7 habits successful entrepreneurs have

If you wish to become an entrepreneur, you should know that having a success-oriented mind is as important as success itself. However, this doesn’t mean you should start a business and cross your arms while waiting for things to happen!

It may seem cliché, however, great entrepreneurs didn’t get to where they are today without changing their habits and making sacrifices in favor of their goals. And guess what: You will also need to do this if you want to stand out in the market.

Find out about 7 habits you can adopt, from now on, to be successful in your entrepreneur journey.

1. Small decisions can distract you from a bigger objective

Like everything in life, working on your own has advantages and disadvantages. If, on the one hand, you have more autonomy, on the other, the consequences of your decisions weigh more.

To ensure you’ll have time to assess all possible scenarios and make the right choices for your business, it is fundamental to avoid distractions. When you reduce the number of small tasks you perform a day, you’ll have more time to focus on more strategic matters.

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, is an adept of this theory. Every day, he wears the same clothes to go to work (a gray shirt and black sweats), thus saving from 5 to 10 minutes that he would spend choosing what to wear.

Of course, you don’t need to have a wardrobe with the 30 exact same shirts. You just need to make small adjustments to your routine, such as leaving meals prepared for the next day. By doing so, you already save important minutes that can be used in improving your processes.

2. Actions are more important than technique

Recently, João Pedro, CEO at Hotmart, said that actions are more important than technique. And, this is definitely the best advice for people who are just starting out! After all, it doesn’t matter having a lot of knowledge about a topic if you never put it into practice.

If you don’t test your idea, it will be impossible to know how you can optimize your product/service to offer a good purchase experience to your audience.

I know a lot of people who made it with lots of action but I’ve never met a single person who knew everything and got somewhere without doing anything.

João Pedro Resende, CEO at Hotmart.

3. When in doubt, make the customer your priority

In an ideal world, your business timeline would go: have an idea > create a product > make sales > make money with the business. However, we know that the entrepreneur’s journey is not linear. And, in the beginning, your business can have more losses than profit, especially if you don’t use the techniques you need.  

To turn negative revenue, many entrepreneurs start making budget cuts, change the strategy for pricing the product, fire people from the team or restructure processes.

There’s no magic formula in these cases. When in doubt, make the customer your priority: never make changes that can compromise the quality of the product or service you offer. These measures can work out in the beginning, but you get what you pay for.

4. Don’t take “no” for an answer

Every time we ask someone a favor, go on a job interview or ask someone out, there is a 50-50 chance that you’ll achieve your goal. This is because most daily situations have two possible answers: yes or no.

From the moment you start a business, this scenario changes a little and the “no” starts to gain space because you’re now dealing with the demands and desires of different partners. But this doesn’t mean you should give up on your ideas at the first sign of resistance. Quite the opposite! If you truly believe in what you’re suggesting, take the “no” as an opportunity to improve your presentation and be more assertive in your delivery.

5. To be productive, your day needs to be very organized

There are many different techniques to increase your productivity at work, however, the most popular one is definitely the Pomodoro technique.

This technique, which was created in the 1980’s, consists in dividing the day into 25-minute blocks, separated by small breaks in between them. This way, you ensure you’ll have total focus on your tasks, and still have free time to dedicate to other activities you enjoy.

Splitting your day into blocks is also useful to organize your schedule, learning the best time to schedule meetings, exercise or eat. As soon as you’ve finished reading this text, take advantage to read our post on apps that can help you optimize your routine!

6. Knowledge is never too much

Did you know that Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, reads about 50 books a year? This is almost one book a week!

Oprah Winfrey, the American host and magnate, is another one who is never without a book to read, and actively participates in book clubs with her friends, since the 1990s.

Both of them believe that reading is important to the work they perform and that every book has some knowledge that can be applied to their business. Reading often, especially texts related to your market, is important to increase your sales pitches and better understand the needs of your target audience.

7. Having a success-oriented mind is as important as success itself

I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the nonsuccessful ones is pure perseverance.

And we’re not the ones saying it, Steve Jobs did. The same one who founded Apple, a multimillionaire company, with his college friend in the 1970s.

Right now you must be thinking: “but I also need luck and money if I want to be a successful entrepreneur.” The truth is that, with the advance of the Internet, the dream to leave the conventional job market is closer than ever, especially when you are determined enough to get hands on and make it happen.

You don’t need to create a tech multinational to be successful. You just need to choose something you do well and share this knowledge with other people.

Here at Hotmart, for example, every day we listen to stories of people who were facing financial difficulties or spent little time with their family and decided to create a digital product and, nowadays, they make a living solely on that.

Of course, a decision this important can’t (and shouldn’t) be made overnight. After you identify your natural talents and skills, you’ll need to establish goals and come up with a detailed business plan, if you want to ensure a long lifespan for your business. But having a goal is the first and most important step to take.

Do you also want to create a digital business but don’t know how to get started? Understand how Hotmart works.

What about you? Did you acquire any habits after you decided to become an entrepreneur? Let us know in the comments section below!