Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2014. It describes HubSpot as one of the fastest-growing web analytics and online marketing companies, treats Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg as the current big names, and ’30 years ago’ is relative to 2014.
A while ago we talked about 7 habits clearly found in highly successful people, and although success is for people of action, it’s also true that the actions we take are based on our beliefs. Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, one of the fastest-growing web analytics and online marketing companies, says he has met all kinds of people.
Some achieved nothing, while others have been very successful in their businesses and careers, and according to Shah, the only difference between them lay in their beliefs.
What are the beliefs that lead to success?
What do people need to believe to succeed in life, in their careers or in business? This entrepreneur sets out what outstandingly successful people believe.
1. They don’t believe they have to wait to be chosen. They choose themselves.
Many people wait for their chance, wait for someone to recognize their work or wait for someone to fund their business idea. Successful people don’t wait for anything or anyone. They simply go out and look for what they believe belongs to them. The internet and social media are very powerful tools: if a record label won’t fund your album, you can distribute your own music. You can self-publish a book, and you can design your own social media marketing strategy to promote any product you plan to sell.
The truth is that self-promotion has never been this easy, and many people don’t take advantage of it. Today, if you want to, you can. The only thing stopping you is your own willpower.
See also: Billy Joel’s pianist and the importance of taking risks
2. They believe in perseverance and the daily fight to improve.
Success is almost always the result of hard work and perseverance. Failure tends to happen when people compromise their judgment and values or stop striving to better themselves.
Others may be smarter, better connected, more talented or richer, but they can still lose if they stagnate and get overtaken by people who keep pushing and improving every day. People who relentlessly pursue perfection tend to win.
See also: 15 habits and choices for success
3. They believe success only looks predictable in hindsight.
When we read the stories of successful entrepreneurs, it’s as if they had some talent, skill or level of creativity that made their success inevitable, while the rest of us lack that greatness, those skills or aptitudes, since we have no clear picture of our own future success and can’t even glimpse it.
Successful people are aware of one of Steve Jobs’s most famous quotes, in which he said that you can’t connect the dots looking forward, but that at some point in the future they would connect.
Success only looks inevitable once we’ve achieved incredible success. Successful people know that success is never guaranteed, however good your plan. In fact, even the greatest entrepreneurs have big failures behind them. You have to work hard and persevere. If you fail, you try again. That’s the only way to succeed in business.
4. Success comes from teaching what you know, not hiding it.
You’ll never succeed on your own, and so you’ll never succeed if you surround yourself with mediocre people. Great leaders make a habit of teaching and providing the tools and knowledge their team needs to grow professionally and reach its goals.
“Your chances of success are proportional to the number of people you want to see succeed.”
See also: 9 skills of exceptional employees
The more successful the people who work with you are, the more successful you’ll be. But what if you train someone so spectacularly well that they end up leaving the company? It can happen, but… what if you never teach them and they stay loyally at your company?
5. They believe (they know) they’ll have to do things nobody else is willing to do.
It’s pure statistics. Most people do the same thing, and that’s why very few people succeed. To achieve what most people don’t, you’ll have to avoid doing what most people do and start doing what that successful minority does.
Whenever you’re working on something, think of a few extra things you could do that you know not everyone would be willing to do. Research a little more, polish it a little further.
“The best business opportunities often lie in fields that other people haven’t bothered to cultivate. Find those fields.”
For example, Richard Branson’s secret is to enter industries where customers aren’t well served.
6. They believe ideas are nothing… but execution is everything.
Until a business idea is executed, we really have nothing. Do you have a business idea? Great. Quickly draw up a strategy, a basic plan to launch it, then execute it, adapt it, and execute and adapt it again until you turn it into a profitable business or kill it off.
Success has nothing to do with ideas and everything to do with executing them.
See also: How to validate your idea in under 5 minutes
7. They believe in the future payoff.
You’ll have heard the typical lines: “I work according to what they pay me,” or “if the client paid me more, I’d give them a better service.” According to Dharmesh Shah, successful people don’t wait to get a raise; they work much better in order to earn it. In the same way, successful entrepreneurs don’t expect an extra reward at the start. They give their best to show they’re worth betting on.
8. They believe in being part of change.
Some people are scared of change, while others adapt to it. Then there are people who are part of that change, and it’s in this third group that you usually find the great successful entrepreneurs. Today, names like Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg are well known. Before them, it was Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Over the next 10 or 20 years, names that nobody knows yet will emerge.
In 1980 people said everything had already been invented and that it was very hard to innovate in anything. You hear the same words now, and they’re as wrong now as they were 30 years ago.
This article originally appeared on LinkedIn and has been extensively adapted.
Further reading
Featured image: Betsy Weber, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
