Surviving As An Entrepreneur

Surviving as an entrepreneur is not easy, the odds are against you. For every entrepreneurial success story, there are many more failures no one talks about. The rewards of entrepreneurship can far outrank the risks but, in order to make it, you will need some help. Here are five things to keep in mind when trying to survive as an entrepreneur.

Pick Good People To Surround Yourself With

If you do not surround yourself with the right people, it will be extremely hard to reach both personal as well as organizational success. People around you either push you to become better or pull you to become worse. Hard and relentless workers will push everyone each day to do more which has huge ripple effects. People with positive attitudes create a work environment and vibe where everyone accomplishes more simply because people that are actually happy perform better. People who ask questions are an important piece to the team as well as your individual success because they help discover innovation which creates value, perspective is everything. Finally, you need to surround yourself with dreamers. Seeing other people’s drive, determination and grit will reinforce your mindset and build a stronger foundation for both vision and execution.

Let Your Efforts Compound

The easiest thing to do in life is quit. When you decide to quit, you mentally start to prepare yourself to accept this decision by justifying it. Many times, success is awarded to those that can just stick it out with activity over a period of time. It is not the smartest or the most talented many times, but those than commit to the process without giving up. Someone would never invest their money in a vehicle or instrument and then expect the money to grow substantially in the first month, compound interest does not work that way. Same thing applies to the concept of compound activity. Most of the compounding effect happens later but you have to put in the upfront work and then give it some time. Think years not weeks or months. Be honest with yourself about the timeline and then commit to the activity.

Understand Your Audience

Create a client or partner persona. Do some research. Who are you trying to talk to? What is your message when you get in front of your audience? It is a lot easier to both find what you are looking for and stay away from what you are not looking for when you actually have an idea of what you are looking for. With digital marketing and social media platforms, the tools as well as analytics available for today’s entrepreneur give them a great insight into understanding their audience.

Know What Is Going On

Have a clue. As an entrepreneur, you are a business. Know what is going on and be able to lead in a direct and confident way. You can only BS your way through so much before people see through it and start to lose confidence in you and your ability as a manager or leader. If you cannot control a small organization, real growth will never be successful because there is no infrastructure in place from the lack of development in the earlier stages. The more you know your business, the better likelihood you will have a business that survives.

Move Fast

There is a difference between patience and persistence. You are not trying to wait out the clock here. As an entrepreneur, you must move fast and make things happen. You must be the aggressor, don’t wait on others, initiate the action from your side. You are either going to be expanding or contracting, growing or dying. You must think and act like someone is trying to take something away from you. That is your competition, move fast, stay in front and outwork them.

Surrounding yourself with the right people, giving time to let your efforts compound, understanding your audience, knowing what is going on and moving fast are all key ways to help survive as an entrepreneur. Once you survive that initial period of time, these will also be a great help when growing and scaling an organization or company.

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