What are good entrepreneurial habits you should start embracing? How do customers define a business’s success?
Good financial habits are crucial, but of course, you need to have income before they’ll do you any good. One route to a steady income is to become an entrepreneur by starting your own business.
To become a successful entrepreneur, here are the habits Brian Tracy recommends picking up.
Achieving Success as an Entrepreneur: Focus on the Customer
If entrepreneurship is your preferred method, it’s important to first understand what entrepreneurial habits make a business successful: satisfying and retaining customers, and continuous improvement. As a business owner or entrepreneur, Tracy says you must constantly prioritize your customers’ needs. Thus, every decision you make should be evaluated through the lens of how it will impact the customer experience.
(Shortform note: Building lasting relationships with customers is crucial because a single customer can lead to many sales over time. In fact, in The Ultimate Sales Machine, marketing coach Chet Holmes says viewing each sale as a simple one-and-done transaction is one of the biggest mistakes that companies make. Instead, he suggests staying in touch with your customers and offering rewards for people who frequent your business. This way, you’re likely to get many more repeat customers—and, just as importantly, people are likely to remember you and recommend you to their friends.)
However, it’s not enough to just offer a great customer experience. Tracy also says you must convince people that your products or services provide more value than what your competitors can offer—this could mean higher quality, lower prices, or both. Doing so requires constantly looking for ways to improve your products or services and enhance your marketing strategies.
Therefore, always be on the lookout for opportunities to innovate, refine your approach, and communicate your unique selling proposition more effectively. Continuous improvement is essential to stay ahead of the competition and meet evolving customer needs.
(Shortform note: Tracy says that the key to a successful product or service is to make it more valuable to customers than what your competitors offer. In Purple Cow, marketing expert Seth Godin suggests a different approach: Instead of just trying to offer a “better” product, you need to offer something remarkable that will get people talking about your business. Godin also says that making constant, incremental improvements is not an effective way to attract and retain customers. Instead, do something extreme and unusual. For example, the Tesla Cybertruck’s extraordinary design attracted a lot of attention—not all of it was positive, but even scorn is better for business than being ignored.)
Habits That Promote Entrepreneurial Success
Tracy discusses several habits that will help you succeed as an entrepreneur:
1. Planning. Meticulously plan your strategy before making any big business decisions. You should be able to articulate what your product or service is, who your target audience is, how your product adds value to your customer’s life, and how you’ll offer more value than your competitors. On a smaller scale, set regular sales goals and make plans for how you’ll reach them.
(Shortform note: In Competing Against Luck, business consultant Clayton Christensen writes that the key to a successful business or product launch is to identify what specific task your customers want to accomplish. For example, elderly people often want to live as independently as possible, so one specific task they want to accomplish might be to get around more easily. Therefore, if you can sell a mobility aid that’s more effective or cheaper than what your competitors offer, your business will likely do well.)
2. Delegating. As the business owner, you should focus on only two or three core tasks that keep your company running smoothly, and delegate everything else to your employees. On that same note, make sure you don’t skimp on hiring or paying staff; your team will make or break your business, so hire the best people you can and do whatever it takes to retain them.
3. Monitoring. To ensure that the tasks you’ve delegated are being done correctly, implement systems to monitor work progress. Additionally, set clear and measurable standards to gauge how well you’re meeting your sales and performance goals.
| Delegate, But Don’t Micromanage Many experts say that, in addition to delegating tasks to your employees, you’ll get the best results if you let them handle those tasks on their own instead of micromanaging their work processes. But how do you balance employees’ autonomy with the need to monitor work progress? In Humanocracy, business consultants Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini say that your company should promote empowerment and accountability. This means that employees are encouraged to find their own solutions to problems and their own ways to meet the goals you set. However, they must also accept the consequences of their decisions (both positive and negative). This is also why it’s important to hire the best people: You’ll need skilled and conscientious employees who won’t abuse the freedom you give them. |
4. Reporting. Regularly report your results to people who have vested interests in your company—including your bank and your employees, not just shareholders—to keep everyone informed and motivated.
(Shortform note: Reporting monthly or quarterly results isn’t just informative, it can also be an opportunity to celebrate what you’ve achieved so far. In Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath explain that celebrating small victories along the way to a larger long-term goal is a highly effective way to stay motivated. This is because people’s emotions are generally stronger than their logic, and emotions demand instant gratification instead of sustained effort toward a distant goal. Therefore, these small victories are opportunities to satisfy that need for instant gratification and to motivate them toward the next small goal, when they’ll be able to experience that gratification again.)
