The factor that separates those who succeed in business from the rest is not strategy or ideas – it’s the right psychology or mindset.
Here are some of the keys to a winning psychology:
1. Purpose
This one is so important that I talked about having a clear sense of purpose in more detail in a separate post.
But having the right aim is only the first step in the process. The real challenge is staying focused on that goal when things are moving fast.
It’s often too easy to get distracted from your original goal because something comes along that seems more attractive. That’s when you need to maintain your focus.
It’s a good idea to think of the word focus as standing for Follow One Course Until Successful.
If you keep switching track, you’ll never reach any successful conclusions. So decide what you want and go for it.
Sometimes that means we need to develop the power of persistence. And that’s not always easy if you are an independent professional or solo entrepreneur.
So it’s important to build your own support system – maybe a few friends or fellow professionals – and develop a way to maintain your enthusiasm in all circumstances.
2. Positive Thinking
Many people waste a lot of time worrying about what might go wrong.
If they put the same energy into picturing success, they would get much better results.
In his book Psycho-cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz talks about sports people running successful outcomes through their mind many times before the event. You can do the same in any area of life.
Maltz also points out the importance of self-image. Successful people believe in themselves.
Too many people base their confidence on what they believe others think – not on reality.
3. Proactivity
One of the main characteristics of successful people is a willingness to take action.
The biggest blocks on success are the twin evils of procrastination – putting off doing something you should do now – and perfectionism – just needing ‘a few more changes’ to get it right.
The only sure way to success with anything is to get out there and try it. Then make the changes you need based on feedback.
Whatever you’re doing it’s a good idea to identify a step you can take within the next 24 hours to start making it happen.
If you decide to wait, you’ll find that someone else is taking action. They won’t be any better than you but they’ll be one step ahead of you when it comes to making money and establishing a reputation.
4. Pride and Confidence
Many people fail to achieve the levels of success they should because they lack confidence in their own expertise.
The key to success is being able to see yourself as an expert that offers solutions that other people will value.
In his book “Winning through Intimidation”, Robert Ringer talks about the “Leap Frog Theory”. This means that you have to be willing to tell people you’ve got specific knowledge and skills. When you do this, you can easily “leap over” the people in the middle who also have this expertise but are hesitant to talk about it.
Too many people are waiting for that “one more thing” they think they need to know before they can claim to be an expert.
The trouble is most business owners are so close to what they do that they don’t realize how much they already know.
You need to appreciate the value you’re delivering to your clients. You’ll probably find that they rate your expertise more highly than you do yourself.
5. Personal Development
Successful people don’t try to be good at everything. But they do seek to master a few important skills that give them an advantage.
You need to decide what specific skills you want to master and then stay focused on them so that you become a recognized expert in them. You should always seek to improve in these areas.
But don’t try to become a master or everything. It won’t work. You need to find other people who can give you the benefit of their expertise in other areas.
6. Productivity
When you run your own business, your most important resource is your time.
So the degree to which you achieve the best use of your time will determine your success.
The three keys to making the best use of your time are:
- Knowing how much your time is worth
- Making best use of the limited time you have available
- Only doing things that earn the value of your time
Knowing how much your time is worth
The first step in getting control over your time is to know how much it’s worth. The most obvious way to value your time is just to take your annual earnings figure and divide it by the number of hours you work in a year.
Assuming you want to earn more and work less, another way is to choose the level of income you aim to achieve and divide it by the number of hours you want to work.
If you begin to think of your time as worth your hourly rate, don’t be surprised if you start to earn it.
Making best use of the limited time you have available
Your day can be split into productive and unproductive time:
- Productive time is time spent with clients or creating products and generates income
- Unproductive time is checking emails, answering the phone, learning new things, surfing the web or talking to friends and makes you no money.
If you recalculate your hourly rate based on your number of productive hours each day, it will be much higher.
Only doing things that earn the value of your time
Once you know how much your time is worth, you can easily ask yourself if what you are doing is worth your hourly rate. If not, it’s easy to find someone else to do it via outsourcing.
Outsourcing can make your day a thousand times easier and more profitable. Here are some of the advantages:
It allows you to focus on your priority tasks
You cut the learning curve by employing an expert
They can probably do the job faster than you
You can outsource just about anything you can think of, including:
- Website design and programming
- Graphic design
- Copywriting
- Search engine optimization
- Press release writing and distribution
You can also employ a “virtual assistant” to handle many tasks.
The best way to find vendors is to get recommendations from other people. If you can’t get any, try suppliers out with small tasks before giving them anything big or important.
As an example of what’s possible, here are some websites where you can get access to some of the people you need. Of course, there are more like this and you should satisfy yourself that any suppliers you use are suited to your needs.
www.RentaCoder.com – useful for programmers and designers – e.g. for website design or software creation
www.Elance.com – good for writers and other specialties
www.GetaFreelancer.com – another general site with access to a wide range of freelancers
www.Scriptlance.com – gives you access to programmers for software needs
So if you want to achieve the success you crave, it’s time to give your time its true value and use it effectively.
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