Enjoy this week’s guest post from Kat Buckley on 7 important lessons from entrepreneurship!

 

The successful entrepreneur you admire so much did not become successful with just a great idea. Running a successful business requires a lot of work and is something that needs to be done deliberately and consistently to become profitable.

You need to be able to identify what will help your business to grow and make informed decisions. You can’t pick up these skills through formal education, only experience can teach you what you need to know. However, learning from the experience and mistakes of others can help you avoid making the same mistakes and give you a greater chance of success.

Here are 7 lessons that can give you a head start when trying to run a successful business.

Don’t Procrastinate: You have a great idea that you believe will work, but you do nothing about it. Instead, you spend too much time sweating the small stuff like what the business name should be, closely defining your target market etc. Successful entrepreneurs are known to have an “I can do it” mentality even when many barriers stand in their way. For example, Bill Gates started his journey by pitching a software he had not designed to the computer company Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS).

Don’t Let Setbacks Hold You Back: Challenges will always come. If you don’t encounter challenges, then you are either not doing enough or something isn’t quite right. When setbacks do come, you need to learn how to deal with them and keep moving. Many successful entrepreneurs have failed a number of times, but the reason you know them today, is because they did not let those setbacks affect them. A newspaper company once rejected Walt Disney when he pitched his comics to them. Your first business idea may fail, maybe the second too, but to be successful, you must be able to get back up and keep moving forward.

Hire Incredible Talent for Your Team: It’s a big mistake if you think you can do it all on your own. As you grow, you will need capable hands that have the same dedication as you to the success of your business. Hiring capable people to join your team could be the difference between becoming successful and failing. When you have a goal that requires people to achieve it, you don’t want to be understaffed. That is a stressful position to put yourself in so you should always hire hardworking talent for your team.

Delegate: At the beginning of your journey, delegating tasks to others might be hard to do because you want things done ‘perfectly’ and in a certain way. Most entrepreneurs start off as a one-man show but gradually grow. However, successful entrepreneurs know when it is time to delegate tasks that others can handle with minimal supervision, so that they are able to focus on the bigger picture. Ensure that you’re focusing on growing your business and leave your great team to take care of the day-to-day operations.

Pay People Well: As an entrepreneur, you are focused on making a profit on your investment and your bottom-line is always front and center in your thoughts. However, paying people well for work done is a great motivator for achieving even better results and people who work for you deserve a reward for working hard. Remember that if your team is happy, they are motivated to work harder. And when they work hard, you’ll see better results which will in turn make your business more successful.

Check Your ROI On All Marketing:  No one wants to keep pouring money into something with nothing to show for it. To become a successful entrepreneur, you need to achieve a positive ROI on your marketing efforts. It may not happen immediately but monitoring your marketing channels over time will help you understand which work best. Ensure you track your marketing channels and calculate what you spend for each channel.

Find a Good Accountant: While running a business, you want to make sure that the financials of the business are in order. You also want to ensure that your taxes and all other fees are paid when due. It may be possible for you to do these tasks by yourself but delegating these tasks to a qualified accountant will save you a lot of time and hassle. You also want to be able to take advantage of any savings you might get through tax deductions and your accountant will generally be far more up to speed on this. This ensures you’re not burdened with thinking calculating taxes allowing you to concentrate on other aspects of the business.

Key takeaway

Becoming a successful entrepreneur takes patience, dedication and hard work. You can learn from the mistakes of other successful entrepreneurs to get to where you want to be a little more quickly – but keeping going through tough times is vital.

Kat Buckley is the owner of HappyCleans. She is passionate about startups, travel, and the environment.