4 Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs to Build a Successful Business
Hard truth: We rise only to the level of our weakest habits.
When I opened my marketing consulting business in 2015 I craved discernment and good decision-making ability. I had an MBA under my belt and I had experience in the corporate world, but I felt overwhelmed that there was still a lot I didn’t know about running a business. I set out to figure out what sets the successful apart from the rest:
What makes them good decision makers?
What makes them good leaders?
What makes them effective at their work?
What makes their businesses profitable?
The best habits for entrepreneurs
These are questions so often asked by new entrepreneurs and a big part of why I am launched the Founding Females Community - to help female business owners seeking to become more effective in their businesses. But for now, let's focus on these 4 Habits...
For each of the four habits, I’ll share with you why the habit is so powerful along with actionable takeaways so you can walk away from this post and apply what you learned here immediately to your business or life.
Habit #1: Embrace the power of small decisions.
People wait around for winning lotto ticket-types of opportunities and they fail to realize that the small decisions you make daily compound to make a much more probable impact.
The “small opportunities” I’m talking about are the micro-moments that have made up your unique autopilot. Most of your understanding about the world has been shaped through shortcuts whose purpose is to expend the least amount of energy; not necessarily achieve the most effective results. Think about that for a second
But guess what, you have the power to fine tune your thought processes every moment of every day.
What does this have to do with running a business?
Your repetitive thoughts form your neurological wiring and if you’re not finding the results you’re looking for in your work, start with your repetitive thoughts...
These repetitive thoughts determine how you connect with other people. Do you believe your team will create incredible results or are you waiting for them to mess up? Your outlook on life determines the results you get.
Repetitive thoughts determine how you manage your money. Do you spend everything that comes in for personal gain, or do you wisely invest it back into your business?
Repetitive thoughts determine the intention behind running your business. Do your habits and behaviors reflect working for a paycheck or building assets?
Successful people are successful because they have built successful thought processes and habits. Not because they got lucky. And because this is true for them, it also works for you and me.
Change your thoughts to change your world. The seemingly meaningless decisions are actually your keys to success.
How to use habit formation in your business
Here are are two actionable takeaways you can apply with this information for better results:
Each morning, deliberately play forward how you want your day to look. Consider how you want to think, feel, and behave. Only when you challenge the status quo - your unique autopilot that has gotten you to this point - will your brain veer from auto pilot and toward your intended outcomes.
Assess how you spend your day. Recognize that you vote with your time. You tell the world what matters to you by what you devote your time to. Are you voting for success, or are you voting for average? I can tell you, if you’re not pushing yourself outside your comfort zone by challenging what you’re comfortable with, you’re probably voting for average.
Habit #2: Learn to deliver the right message at the right time
In marketing, we have what’s called The Buying Cycle (also referenced as “The Sales Cycle” and “The Buyer Journey”), which describes the pathway people take to make a purchase.
The four simple stages of the Buying Cycle are
Awareness
Consideration
Purchase
Aftersale
Companies that are effective at turning leads into paying customers understand that they must deliver a slightly different message depending on where the lead is in The Buying Cycle.
See, “Buy my stuff! Buy my stuff! Buy my stuff!” is most effective only when people have traveled through the awareness and consideration phases of the Buying Cycle.
The awareness and consideration phases, that’s where the magic happens. That’s where we create relationships, connection, and understanding that leads to customers knowing, liking, and trusting - factors that are integral for making a buying decision.
Because leads have then had the opportunity to evaluate your company as a viable solution to their needs but without that know, like, and trust factor, your salesy message only sounds like static on the radio.
The more we know about how customers make buying decisions, the more we can craft a message and position our product or service in a way that aligns with how a customer conceptualizes their own needs, pains, wants, and challenges.
The concept is explained in detail in the launch chapter of Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, which is Business 101 for females looking to start and grow a business.
How to use The Buying Cycle in your business
Here are two actionable takeaways you can apply in your business with this information:
Clearly identify your target market and figure out their pains, wants, needs, and challenges so that you can develop a message that deeply resonates with them depending on where they are in the buying cycle.
Sell the problem you solve, not the product or service. As the saying goes, nobody needs a drill. They buy a drill because they need a hole in the wall. Figure out your business’s equivalent to “the whole in the wall.”
Habit #3: Invest Time and Energy Into Relationships
Success in business is about so much more than financial statements, ROI, and, year over year growth. Your effectiveness very much hinges on your ability to develop community inside and outside your organization. Genuine relationship building is one of the reasons why our Founding Females Mastermind Community sees such amazing results.
I’m a big advocate for processes because I’ve seen over and over how leaning up processes is an integral key in scaling profitability.
However, automating the people side of business can be detrimental to morale.
