The Seven Eternal Truths of Entrepreneurial Success

The Seven Eternal Truths of Entrepreneurial Success
Everybody has a secret recipe for success on the web. 99.9%
are not secret and who knows how many lead to success? But
there are some eternal truths that work both on and off the
web, indeed work for life in general. Are they secret – no!
Are they usually forgotten – absolutely!

1. Know Yourself! Even at the oracle of Delphi over 2000
years ago this was cliché wisdom. But as they say, clichés
are clichés because they're true!

The essence of business success is self-understanding.
Without it you cannot understand others, your interactions
and reactions to events and people, and how to maximize
your probabilities of success.  In classic leadership
development, the candidate is put through a battery of
personality tests and the organization puts feedback
systems (360 degree programs, job evaluation) that force
people to examine themselves objectively. What has this to
do with the home-business entrepreneur?

Working in your pajamas at the living room table can be a
wonderfully releasing experience. But after a time it can
pall – believe it or not!

For many, the lack of companionship, the loneliness of it
and the lack of imposed discipline can lead to a loss of
focus and a drop in motivation. For those who are squeezing
it in between a hundred other tasks and calls on their
time, choosing a business model that doesn't fit with your
personality can be a disaster.

>From a life point of view, Knowing Yourself is a powerful
way to expand your world.  There is no value in not knowing
and the value in knowing is to use the MasterCard
catch-phrase: priceless.

2. Know where you're going. "If you don't know where you're
going any road will get you there" (The Cheshire Cat, Alice
in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll)

Home-based business is no different from IBM or Toyota. If
you don't know why you're doing it, you'll get lost and
confused. I'm not suggesting a corporate Vision Statement,
but a picture of the Ferrari you want or of the beach in
Bermuda, or the Private School you crave for your children
will serve just as effectively.  Stick them to the ‘fridge
and know why you're doing all this.

Should you set personal goals, production targets, and
detailed objectives? It depends. If you are running a
Google Ad campaign with 250 separate streams I think you
need a lot of focus. Similarly, if you are in an MLM scheme
where you have to contact 200 people a day, then operating
goals are a necessity. Home business can be as ‘structured'
as you like, but most people sitting in their pajamas may
think they left regular employment to avoid imposed
discipline but eventually find they want (and need) some
structure.

3. Focus on the Process. Every business is simply a number
of processes that identify, create and deliver value. If
you are a Fortune 500 company you may well spend millions
on refining and focusing your activities. If there are just
you and the cat, well it seems like over-kill. However!!
Small business on the web is becoming more and more
professional. Others are focusing on making sure everything
is covered off. If you don't, you will fall behind in
professional skill.

Work out the steps in your business and focus on improving
them. This will guarantee long term effectiveness

4. Be aware of the Critical Success Factors. A Critical
Success Factor (CSF) is something that MUST exist if
something else is to happen. If you want to win the
America's Cup you need a top-end 12 meter yacht with
perfect aerodynamics, plus a top-flight crew, plus a
winning skipper, plus…well you get the idea. Miss out ANY
ONE of these and you will fail.

Every business, indeed every human endeavor, has CSFs. Work
out what they are – typically there are more than 3 and
fewer than 7 – and make sure you have covered them off.

5. Learn, learn, learn and most of all learn from Action. 
Building knowledge is critical to growth in your web-based
business. There are endless e-books to buy on how to do web
business, a goodly number of them totally useless and many
of the rest simply regurgitating stale ideas. However, the
best sort of knowledge comes FREE. It comes under the
heading of Action Learning. Every action you take in your
web business (or in life for that matter) is a potential
source of learning.  The cycle is: act, measure, reflect,
adjust, and act and so on. Most of us (and most businesses
incidentally) go through life missing out the Reflect and
Adjust steps. We lurch from action to action hoping for the
best. That's Einstein's definition of madness (doing the
same thing over and over again and expecting a different
result!)  Milk your experiences for every drop of learning
and apply it.

6. Find the best resources and use them. Virtually
everything you will ever want to do on the web has a
supplier, and their offerings are getting more
sophisticated all the time.

7. Act, Act, Learn and Act Sitting on your chair and doing
nothing but dream is a recipe for zero profit. It almost
doesn't matter what you do – just do SOMETHING. Then see
what happens and get into the learning cycle.


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Michael Kay is Research Director of HBB Research a business
school based research program looking at web home-based
business. He is the lead author of HBB Research's recent
Report: The Gold Rush. To For more on The Gold Rush and to
get your free subscription to HBB Insights, the ideas
newsletter of HBB Research, go to
http://www.hbbresearch.com/

This blog is © 2006 Barrie Segal - All Rights reserved

The editor, Barrie Segal is the founder of AppealNow.com™ and is a regular radio broadcaster in the UK.

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