“Anyone who has ever struggled
with poverty knows how devilishly expensive it is to be poor.” – James
Baldwin
1.
Prepare your mind to become a success
To become a success fast, you must
see yourself as a success already. You must believe it is achievable.
Ultimately, you must prepare your mind to face the challenges associated with
your dream of becoming a success. You must also be prepared for disappointments
and setbacks along the way.
Preparing your mind also entails
abandoning the employee mindset of working for a paycheck. It’s all about
transiting or changing your mode of thinking; it’s all about thinking like an
entrepreneur. In the process of preparing your mind to become a success, you
must also develop the necessary entrepreneurial skills needed.
“To be successful, you must act
big, think big and talk big.” – Aristotle Onassis
One of such skills is that you
must develop a tough skin towards rejection and criticism. You must not
give up on your dream just because somebody said it’s impossible.
2.
Set a goal to become a success in 1 a year
The next step is to set a goal to
become a success within a time frame of one year. After setting the one
year goal, break it down into monthly, weekly and objectives. The goal
and objectives must be written down. Writing it down will help you must make
sure each new day is fully utilized to the realization of your goal.
3.
Look into yourself and list out your strengths
One
of the easiest and fastest ways to make money and become a success is to
utilize your potential. Every human being is blessed with a gift or has a
unique talent that needs to be discovered and harnessed. Even if you think you
are not gifted, there’s definitely something that drives you crazy; something
you are never tired of doing. Something you are very passionate about,
something you can do and do excellently well.
It
could be an acquired skill, an in-born talent, your hobby or just anything that
thrills you; even if it’s the world’s craziest idea, it’s your strength. Debbi
Fields took her passion for baking cookies and made a lot of money out of it
with her company; Mrs. Field’s Cookies.
Bill Gates discovered at an early
age that he loves tangling with computer programs and this passion evolved into
Microsoft. Oprah Winfrey utilized her gift for speaking and became the richest
black woman in the world; while Rachael Ray took her passion for cooking and
became a famous millionaire.
No matter what your strengths are,
you can make something out of it. All you need to do at this stage is list them
out in written form. Now if you feel you don’t have any talent or skill to leverage
upon, which I doubt; then you have to ask yourself the following questions:
- What do I have around me that I can leverage upon to
become successful?
- What drives me crazy?
- What do I know that others don’t?
4.
Analyze your strengths or idea and figure out if it interests others
After listing out your strengths,
you need to go to a quiet place and reflect on your strengths. Analyze each of
them and tick the ones you are very strong at. After analyzing each one of
them, you will need to carry out a preliminary research to know which of your
strengths or ideas has potential for success in the market place.
This research might require you ask
questions, read journals, magazines and books and even spend time on the
internet. Any of the research vehicle you choose, just make sure it yields the
desired result.
5.
Draw a plan on how you intend to profit from your strength or idea
If you can get to this stage, then
you are half way down the road to becoming a millionaire. This is where you sit
down to draw a plan of how you intend to leverage your strength or idea to make
money. This is where you to convert the results of your feasibility study into
a business plan. Your plan is going to contain tactics and strategies that will
help you surmount business challenges and achieve your goals faster.
6.
Make sure you are legally protected
Many budding entrepreneurs strive to
pass through step one to five, only to bypass step six and proceed to seven.
This single business mistake has resulted in the death or painful loss of
brilliant ideas and opportunities. I have also seen smart entrepreneurs being
launched into a world of tremendous wealth simply because they protected their
ideas.
Never test run your idea or launch
it without first protecting it using patents, trademarks, copyrights,
non-disclosure agreement or conformity forms. If you are leveraging someone
else idea or product, be sure to obtain a license, distributive rights or
exclusive right from the owner. Legally protecting your idea will cost you
money in the short run but it will be highly beneficial to you in the long run.
7.
Test run your idea and note down the result
After protecting your idea, you can
now test run it to see its workability and identify flaws. Test running your
idea might require you to; give out free samples of your product, grant access
to experts to scrutinize your idea or join a focus group. The end point of your
test running should be to gather feedback and improve or proceed with the idea.
If the product is not yours, you will still need to test the market with it.
Nobody wants to be stuck with a dying product.
8.
Assemble a team to help you expand your idea
If you are smart and open minded,
you will assemble a team during the test running of your idea because few will
see potential in your idea and will want to be part of it. If this happens,
then you need to be selective of who you bring on board as team member. But if
not, then you will need to find your own team. Whichever way it works, just make
sure your selected team members sign an agreement highlighting their roles and
stakes to avoid future dispute.
9.
Form strategic alliance with stronger external teams
After kicking off with your idea
alongside your team, you will surely meet some business challenges and some
progress. You may decide to maintain status quo and work strictly with your
team but if you need accelerated growth and speedy achievement of your goal,
then you need to seek out external assistance.
You need to form strategic alliance with
stronger external teams; teams bigger than yours. This will reduce your
overhead and help you grow faster while still running on a lean budget.
10.
Stick with the process
Finally, we are at it. What else do
I have to say, what advice do I have to give at this point? If you have
steadfastly gotten to step nine, I say congratulations but I’m still sorry to
say that all your effort will be null and void if you ignore step ten; the most
important step of all.
In the game of entrepreneurship and
life in general, many start the race with enthusiasm but along the way, most
lose their enthusiasm and others their focus. Only about ten percent will make
it to the end of the race. Are you going to be among this ten percent? Only you
can decide that.
“Anything the mind can conceive
and believe; it can achieve.”
