The 3 Top Qualities of Successful Entrepreneurs

Your Dream Business

English - April 23, 2018 00:02 - 16 minutes - 12.8 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
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KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

All new business owners face the same three challenges involving self-motivation, time management and work-life balance.New business owners make their own lives harder by playing the comparison game with other entrepreneurs in our space. We must stop doing this!New tools, techniques, platforms and systems are releasing all the time. It can be difficult to not get wrapped up in all the “new” that you need to do.Drive, consistency and relentlessness are key to success in

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

“If you build it, they will come,” doesn’t apply in the entrepreneurial world. It’s more like this: If you build it and you market your backside off and you give it consistent attention, THEN they might come. Success takes time and effort! Please keep going and keep up the hard work!“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael JordanHIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSTeresa’s challenges when starting her own business – 02:21The main challenges new business owners face – 03:15The syndrome all entrepreneurs suffer from, especially in social media – 05:25Entrepreneurial Myth #1: Everyone else is an overnight success – 07:21Characteristics of successful entrepreneurs – 09:12Entrepreneurial Myth #2: That success is easy and will come quickly – 10:23Teresa’s plea to YOU – 15:13
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODE

Amy Porterfield’s podcast, episode 203
Transcript below

Hello and welcome. And thank you so much for joining me for episode number nine of the social media marketing made simple podcast. I am so thrilled to have you here with me today. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different from the episodes that I've done so far. The episodes I have done to date have tended to be around tools or tips or tricks. And five ways to help you with X, or whatever it is. And today's going to be a little bit different. However, I think this subject that we're going to talk about today is super important for business owners and entrepreneurs and social media people alike. Today we are going to be talking about becoming successful.

And what it means and the importance of consistency. Now one of the reasons why I've decided to do this episode this week is because it seems that I've been having these kinds of conversations recently with friends and clients. Also I listened to a recent episode of the podcast by Amy Porterfield. It's episode number 203, How To Get Noticed Online When You Are Just Starting Out. And a lot of the things that Amy said in that podcast was resonating with the conversations that I had had with like I said, friends and clients.

And also it's something that I have been thinking about for my own current projects and also the level of success that I am at, at the moment. And the level of success I want to get to. So it felt like I was being led down this path or someone out there, the universe was telling me, Teresa you need to talk about this because like I said, so many things have presented themselves to me, where I thought, this is going to make a great podcast episode. And I think this is something you're going to be able to resonate with. It's going to be something that you have thought about, or you struggle with. And every so often I think we need to remind ourselves of some of the points that we're going to cover today.

Teresa’s challenges when starting...

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

Amy Porterfield’s podcast, episode 203
Transcript below

Teresa’s challenges when starting her own business

So let's jump in. I'm going to start by saying, the most obvious thing in the world, running a business is hard. Oh man, is it hard. I remember when I first started out, I probably didn't have the faintest idea what it was like to run a business. I had worked as an employee, I had never had my own business before. And I used to look at business owners thinking, why aren't you more organised? Why are you so scatty? You're running around and doing a million things at once. And I didn't have the faintest idea until I started running my own business, and I realised that your brain is going in a million directions all the time trying to do a million things.

So let's just say, the most obvious thing, it is super hard work. And it's hard work for lots of reasons.

The main challenges new business owners face

Firstly, self motivation, managing to get yourself out of bed every morning and get yourself motivated when there's no one to be responsible to that are going to hold you accountable for not getting out of bed or not starting work on time. Or not finishing that project by that time. Self motivation is super difficult. The next thing, managing your own time. Now trying to juggle this with your home life, especially if you're a mom or you're a dad. I have an eight year old daughter and two step children. And it's super hard trying to build a successful business while you are also trying to be this great mom. You're being a great wife or a great husband.

And it's really difficult. It's super, super difficult to try and find that balance. Then we make our life so much harder because the next thing we do is we compare. Oh boy, we area a nightmare. We basically watch what other people do, and now that social media is the way it is, it's so easy to do. We look at all the other entrepreneurs and business owners out there and we see them succeed. And we wonder why we still feel like we're on the starting block. And have been there for a long time. We look at their social media. We look at the tens of thousands of followers they have. We look at all the interaction they have and how everybody comments on stuff when they post something.

