Mentoring yourself for entrepreneurial success

Published: 06 June 2014

When people look for mentors they often overlook the power of giving oneself good advice and following it. A mentor is valuable because he or she will encourage you to do your best and stay on course, but have you ever thought about mentoring yourself? This article offers practical tips to assist you in being your own success mentor, especially as an entrepreneur.

Surround yourself with outstanding people
Whenever you recruit, choose friends or decide where you want to go in life, make sure you learn from great people around you. If you cannot find them in person, find them in books, podcasts and on testimonies such as TED Talks. There are many great people with great ideas and you can become a better person by learning from them.

Look for good buys
When you are negotiating and selling, the power of waiting and being patient cannot be ignored. Never be in a hurry when you are buying anything. Instead, compare options, bargain, haggle, and shop around. Understanding and getting good value are great principles for succes.

Exploit the difference between investments and costs
Investments regularly contribute to profits going forward. Costs take profits away. If you look at your bank statement from last month, ask yourself what was an investment and what was a cost. Are there ways to turn your costs into investments or to get rid of the costs altogether? Sometimes it is as simple as saving enough so that the interest will cover the cost into the future.

Focus on improving your product
The best entrepreneurs constantly invest in improving their product. Products bring the profits so there is nothing better to invest in than improving your products. When you have the best product, people will buy it because it cannot be compared with another.

Keep overheads down
Overheads are costs that do not contribute to profit. Some management consultants would say that overhead costs in the business often walk on two legs. Every resource that is not involved in revenue generation messes up the Profit = Sales - Costs relationship, because it adds more costs. While a certain amount of overhead is necessary, nobody has ever been fired for reducing overheads. The opposite is also true: If costs are in relation to what is being provided for customers, it means that customers are paying for what they get. Therefore, make sure that costs and savings are passed on to your customers.

Ego and vanity are also overheads
Large businesses have failed due to expensive luxuries, executive compensation, huge head offices and too many staff not being involved in production. In effect, all of these contribute to ineffectiveness. If you are more concerned with looking good than getting business, you may end up failing at both. If you are more concerned with getting your customer the best product, you will end up looking good and getting business.

Cash in the bank
Entrepreneurs and mere mortals tend to use money that they have not received yet, to build on their future plans. Living within your means and building on the free cashflow that you have in the bank for expansion is one of the wisest lessons that you can learn. If you need more money to invest, cut your expenses and increase your revenues. Expansion and investment via the principle of free cashflow not only allows you to grow prudently, but also creates sustainability. Rushing things means that you will be using your future profits, and this invariably means that you will overextend.

Get the best out of your people
You can choose to buy good people, but put them into a poor structure. You need to both recruit the best people and set them up for success, building a strong team culture, team identity and collective knowledge. Recruitment needs to be a stringent process in order to set people up to succeed and understand the job. People need to take ownership of their results through understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It is critical that you use education and training to motivate, empower and upskill people. Never hire cheap resources and try to upskill them - it simply does not work.

Big picture leadership - small picture management
It is important to understand and lead by using the big picture. Everyone must understand where they are going and that they are able to get there. Your daily activities must be managed by using a small picture that looks at planning, leading, organising and controlling the outcomes of future actions so that it moves you towards the big picture. One person describes it as having a telescope to look at where you are going and a microscope to check that you are doing it right.

Be positive - success creates success and failure is not an option
Being negative destroys more businesses, ideas and people than any other single force on earth. Being positive about the direction you take and making a determined effort towards reaching the destination is rewarding. It also makes the challenges worthwhile and interesting.

If you gamble, you will not be happy. Entrepreneurs do not gamble. Instead, they wait for the right opportunity and then make the most of it. We often think that entrepreneurs gamble because we cannot see the end-result, which is in fact very clear for them.

Decisions must be informed
It is tempting to move into a situation and simply start making decisions. A wise entrepreneur first collects facts and validations, and understands the options and implications. Then, when they do make a decision, it stands firm, as it is informed. It is important to be decisive to get stuff done. Yet, it is also important to consult with others to make the best decisions. Small mistakes in the beginning can cost a lot of money later.

Think ahead
Ask yourself what happens after three, six, and nine months, and after one, two, and three years. If you update this forecast weekly, you will have a good view of what is on the horizon.

Plan B and Plan C
Great strategists and entrepreneurs always have a second and third option, as well as some alternatives to bring to a situation. Never get caught unprepared - especially not when risk is involved.

Provide what people want to buy and price it right

People want great products and the price follows. Listen to your customer when designing and pricing your product.

Concentrate and focus on your goals
If you have one goal, bring all your attention to that goal and you will succeed. This is human nature and entrepreneurs and great business people understand that a singular focus is always achieved.

Spread the word
Good service and a great product will always be talked about. Publicity and marketing is a way to fuel this message, but is not the way to create it. You can get a lot of good public relations from a product if it is successful. On the other hand, good public relations cannot make a poor product successful in the long run.

Conclusion
This article set out some practical advice on management, entrepreneurship and life in general. You can be your own mentor and coach. To make it work you simply have to go out there, look for the wisdom that works for you, and stick to your approach.
- Regenesys

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