7 Habits of Highly Effective and Successful Entrepreneurs

Some entrepreneurs invent only excuses, while other entrepreneurs are highly effective and successful.

Success and failure don’t happen by chance.

Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs share common habits.

Here are seven habits of highly effective and successful entrepreneurs (plus a bonus 8th habit):

1. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs measure progress.

It’s very difficult to succeed unless you are able to measure your progress.

This is especially important in the beginning when you’re just starting your new business.

But, measuring progress never stops being important.

It’s easy to measure success if you have billions in your bank account, but for most entrepreneurs, overnight success takes 10 years.

How can you succeed if you don’t recognize what is working and what isn’t?

Set up your accounting and bookkeeping systems and then set targets for marketing, sales, and profitability, for customer service and other areas of your business, and understand which initiatives bring you closer to those targets, and which initiatives take you further away.

If you delegate authority and responsibility to others, measure performance to make sure that the work is done in a timely and effective way.

Everyone expected to carry out a task must understand the goals, how their performance will be measured, and when you expect them to deliver results.

2. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs take calculated risks/are willing to fail.

Nearly all successful entrepreneurs failed before achieving success. Some failed many times.

Successful entrepreneurs and successful people, in general, have in common an ability to see beyond ideas that don’t work out, businesses that fail, and opportunities that don’t bear fruit.

But it’s important to understand that not every failure is a learning experience. In fact, failure is often overrated.

3. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs never stop learning.

Effective and successful entrepreneurs never believe they have enough success, or that they know as much as they should ever know.

Richard Branson, for example, achieved great success with Virgin Records, but then went on to launch Virgin Atlantic and many other successful companies. Successful entrepreneurs learn from their failures and successes, adapt to changing circumstances, evaluate new obstacles, and evolve their ideas. Successful entrepreneurs learn both from their own failures, and from others.

To be truly great and successful, you have to continue to stay dissatisfied and hungry.  Apple’s iconic Stay Hungry, stay foolish campaign smartly reminds us why this is important.

4. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs delegate wisely.

Effective and successful entrepreneurs like to work smart. While some see 20 hour days as the entry fee to success, this is neither necessary nor, for most people, effective. The challenge with delegation is that you must learn to delegate to the right people AND to do it the right way.

Many successful people, when starting a business, do various jobs themselves. This is normal – don’t delegate until you’ve done it.

But as the business grows, the job becomes too large for one person so you must hire someone to take over some of your duties. Successful entrepreneurs know how to hand over both authority and responsibility to the other person.

People who are ineffective try to retain authority, even when handing over responsibility, and this often results in mediocrity.

When you delegate, be certain the other person knows what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and to what standard.

This is especially important when managing remote employees. Then make sure that the person has the time, resources, and support to get the job done right.

5. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs acquire and manage talent.

The difference between a successful company and one that fails is rarely the leader. The best leader, without a great team, can’t accomplish very much.

A strong leader with a great team can change the world.

Successful and effective entrepreneurs know this – and spend a good deal of their time building great teams.

It took us some time to understand that it’s more important to hire the right candidate, instead of hiring the best candidate. The best candidate from a pool of 300 applicants isn’t necessarily the right candidate, and the wrong hire, particularly in a small startup, can do much damage.

We offer many tips, including interview tips, in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Employees.

6. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs know when to say “no”.

Steve Jobs wisely said that “innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most critical features.”

In fact, “no” may be the most powerful word. It lets you focus, protect your priorities, and reduces the chance that you will fail. Saying “NO” to customers can save your company.

7. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs have a laser focus.

Effective and successful entrepreneurs are geniuses when it comes to identifying market needs and focusing their energies on solving real-world problems. They spend little to no time obsessing about the location of their business or other factors that often are irrelevant, and the vast majority of their time obsessing about building great things.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, attributes Amazon’s to a laser focus on customers:

If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful.

I promised to highlight seven habits of highly effective and successful entrepreneurs, but there’s one more habit I want to mention.

8. Highly effective and successful entrepreneurs listen more than talk.

The most effective and successful entrepreneurs first seek to understand, before they push to be understood. This is important. You can improve your team’s performance only if you listen and understand their challenges.

This is an important distinction. Successful entrepreneurs listen to understand, not necessarily to respond immediately to what was said.

Listening is not easy for most people.  Most people prefer to talk and rarely take the time to listen. Most people ask few questions and spend their time giving answers.

Effective and successful entrepreneurs listen and ask many questions.