Or they'll do a Facebook live and loads of people turn up. And we wonder why we don't have that. And how did they get it? How did they become that successful? And the other interesting thing that we think is that we think they did it overnight. We would discover someone today or tomorrow, and we just think, they've appeared out of nowhere. They've obviously just started the day before and become an overnight success, which makes it feel even more difficult for us. That to date ourselves, we start to think, what is it that I'm doing wrong? Why is everybody else doing okay? And it becomes a real source of frustration.

The syndrome all entrepreneurs suffer from, especially in social media

The other interesting, I don't want to say the word problem that I think entrepreneurs have, but is that we suffer from shiny object syndrome. Gosh, that's hard to say. Anyway, we suffer from basically seeing all these other people doing all these other things and thinking, I should be doing that. That's obviously why I'm not successful. That's obviously why I'm not where I want to be. I should be doing these things or using that latest technology, using that latest tool. Especially in social media world. Wow. When I was in social media marketing world, I think it was actually 2016 or '17, Mike [Stelsner 00:06:02] said that we were in the fastest moving industry in the world. And I couldn't agree more.

New tools, techniques, platforms, systems are coming out all the time. And it's so hard not to get completely overwhelmed by it all and be thinking, oh my God, I need to be doing that, but I definitely need a but, no, I need to do some email [inaudible 00:06:24]. I need some new landing pages. I need a new website. Definitely going to have to do a podcast. Need to do more Facebook lives. And then what makes it worse, is we hear all these amazing success stories of all these people who did amazing launches of this membership and got this. Produced a course, and made this amount of money. Starting working hard on Instagram and suddenly have all these followers and are able to monetize it.

We constantly feel like we're doing something wrong. And are left wondering, why is this not working for us? It's absolutely nonstop. And is so overwhelming. If you are listening to this and thinking, wow, that is me, then you are not alone. These are conversations that I have day in, day out with people. And it is a constant struggle. That's why I wanted to cover this subject on today's podcast because I want to cover a few myths.

Entrepreneurial Myth #1: Everyone else is an overnight success

Myth number one, that people are an overnight success or there is a secret money-making scheme that everybody else knows about and you don't.

I can promise you that even though it might seem like they appeared overnight and their success was achieved overnight, in most cases probably 99.9% of the cases, it really wasn't. There are so many examples of successful people who have worked so hard to get to where they are and have had so many knock backs. Stephen King was rejected 30 times. Before his 31st attempt he threw it into the bin and his wife rescued it an asked him to try one more time. Michael Jordan has an amazing quote that he puts out there, which I wanted to read to you. "I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game's winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's why I succeed."

I love this quote and you know why? Because no one would've ever talked about that. You would never have seen on the sports news that he had failed all those times. No one ever talks about their failures that often. They always talk about their successes. So someone from the outside looking in, is going to be thinking, wow, they have just been successful over and over and over again. And it hasn't been the case. They like the rest of us, would've had so many knock backs and so many failures, they just don't talk about them. Or we just don't see them. Or maybe we choose not to see them.

Characteristics of successful entrepreneurs

When I was just searching for this podcast, I was looking at all these people who had been successful. And I was wondering what was it that enabled them to have this success? And for me it comes down to a number of characteristics that they have.

One, they all had the most unwavering determination. They had a goal in their mind that they knew they wanted to reach, and they didn't stop until they got there. They were consistent and had perseverance. Someone like Michael Phelps didn't just get brilliant at swimming overnight. He consistently trained. They consistently work at it. Not knowing whether they were going to reach their goal at all, but they carried on regardless. And the one characteristic that I feel like I saw in all my examples that I looked at, they were relentless. I love that word.

They did not want to stop until they got there. In Amy's podcast that I listened to, one of the key points I got from it was that the people who ended up being the most successful, they acted like they had nailed it already. They went out to the world and acted like they were as successful as they wanted to be from day one.

