10 Tools Every Entrepreneur Should Know About

If you have the entrepreneurship bug, you have to know some fundamentals that will make you succeed in your business. You need to be mentally prepared and know that overnight success is rare and there are no quick fixes.

Whether you are starting entrepreneurship to survive or want to fulfill a dream, you must know these things below to succeed.

1. Solving Market Needs
You can come up with wonderful ideas all day long but unless they satisfy a large enough need, one that can support a business, they don’t do anyone any good.

2. Bringing Ideas to Reality
More than motivation, focus, hope, financing, marketing skills or a brilliant idea, the most important thing is the will to bring the idea into existence. Nothing will happen unless you truly want to make something happen.

3. You’re Your Greatest Investment
When rough times come around and there’s no one to save you, it is your skill that will. Mastering your skill requires utter devotion and that’s the only way to improve your craft and devotion gives you confidence. If you are to lose everything, you’ll still have your skill and no one can take away that.

4. Failure is common
The essence of entrepreneurship is failing more times and still getting up. Accepting disappointments and suffering is part of entrepreneurial growth and always know that the more things we try, the more likely we are to fail.

5. Give up control
You can try to micromanage but your business won’t be able to move very quickly if everything has to flow through you. It will be hard to get the best ideas out of your people. Once they understand the company is set up so everything revolves around you, people are not going to take the time to develop their best ideas.

6. Avoid people who hold you back
The people you surround yourself with make the difference between failure and success. Avoid people who will leave you feeling exhausted and drained, people who take you backwards, waste your time and drain your energy.

7. Say no more than you say yes
It takes a lot of courage to say no than to say yes. But making tough calls is essential in order to protect you from making poor decisions. It helps you stay focused and prevent unnecessary complexity and wrong turns.

8. Believe in chance encounters
There are many encounters, some which are planned and some happen by accident. Accept them with open arms; you never know what may become or what you might learn from them.

9. Stay mindful to survive
You should always have all your attention to the present experience on a moment to moment basis. Being mindful allows us to focus and execute one task at a time and conserve all your inner energy.

10. Be kind to yourself
Entrepreneurs are often very hard on themselves. For a lot of people it is easier to show compassionate towards other and even easier to blame ourselves and put oneself down when things go wrong. Let go, have self compassion and self encouragement.