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10 Secrets of Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur

There is a myth that entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough
ideas. Here's what success truly means.

By Naveen Jain
@Naveen_Jain_CEO

I've been an entrepreneur most of my adult life. Recently, on a long business flight, I began
thinking about what it takes to become successful as an entrepreneur--and how I would even
define the meaning of success. The two ideas became more intertwined in my thinking: success as
an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial success. I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of
entrepreneurship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that
entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas. I've found that
entrepreneurial success usually comes through great execution, simply by doing a superior job of
doing the blocking and tackling.

But what else does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how should an entrepreneur define
success?

Here's what I came up with, a Top 10 List:

10. You must be passionate about what you are trying to achieve.

That means you’re willing to sacrifice a large part of your waking hours to the idea you’ve come
up with. Passion will ignite the same intensity in others who join you as you build a team to
succeed in this endeavor. And with passion, both your team and your customers are more likely to
truly believe in what you are trying to do.

9. Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing.

This focus and intensity help eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from
indigestion rather than starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same
time rather than doing too few things very well. Stay focused on the mission.

8. Success comes only from hard work.

We all know that there is no such thing as overnight success. Behind every overnight success lie
years of hard work and sweat. People with luck will tell you there’s no easy way to achieve
success--and that luck comes to those who work hard. Successful entrepreneurs always give 100%
of their efforts to everything they do. If you know you are giving your best effort, you’ll never
have any reason for regrets. Focus on things you can control; stay focused on your efforts, and let
the results be what they will be.

7. The road to success is going to be long, so remember to enjoy the journey.

Everyone will teach you to focus on goals, but successful people focus on the journey and
celebrate the milestones along the way. Is it worth spending a large part of your life trying to reach
the destination if you didn’t enjoy the journey? Won’t the team you attract to join you on your
mission also enjoy the journey more? Wouldn’t it be better for all of you to have the time of your
life during the journey, even if the destination is never reached?

6. Trust your gut instinct more than any spreadsheet.

There are too many variables in the real world that you simply can’t put into a spreadsheet.
Spreadsheets spit out results from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security.
In most cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide. The human brain works as a binary
computer and can analyze only the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white).
Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can’t
be easily defined in zeros and ones. We’ve all had experiences in business where our heart told us
something was wrong while our brain was still trying to use logic to figure it all out. Sometimes a
faint voice based on instinct resonates far more strongly than overpowering logic.

5. Be flexible but persistent--every entrepreneur has to be agile to perform.

You have to continuously learn and adapt as new information becomes available. At the same
time, you have to remain persistent to the cause and mission of your enterprise. That’s where that
faint voice becomes so important, especially when it is giving you early warning signals that
things are going off track. Successful entrepreneurs find the balance between listening to that
voice and staying persistent in driving for success--because sometimes success is waiting right
across from the transitional bump that’s disguised as failure.

4. Rely on your team. It’s a simple fact: No individual can be good at everything.

Everyone needs people who have complementary sets of skills. Entrepreneurs are an optimistic
bunch, and it’s very hard for them to believe that they are not good at certain things. It takes a lot
of soul searching to find your own core skills and strengths. After that, find the smartest people
you can who complement your strengths. It’s easy to get attracted to people who are like you; the
trick is to find people who are not like you but who are good at what they do--and what you can’t
do.
3. Execution, execution, execution.

Unless you are the smartest person on earth (and who is), it’s likely that many others have thought
about doing the same thing you’re trying to do. Success doesn’t necessarily come from
breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or
a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling. All of us have seen entrepreneurs who
waste too much time writing business plans and preparing PowerPoints. I believe that a business
plan is too long if it’s more than one page. Besides, things never turn out exactly the way you
envisioned them. No matter how much time you spend perfecting the plan, you still have to adapt
according to the ground realities. You’re going to learn a lot more useful information from taking
action rather than hypothesizing. Remember: Stay flexible, and adapt as new information becomes
available.

2. I can’t imagine anyone ever achieving long-term success without having honesty and integrity.

These two qualities need to be at the core of everything we do. Everybody has a conscience, but
too many people stop listening to it. There is always that faint voice that warns you when you are
not being completely honest or even slightly off track from the path of integrity. Be sure to listen
to that voice.

1. Success is a long journey and much more rewarding if you give back.

By the time you get to success, lots of people will have helped you along the way. You’ll learn, as
I have, that you rarely get a chance to help the people who helped you, because in most cases, you
don’t even know who they were. The only way to pay back the debts we owe is to help people we
can help--and hope they will go on to help more people. When we are successful, we draw so
much from the community and society that we live in that we should think in terms of how we can
help others in return. Sometimes it’s just a matter of being kind to people. Other times, offering a
sympathetic ear or a kind word is all that’s needed. It’s our responsibility to do “good” with the
resources we have available.

Measuring Success

I hope you have internalized the secrets of becoming a successful entrepreneur. The next question
you are likely to ask yourself is: How do we measure success? Success, of course, is very
personal; there is no universal way of measuring success. What do successful people like Bill
Gates and Mother Teresa have in common? On the surface, it’s hard to find anything they
share-;and yet both are successful. I personally believe the real metric of success isn’t the size of
your bank account. It’s the number of lives in which you might be able to make a positive
difference. This is the measure of success we need to apply while we are on our journey to
success.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
PUBLISHED ON: AUG 13, 2012
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Small Business» Managing Employees» Jobs»
Negative Attitudes That Affect Businesses
by Miranda Morley
Negative employees can affect their peers.
In addition to reviewing qualifications and experiences, small business owners may also want to
screen applicants for their attitudes before making them an offer. According to Wharton
University's Sigal Barside's 2007 study, "Employees' moods, emotions, and overall dispositions
have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations
and leadership." From being in perpetual fear to hating work, a number of negative attitudes
impact the workplace.

