What is success? This is probably one of the most complicated questions to answer, yet it is so simple. Many will respond with wealth in their statements, but that is not what success is all about.
Graduates who are interested in running their own companies in the future and business startups may want to know how to get their ideas or small businesses into Fortune 500s corporations. Here are six career tips for young and aspiring entrepreneurs to be successful in their ventures and build their dream business empire.
1- Learn As You Go
Many graduates go wrong by focusing on their industry jobs. Yes, you may be an expert in catering, and your skills will boost your career. But, what about when you start your own catering company? It no longer becomes only about catering – the skill; it’s now an enterprise that requires business skills.
Do you have skills in accounting, customer service, human resource, sales & marketing and all that? These are the skills you should have gathered during that small job that you keep complaining about and the seminar and benchmarks you used to sleep through. When working in a small company, take it as training.
Offer a hand in all departments to learn how things work and grasp as much as possible. Forget the pay; you’ll have time to enjoy big money once your business is thriving.
2- Be Hard On Yourself
When you think you have accomplished a goal, raise the bar. Compete with yourself. Never settle because someone out there is working harder each day and they will be your company’s most significant competitor. Being hard on yourself helps you learn, grow, and discover more strength and capabilities than what you thought you had. It also involves aspects of discipline like time management, courtesy, reliability, and other virtues that will make others feel like they can rely on you.
When people categorize you as dependable, they have trust in you. If you always show up when you say you will, the chances are high that they will show up for you and trust you with their businesses.
3- Allow Yourself to Grow Through Failure
Richard Branson always advises young entrepreneurs and small business owners to allow themselves to fail. The best thing is to learn from your mistakes and make them your strengths. Do not dwell on defeat. Learn and move on so that you can use that time and knowledge to better yourself and your business. Do not be a perfectionist. Keep in mind that not every idea you have must be successful, but every idea that fails is a step forward to success.
4- Be Experimental and Open Minded
One of the greatest human challenges is having closed minds. What you were born knowing is what you’ll die knowing. This is not an entrepreneur’s attitude. You have to have a child’s mind. The kind of thought that is open to everything. Get curious and experimental because successful entrepreneurs are risk takers. As long as an idea seems worth diving for, do so without fear of the unknown.
The right mentality is getting into something knowing it may fail and if it does, laugh, learn, and apply the lessons. Don’t play it safe; shuffle the cards, pick the one that feels daring, and swing it.
5- Don’t Base it on Success and Money
Yes, the goal is being prosperous and financially stable, but that’s not how you approach your career. Approach it from a passionate point. This is your dream, and it’s what moves you, so invest as much money as you can wisely. Invest your time and efforts as well. The best business ideas are those that provide a solution to the community, something that people will use for a long time. Also, it is something that will define your legacy. In short, base it on the solution you are trying to achieve for others, and everything else will fall into place.
6- Then, do it
Stop talking about the idea and start putting it into practice. Feeling like you’re not ready yet? Well, if you’re at least sixty percent equipped with the industry knowledge, skills, and obviously capital, it means that you are ready. Don’t expect that you’ll ever be one hundred percent ready. Some things you learn as you go and while learning them, you can always find a way to incorporate them into your small business.
Pursuing further studies in business such as online MBA can also be excellent knowledge equipment that young and aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as small business owners, can take up. So, what is success? Well, success is achieving your goal; no matter how small. That’s your success, and it’s not limited, so have many goals to achieve many successes in your lifetime.