Entrepreneurial Myth #2: That success is easy and will come quickly

Myth number two, that it's easy and takes no time whatsoever. Like I said earlier, I think sometimes we look at these people and because we've only just discovered them, or they've just come into our world, we think that they have literally just started.

I want you to go back and look at the people that you follow, or you aspire to be like, and just have a look at how long they've been doing what they do. And also how consistently. Now I have some great examples for you. Some of the people that I follow, for instance, Amy Porterfield, I am an avid listener to her podcast. She is on episode 206. Amy puts a podcast out weekly. So do the math. Amy has been doing that podcast consistently for almost four years. Another example, Pat [Flin 00:11:17]. He also has a podcast, very successful guy, great podcast. He's on episode 313, which means if he does a podcast a week, he's been doing it for six years. Let's head over to Instagram. I love Instagram as you probably know by now.

Two of my favourite accounts on Instagram are Jasmine Star and Jenna Kutcher. Jasmine Star posts roughly once a day. She has 2422 posts, which means if she's posted daily, she's been doing it for six years. Jenna Kutcher has 4372 posts. So if she posted twice a day, she's also been doing it for six years. So I wanted to give you these examples to prove to you that it might feel like to us that it's just appeared overnight. That they have got all these hundreds of thousands of followers. But they haven't. This has been built up over time. And as I said before, the key in this is consistency. So I wanted to give you a real practical example of this.

And the podcast is the example. I decided that I wanted to start a podcast as I've said to you, I much prefer speaking over writing. I decided that I was going to set up the podcast and I was going to give it a go. Now obviously I have no idea at this point how successful this podcast is going to be. And I have committed to doing the podcast consistently every single week and when the team came to me and said, "Okay, how long are we going to do it for until you decide whether it's successful or not? Until we decide whether to carry on with the podcast." And they were shocked when I said to them, "12 months." I am going to do the podcast consistently every single week for 12 months because I feel like that is a reasonable amount of time to get something out there, to prove to people that you are showing up week on, week off. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to get to 12 months and ditch you.

I'm obviously going to see and check it's successful. And if it's working for me and I am loving it at the moment, then I will carry on. But what I'm trying to say to you is that I wasn't going to do it for a month or for six episodes or for three months. I'm going to do it for 12 months before I make a decision as to how successful it's been or not. And often when I talk to people about starting social media or Facebook advertising, or a new campaign, or a new level of content, in their head they're thinking, if I do it for a few weeks, if it's not been successful, that's it. I'm not doing it anymore.

I'm not going to waste my time. And I get it. I get that we have so much to do, and I don't want you to waste your time. However, I also want you to realise that you can't expect to just do something today and it be a roaring success tomorrow. This isn't like the quote of Wayne's World two I think it was. "If you build it, they will come." No way. If you build it, and you market your backside off, and you give people good, consistent value, then they might pay attention. That's probably how that quote should sound.

So like I said, I don't want you to look at something and think, do you know what, I've done three Instagram posts and no one liked it. Uh uh, this is going to take a lot longer. I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to give you some magic formula or some secret thing that is suddenly going to make us all dreadfully successful and rich tomorrow. I really do wish that there was something out there like that. However, I really don't think there is. And I think the main difference between lots of entrepreneurs and the really successful ones is down to those key qualities. That drive, the goal, the consistency and the relentlessness to want to achieve and be brilliant at what you do.

Teresa’s plea to YOU

And you know what? You are brilliant. And I know there might be some people out there, who are doing what you do and might seem way ahead of the race than you, but please keep going. Please keep that consistent, hard work up because I promise it will pay off in the end. And if you start to lose faith, just think of some of these following examples. Steve Jobs got fired from Apple. Walt Disney was told that he lacked imagination. And Elvis was told he couldn't sing. Imagine if they had given up when they reached those hurdles. I really hope that you've enjoyed listening to today's podcast as much as I have enjoyed recording it. And if you have got some entrepreneur friends or some business owner friends, that you think would benefit from listening to this episode, maybe they need a boost, or they need to remember to keep going. Then please share it with them. As always, I really do appreciate you listening. And I can't wait to see you next time.