Job Insecurity
Although many people have a legitimate fear of losing their jobs, bringing that attitude into the
workplace will only make completing the work harder, both for the individual and her co-workers.
In fact, Success Magazine notes that a person with a negative attitude has just as much power to
influence the people around her as a person with a positive attitude. Those who are so afraid of
losing their jobs that they are unhappy at work can spread the feeling, making others feel insecure,
and that insecurity can get in the way of all workers' productivity. Of course, less productive
workers are more likely than their co-workers to get laid off or fired, so the negativity issue
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Lack of Belief in Oneself

Employees who lack confidence and who think that they can't do the jobs that they have been
assigned can compromise their own work because of what Chuck Bauer of "Top 7 Business" calls
a "distorted thinking style." Employees who constantly say that they cannot do something may
trick themselves into believing that they can't do it, automatically reducing the amount of effort
they put forth. In addition, co-workers may not only get so frustrated with these people that they
request not to work with them in the future but they might also start to believe that certain tasks
are harder than they really are.
Haughtiness
On the other side, haughtiness occurs when an employee thinks that he is the only one who can do
the job right or that he is a much better worker than everyone else. While each employee does
have strengths and weaknesses, and it can be healthy to acknowledge those, employees who think
they are better than their peers can drive a wedge between team members and encourage people in
the workplace to take sides. According to Bauer, this is called the "divide and conquer" approach,
and it often happens when employees "magnify" a situation. For example, a haughty employee
may see another employee being trained and think, "This person is going to overstep me as the
best employee in the office," and try to get others to have a negative opinion about this person.

Hatred of Work
At some point in all workers' lives, they must take jobs they do not particularly like. However,
when a person starts to really hate his job or let the extreme dislike show, it affects the whole
workplace. According to Bauer, this may occur when a person uses "destructive labeling" to think
of his job as completely negative, when an honest assessment would certainly show both positive
and negative attributes. A person who hates his job is not motivated to work and will probably
have a borderline competency, just doing enough to get by. Further, his destructive comments
about work and possibly unpleasant demeanor can discourage employees from working with him,
even if it is part of their jobs.

References (3)
About the Author
Miranda Morley is an educator, business consultant and owner of a copywriting/social-media
management company. Her work has been featured in the "Boston Literary Magazine,"
"Subversify Magazine" and "American Builder's Quarterly." Morley has a B.A. in English,
political science and international relations. She is completing her M.A. in rhetoric and
composition from Purdue University Calumet.

Photo Credits
Christopher Robbins/Photodisc/Getty Images
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Home » Get Ahead » Managing the Office

THE EFFECT OF EMPLOYEE ATTITUDE ON PRODUCTIVITY IN THE WORKPLACE
By Linda Ray; Updated July 05, 2017
Side profile of a group of young executives clapping (blurred)
George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Images
The attitudes of employees in the workplace can have a significant effect on the business as a
whole. Attitude is one of the hidden, hard-to-measure factors that ends up being crucial to the
success of a company. Whether for better or for worse, employee attitudes tend to have a drastic
impact on the productivity of a business, both directly and through the effect on other job-related
factors.
Engagement
The first factor subject to employee attitudes is engagement. Employees that have a negative
attitude toward their company are far more likely to be disengaged, fulfilling their jobs with the
least amount of work possible and at the lowest quality level. This attitude of disengagement,
disconnection and lack of concern for the company's well-being is costly to employers by way of
lost productivity. Employees with the same competencies and skill levels are likely to be many
times more productive if they have a positive attitude toward work, and feel connected, committed
and invested in the success of the company.

Retention
Based on their attitudes toward work, employees feel more or less committed to the job. Those
with a generally negative outlook at their work situation have no reason to feel invested in a future
with the company. They can leave at any time and might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
High employee turnover is significantly costly to business in a number of ways, including training,
hiring resources and work left undone. By contrast, employees with positive attitudes toward the
job are more likely to develop a sense of commitment to the business and stay for the long haul,
lowering turnover costs and increasing productivity through experience, reports "Entrepreneur."

Work Environment
Workplace attitudes, both positive and negative, are infectious and can easily spread to co-
workers. Negative employee attitudes can have a ripple effect. Decreased trust and goodwill
toward co-workers harms collaboration, decreasing productivity. A negative social environment
isolates individual employees and creates incentives to avoid or leave the job. By contrast, positive
attitudes make interaction and collaboration more pleasant and productive. The encouraging social
atmosphere that results from good attitudes creates incentives to be part of the team and gives
employees a sense of belonging and emotional investment with the success of the company.

Client Interaction
Not all employees interact directly with customers and clients, but when they do, their attitude is a
reliable predictor of customer satisfaction. Even the employees who don't have direct contact with
clients can influence through their attitudes the level of care and customer service. A negative
attitude is likely to manifest in disengagement from customers and lack of concern for their needs.
Customers are an annoyance and an inconvenience to employees with a bad attitude. On the other
hand, a positive and engaged attitude is likely to result in courtesy, emotional engagement and a
real concern for the well-being and satisfaction of the customer.

References
Entrepreneur: The Hidden Costs of Employee Turnover
Corporate Leadership Council: Linking Employee Satisfaction With Productivity, Performance
and Customer Satisfaction
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About the Author
Linda Ray is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years reporting experience. She's
covered business for newspapers and magazines, including the "Greenville News," "Success
Magazine" and "American City Business Journals." Ray holds a journalism degree and teaches
writing, career development and an FDIC course called "Money Smart."
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