The biggest disappointments in life happen when a person wants to achieve the same as someone else without acquiring the same habits or making the same choices. For some years we’ve been collecting advice from the greatest entrepreneurs and investors around the world, as well as from young entrepreneurs who acknowledge that part of their success comes from reading the advice of people who had already achieved what they wanted to achieve.
Perhaps one of the business figures who best sums up the reasons for success and failure is Jim Rohn, who always said that for him, success was very easy, just as anyone else could have had it, with the difference that he was willing to make sacrifices and adopt habits that the rest of the people he knew rejected.
The truth is that it’s relatively easy to identify these kinds of choices and habits among millionaires, great investors, great entrepreneurs or top company CEOs, because in fact they all have exactly the same habits.
There are no secrets to success, only habits, only choices, and, as in any race, it all comes down to working harder and preparing better than the rest of your competitors.
Here are 15 habits you should develop to succeed
Read also: 5 habits of great business leaders we can copy as entrepreneurs
1. Get up early
It doesn’t matter whether you’re working or unemployed. Practically all successful entrepreneurs agree that they’re always ahead of everyone else, because when it’s time to start, they’re already better informed than the rest and have a clearer mind.
2. Take a new risk every day or every week
We should test ourselves every day or every week. By taking on new risks we accept the possibility of failure, but we have to keep moving all the time. (The importance of taking more risks: Billy Joel’s piano man)
3. Dress for success
You have to lead an orderly life. A great businessman used to say that he knew what kind of person he had in front of him just by looking at how that person kept the papers in their office, how they dressed and how clean their car was. That was what he called “dressing for success”, because until proven otherwise, you are what you show. (Read: If you want to succeed, stop going to the bathroom)
See also: Steve Jobs’s success: the early days of Apple
4. Make sure you’re adding value
Some people work very hard, others very little, but even people who do a lot may not be creating value. Make sure your efforts are adding value to the bottom line.
5. There are never any excuses
Someone once said that people who are good at making excuses are rarely good at anything else. Rafael Nadal’s uncle used to say that if a tennis player beats you, no excuse will do. He was better, full stop. There’s no such thing as wet grass or slippery clay. People who make excuses never learn from their mistakes, because they believe they haven’t made any, so their successes shrink as their excuses grow.
6. Endurance, persistence and determination
Every single successful person has these things in common. They’ve been persistent until they reached their goal. When they’ve faced obstacles, they’ve done so with determination and resolve, because they all agree that they ran into obstacles and problems that at times pushed them to the limit. When problems pile up and you’re attacked on several fronts, you either hold out or give up, and giving up isn’t an option if you want to succeed.
7. Find your purpose in life
You can’t succeed if you don’t know what you want to achieve, what you want to fight for. Look for something you really want to fight for and feed that passion or that dream.
(Read: How to create your own destiny)
8. Be consistent
Try to channel your focus directly into your individual actions. In the Seinfeld strategy, success basically consisted of contributing small doses of consistency every day, and making sure you’d keep doing it every day regardless of your short-term results. In other words, don’t set out to build a Great Wall of China; just lay one brick on top of another every day. That way, the wall builds itself.
9. Accept yourself
The moment a person accepts themselves is when they recognise their strengths and weaknesses, because we all have weaknesses and strengths. We already know that you don’t need a high IQ to be rich, nor do you need a university degree to succeed in business, but you do need certain abilities and habits. Once you recognise your strengths, you can make better use of them, and once you recognise your shortcomings, you can work on improving them.
10. Don’t procrastinate
If you want to do something, make the decision quickly and do it before the first excuses appear (“no time”, “I’ll leave it for tomorrow”…). Every day you don’t act on an idea you have in mind is a day’s delay, or ends with the idea never being carried out at all because of one of the greatest evils: apathy and neglect.
11. Be honest
No white lies, because white lies have become a way of life for many people. To succeed you need people’s trust, and the only ones who earn it are those whose image, honour and integrity are beyond question. A very common motto in sales is: “Don’t make sales, make customers.” Anyone can sell by lying, but the point is to build a portfolio of repeat customers who are loyal and growing in number. We only achieve that by building trust.
12. Give your best every day
At the end of the day, think about whether you gave your best that day, whether you could have done more or done it better. Try to outdo yourself every day. As a rule, without consistency the opposite tends to happen: people gradually lose their enthusiasm and, as a result, do worse and worse.
13. Ask for advice
An entrepreneur or CEO isn’t good at everything. History is full of failures by business people who were excellent entrepreneurs but terrible money managers. Great entrepreneurs, but terrible leaders. Be humble and ask the experts for advice in every field you haven’t mastered. I’m sure that whenever a big company has ended up failing, it’s because it didn’t listen to much of the advice it was surely given.
14. Use what you have to get what you want
To avoid the typical “If I had… I would…”, don’t focus on what you don’t have. Focus on what you have and use it. Many people don’t start a business because they have no money. Your primary goal shouldn’t be to start a business but to make money, and sometimes, for lack of other means, money is made by starting a business, but with what you’ve got. Think about it.
15. Exercise
For some reason, everyone agrees on this one. If you don’t exercise practically every day, you’re killing yourself physically, especially if you’re going through periods of building stress. That’s one side of it. On the other hand, exercise helps you release toxins and clears your mind. Some business people say that since they made daily exercise an obligation, they feel much braver and even make sounder decisions. If you add a healthy diet as well, you’ll avoid days lost to illness.
Further reading
- The one thing successful people never do
- What were highly successful people doing at 25?
- 50 inspiring quotes from successful entrepreneurs
Featured image: Santeri Viinamäki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
