Successful entrepreneurs have a different mindset to the rest of us. They are willing to take greater risks and failure is not an option. Of course, anyone can read a few motivational books and apply what they have learned to their own situation, but becoming a successful entrepreneur requires more than a few motivational mantras written on post-it notes and stuck to a notice board.
In this article, we are going to take a quick look at how some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs think – and how you can learn from them.
Learn from Your Mistakes
Failure happens. In some cases, it happens repeatedly. However, the important thing is that you learn from your mistakes and use this knowledge to guide you going forward.
Successful New Zealand entrepreneur, Sam Ovens, is a good example of how failure need not define your future. Ovens started his entrepreneurial career with a recruitment website in his native New Zealand. He thought he had the bare bones for a successful business, but the site crashed and burned and he went bust.
“The big lesson is that you have to sell something that the market actually wants,” he told the Epoch Times. “It was painful. But I am glad that it did happen because it really laid the foundation for my success today.”
Today, Ovens is a hugely successful business consultant with a number of different businesses. One of his tips is to reverse engineer negativity, so if his brain throws up something negative, he works out where the negativity has come from and fixes it.
Leverage Opportunities
Entrepreneurs, by their very nature, have to be flexible. The world is continually evolving and if you sit still long enough, the bottom will drop out of your business.
A University of Virginia study found that successful entrepreneurs leveraged their strengths to take advantage of current opportunities. They didn’t wait around for an opportunity to strike – instead, they maintain flexible goals to take advantage of changes in market direction.
Richard Branson is an excellent example of a successful entrepreneur who has been successful in numerous areas. During the course of his career, he has been very successful at spotting golden opportunities. Donald Trump is another good example of a man who knows how to leverage a business opportunity.
Believe in Yourself and Your Ideas
Bill Gates was a man with a vision. When he formed Microsoft, he dreamed of a computer on every desk in the country, each one stuffed full of Microsoft software. In the 70s, this was a revolutionary concept, yet today, Bill Gate’s dream has become a reality.
Like many successful entrepreneurs, Bill Gates had an idea and he was willing to put in the hard work to make it happen. Too many people allow others to trample all over their visions and dreams. They listen when someone – be it a bank manager or a friend – tells them their idea is never going to work.
There will be times when the naysayers are right, but unless you push ahead and test your ideas to the limit, how will you ever know for certain?
Don’t be Afraid of the Competition
When starting a business, it is easy to look around at the competition and think “no way, I can’t compete with X, Y, and Z…” Before you know it, you have talked yourself into quitting.
If Mark Zuckerberg had thought like that when he first started Facebook, the world would be a very different place. Facebook had major competition in the early days, yet Zuckerberg wasn’t phased at all. He had a vision and he knew perseverance would bear fruit in the end.
So, there you have it: think like a successful entrepreneur and you will end up just as successful!
