I’m sure you’ve heard of Stephen Covey’s classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In this iconic book, Stephen talks about habits such as seek first to understand, then be understood, building high-trust relationships with a win-win mindset, and making time for renewing activities. There’s a reason why this book has been on the best-seller list and sold over 40 million copies since it was released 30 years ago. Developing good habits is the best (and really the only) way to create a life and a business that succeeds. You can’t hustle your way into success and you can’t fake your way into success. The only true path is to invest in yourself and create habits that lead you where you need to go.
Habit 1: Begin with the destination in mind. Working backwards is a habit that will always lead you where you want to go. As an entrepreneur, you need to know why you’re building your business before you can figure out how. Do you want to build your business to support certain lifestyle? To build up in order to sell? To scale and franchise? Knowing where you want to end up will help you decide where to start.
Habit 2: Write your recipe for success. Now that you know what the end point is, you can start creating the way to get there. If you want to build a business to support a lifestyle, for example, you may want to create one where you only see clients one day a week and can take three or four-day weekends. If you’re building it to eventually franchise, you want to create easily replicable practices so others can quickly learn how to run it.
Habit 3: Understand what you need help with. When you’re building your own business, it’s important to concentrate on the duties you’re great at and either outsource or develop partnerships with those who can handle the rest. Don’t know what you’re great at? Think about what comes easy to you and what gives you energy. Consider journaling for a few weeks and pay attention to when you feel like you reach a state of “flow”. There’s no reason to focus on areas of weakness as it will take away from what you excel at and lead to frustration.
Habit 4: Work with someone who will kick your ass. No man is an island, even when you’re building a solopreneur business. Keeping yourself on track, checking yourself when you go off the path, and understanding where you can improve are big tasks and not ones you can handle all on your own. One of the best ways to increase your chances of success is to develop the habit of regularly meeting with a coach who will continually kick your ass so you can be a better business owner and person. The more you work on your habits, the easier they will come to you. Before you know it, you won’t have to exert any effort at all and you will find that your business practically grows itself. Ready to take the next step to build your business? Reach out to me to talk more about working together. I’d love to be the one to kick your ass and develop the habits you need to succeed.
