. Also, note to always take small steps toward your goal and pause after each one to make sure you are staying on the right track.

6. Give Up Control By Delegation

   You can try to micromanage but the business will never grow bigger than one person can handle effectively. The company won’t be able to move very quickly. Since everything will have to flow through you, you will create a bottleneck; you won’t get the best ideas out of your people. Once they understand the company is set up so everything revolves around you, people are not going to take the time to develop their best ideas. “Why should I,” they’ll ask. “He is just going to do what he wants anyway.” And it’s exhausting. You need to delegate roles to people and let them work with you. Also, As much as you are going to fight it you need a (really smart) advisory board.  You want a board to give you new perspectives and ideas; to give you people to talk to and to provide honest feedback.

7. Act In Your Strength, Stop Focusing On Working On Your Weaknesses

   play to your strengths. This is what will make you successful in the long-run. If you are not good in an aspect don’t try to force it. Work out your strength first and sell your strength.

8. You Need To Know About Marketing

   You figure out who you want to sell to, and then you determine what it is that will get them to buy. Get your product out in the marketplace and strategically make it sells.

9. Target Customers’ Satisfaction

   You don’t determine what a good product is, only your customers do. And if they don’t like your product, it’s a bad product, period. In others words, the customer is always right. If the customer doesn’t like the product, there isn’t much you can do about it with pricing or promotion or positioning. Unpopular products are going to remain so. It is better to come up with a different version, than to keep trying to sell at a discounted price.

10. It’s Common You Make Mistake, Learn And grow

    You are going to make mistakes. It is okay to, it will be wrong when you refuse to learn from the mistakes, providing you truly understand what went wrong. Even if you don’t understand get experts to check things out for you so you can correct your mistakes.

11. Time Management

    

    This is very essential, take time as your life because; it is actually your life. As an entrepreneur always know how to manage time, know when to take crucial decision per time. Avoid staying too long at a spot in your business, learn to grow within time.

12. Create Checklists

    If you want to get more done faster and better create checklists. Checklists are a wonderful way to make sure you don’t overlook anything, and that help whether we are talking about the best way to act in emergency or if you are about to make a big presentation to a client you really want to do business with.

Acknowledgment:Forbes