Your business is made up of humans who crave positive experiences with other human the same way they crave food and water. If you’re a solopreneur, think in terms of the community surrounding your brand.
Fellow introverts, we’re the biggest offenders here. We’re the door shutters. We’re the “I’ll ride by myself and see you there” kind of people.
If you want to be successful in your role, you don’t have the luxury of deciding whether or not you want to become a people person. Want to get serious about nurturing your client relationships?
Personally in my business, when I began leaning hard into community is when my book of business filled out 6 months. It’s when clients said, I don’t care what the cost is, I want to work with you because I developed a personal connection that cannot be developed with written text alone.
Leaning into community will make a massive impact on your business. When you commit to becoming better at relationships, you become better at business.
How to use relationship building in your business
Here are two actionable takeaways you can apply to your business with this information:
Look for opportunities to spend time with others where you would normally spend time by yourself. Doing business alone? Join the Founding Females Mastermind Community. Or, instead of meeting on location, arrange to ride in the car together to your destination. Or, if you normally eat lunch by yourself, aim to take one day per week and invite someone new to eat lunch with you. There’s power in eye contact and togetherness because it builds familiarity.
Why not deem the last hour of the week as “Happy Hour”? Bring some simple hors d’oeuvres and go around the circle naming wins from that week with your team.
Habit #4: Embrace Change
As a young girl, a close family friend of ours, Myron, shared with me, “The only thing that ever stays the same is change.” and he was the first person that keyed me in to the impact of change.
We’re living in an “age of accelerations” where technological advances exponentially impact how we interact, do business, build relationships, and ultimately, exist. Listen to this. Scientists have proved that change that used to take an entire century now only takes a decade. Advances in technology are only accelerating that rate of change.
There’s no way we could possibly leverage this caliber of change except to embrace it and make it part of our best practices.
What does “embracing change” mean for you and me? It means that we must develop forward-thinking decision making ability, not just building our businesses for what is, but what could be or will be.
How to embrace change in your business
Here are four ways to apply this habit in your business for ultimate impact:
Look at the operations in your business. If you’re in a business you didn’t start, think about the tasks that were passed on to you from your predecessor. The ones you do because they’ve always been done that way. Finding outdated inefficiencies is a powerful way to impact your bottom line. If you did in fact start your business, identify tasks you perform manually because that was the most logical option in the beginning and look for ways to automate the processes. You’re going to find that automating processes frees up your time to spend on value-added and revenue-producing tasks.
Embrace change by getting comfortable with feeling like you don’t know it all: Find a podcast you can pour into. Find a blogger that can teach you how to be better at business. Watch YouTube videos to learn a new skill. Listen to audio books from Audible or your local library.
Adopt a fail fast and fail forward mentality. Try it, dive into the metrics, but cut your losses and move on if the numbers aren’t backing your hypothesis.
Make it a habit of surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you. Create a culture in your business where you reward employees who come to you with new ideas and then clear their path to create an ecosystem where they can run with their idea under big picture objectives.
Take change into your control by continually sharpening how you think about problem solving.
The best habits for entrepreneurs
You are in control of your success. Lean into the uncomfortable with the following four habits:
Recognize that the small, seemingly meaningless decisions are actually your keys to success.
Learn to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time
Invest precious time and energy into relationships.
Embrace change.
Want it in writing? Download the 4 Smart Habits for Successful Business pdf.
Let’s wrap this up with one of my favorite small business reminders.
“Small business isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for the brave, the patient, and the persistent. It’s for the overcomer.”
P.S. Here are some of my top favorite female small business resources:
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business - a guided handbook including everything you need to know from business idea to launch to profiting and scaling your business.
Dream, Build, Grow Free Resource Suite - free business templates for your business plan, marketing plan, ideal client persona, financial statements, and more!
Free PDF Download: 25 Ways to Market Your Business (Aside from Social Media)
Founding Females Community - an online female mastermind space for new entrepreneurs to connect
Meet Francie Hinrichsen
Francie Hinrichsen the founder of Founding Females®. She is a business sage empowering female entrepreneurs to breathe life into the business dreams God called them to.
After feeling like a misfit in the corporate world, Francie discovered a life she loved waking up to through business ownership.
Francie is the author of Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, a guided journal helping hundreds of women start and grow their businesses.
She’s a passionate entrepreneurship hype girl, female leader, public speaker, and community enthusiast.
Her MBA and 10 years in a corporate career and in business ownership positioned her to teach women forward-thinking strategies for starting and growing successful businesses.
As a community leader, Francie realized other women could thrive with the right guidance and support. She created the Founding Females® Mastermind Community that provides a safe space for women to build better businesses.
She believes that anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship.
