4 Tips for Increasing the Odds of Your Entrepreneurial Success One Day at a Time

by Sheza Gary
July 20, 2017
There's no shortcut to business success – you'll have to put in the effort to do the grunt to work, put your shoulder to the wheel, and go the extra mile after you are already tired. Interestingly, business success is often a cumulative effect of the habits of the founders and the early team members of the company. Hence, startups must proactively develop a company culture that contains the right habits that will ultimately lead to entrepreneurial success. This article provides four tips that can help you build the momentum for entrepreneurial success with consistent daily efforts.
 
 
Being frugal isn't only for personal finances
 
Many entrepreneurs understand the importance of being frugal and most startup founders have a history of being frugal at the start. However, many entrepreneurs only think about frugality in terms of their personal finances and they don't pay much attention to frugality in business finances. It is very easy to throw money down the drain with this digital age's fixation on user numbers and market share while losing sight on the most important numbers – costs and profits. Knowing your costs will help you know how soon you'll run out of money so that you can start looking for financing in good time.
 
You can start being frugal by doing a quick mental exercise before you pay for any item or service – ask yourself " how can I get this at a cheaper price for the same(better) value? Asking this question will help you open up your mind to possibilities on how to reduce your costs.
 
Track only one business metric per day
 
Business metrics are good – they help you to track the current success and potential success of your business and they help you to identify fault lines. However, trying to track all the business metrics – DAU, Churn, Burn rate, Cost of acquisition, LTV, ROI – will most likely lead you into procrastination because there are just too many metrics to track.  More so, you'll end up being inconsistent in tracking your metrics and you won't have accurate information on the data you want to measure.
 
Try to know the core Increase metrics for your business and then, focus your energy on tracking only one metric per day. You'll be more consistent in your data collation and you'll find it much easier to do any necessary follow up work.
 
Master the art of delegation
 
Delegation is probably one of the hardest skills for entrepreneurs to learn especially in this age of launching a startup by bootstrapping. Running a "one-man show" or "two-man show" might be the smartest way to save money when you are just starting out – the problem however is that you develop a habit of doing those tasks and you'll start to think that nobody can do it as good as you can. However, when you don't delegate your duty, you'll end up overstretching yourself too thin and you'll ruin your health.
 
Reducing your workload by delegating will make you more money, give you more energy, and help you save time.
 
Know and understand the competition
 
You are not running a business in isolation and many other companies are fighting for the same dollars in the customers' pockets. Knowing and understanding your competitors will help you take proactive steps to stay ahead of them and ultimately get those customers' dollars. Knowing the trade secrets of your competition might be somewhat hard but you'll be surprised by the wealth of information carefully-crafted Google searches can yield about them. 
 
You should also pay special attention to their marketing and advertising styles in order to find ways to make your products/services look like the better offer. Interestingly, businesses tend to focus on the bigger competition alone, but you'll need to ensure that you are not blind to new startups in your industry and target market.
 

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