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How To Build Your Business

Idea Validation
September 2021
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Almost everybody knows the obvious and essential activities required to build your business: Marketing, good HR, excellent SEO, superb service, etc.

But what about those nebulous personality traits the top entrepreneurs all seem to have? Can one discover or emulate these traits which give one the edge in building a successful business?

Reading books and articles written by top entrepreneurs, one discovers various repeating elements of what makes a great entrepreneur.

We’ve listed those traits out here.

Ingenuity

Whether you’re devising a marketing plan to get married at a baseball stadium, or working out how to grow your email list, ingenuity is the overriding factor that top entrepreneurs have going for them.

It was ingenuity that brought us such trailblazing services as Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook and others that we can scarcely live without these days.

But these services were utterly unheard of before someone came up with the bright idea to create them.

Ingenuity applies to everything in business, even day-to-day tasks.

The more you focus on cultivating this skill in yourself, the higher chances you will have of building your business successfully and rapidly.

Staying inspired

Business is hard work. And the constant necessity to keep up with tax filings and red tape can put a dampener on your dreams to become a successful entrepreneur.

But the rewards of building a successful business from scratch are almost immeasurable.

It’s important to stay inspired, and one way to do that is to continually read up on those who made it.

Even better, read up on those who made it despite seemingly insurmountable difficulties.

You’ll find that your best ideas come to you when you’re feeling good and lighthearted. Few things can get you to that state of mind like the whiff of success after reading about others who’ve already succeeded.

And good ideas are the very stuff of which successful businesses are made.

Being a “people person”

Entrepreneurship is rarely something for introverts.

You need to have a lot of experience with people of all backgrounds in order to gain a sixth sense of who you can trust and who you can’t.

Such a skill is imperative. It applies when forming relationships with clients, when finding new partners, and especially during the hiring process.

Going with your gut has even been found to be essential in key business decisions.

Resilience

It’s a familiar maxim that to know success, you must’ve tasted failure. It might even be said that failure is a stepping stone on the road to success.

If you really want to build your business, you have to be resilient, determined, and dogged in your efforts to make it.

That doesn’t mean you must never relax. It does mean that you should be ready for a tough road and that you should face that road with fortitude.

Trustworthiness

Your clients must trust you because you are worthy of their trust. This ensures stable growth over the years.

Facebook is now reviled as a company that repeatedly violated its users’ trust. Popular opinion on the company has plummeted over the years. Facebook grew to its mammoth size when people still believed they could trust it with their data.

Being trustworthy doesn’t mean you can’t make mistakes. It means you’re honest about those mistakes and do your best to address them. Confidence in your brand is something built over time, and the more confidence it has, the larger your business will become.

Maintaining a transparent blog where you openly discuss issues of trust can help build the necessary faith in your brand for it to keep growing stronger.

Cleverness

Cleverness

You don’t need to be intelligent, but you do need to be clever.

You need to be on the ball constantly. You need to look at your competition and try and fathom what their next move will be. Then you need to execute your move first.

When you first start your business, you’ll need to use resources in a “clever” way so that you can gain maximum return from the minimum expenditure.

Don’t be an old dog

Technology is growing. New ideas spring up every day. New services put old services out of business if those old services don’t adapt.

The newspaper industry refused to accept that people were accessing their news digitally, and thereby adapt to the trend. This eventually led to multiple newspaper chains declaring bankruptcy.

If things are changing, you need to find a way to change with them. You need to learn new tricks if you want to stay afloat in a world that changes so fast it’s hard to keep up.

Diligence

Nothing beats hard work. Successful people are renowned hard workers. If you have an aversion to hard work, it’s unlikely that your business will grow at all.

Even if a business strikes it lucky, only hard work will keep it going through the challenges it will undoubtedly face in the coming years.

None of the points on this list has any hopes of succeeding if they are not done with diligence.

Summary

There are plenty of books and articles delineating the obvious.

Of course, you need to market your product. Of course, you need to have a website and correct branding. Of course, you need a business plan.

But you could have all those things and still fail.

The only way to guarantee building your business stably and successfully is to:

  • Practice ingenuity
  • Stay inspired
  • Know people
  • Be resilient
  • Be trustworthy
  • Be clever
  • Change with the times, and adapt to new things
  • Work hard, be diligent

Add to that some common sense, and your business can’t help but eventually grow.

About author
Julia Richards
Julia Richards

Our head of content, Julia has spent the past 20 years assisting entrepreneurs with all aspects of business launch and growth strategies in various industries around the globe.

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Ingenuity Staying inspired Being a “people person” Resilience Trustworthiness Cleverness Don’t be an old dog Diligence Summary Almost everybody knows the obvious and essential activities required to build your business: Marketing, good HR, excellent SEO, superb service, etc. But what about those nebulous personality traits the top entrepreneurs all seem to have? Can one discover or emulate these traits which give one the edge in building a successful business? Reading books and articles written by top entrepreneurs, one discovers various repeating elements of what makes a great entrepreneur. We’ve listed those traits out here. Ingenuity Whether you’re devising a marketing plan to get married at a baseball stadium, or working out how to grow your email list, ingenuity is the overriding factor that top entrepreneurs have going for them. It was ingenuity that brought us such trailblazing services as Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook and others that we can scarcely live without these days. But these services were utterly unheard of before someone came up with the bright idea to create them. Ingenuity applies to everything in business, even day-to-day tasks. The more you focus on cultivating this skill in yourself, the higher chances you will have of building your business successfully and rapidly. Staying inspired Business is hard work. And the constant necessity to keep up with tax filings and red tape can put a dampener on your dreams to become a successful entrepreneur. But the rewards of building a successful business from scratch are almost immeasurable. It’s important to stay inspired, and one way to do that is to continually read up on those who made it. Even better, read up on those who made it despite seemingly insurmountable difficulties. You’ll find that your best ideas come to you when you’re feeling good and lighthearted. Few things can get you to that state of mind like the whiff of success after reading about others who’ve already succeeded. 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Trustworthiness Your clients must trust you because you are worthy of their trust. This ensures stable growth over the years. Facebook is now reviled as a company that repeatedly violated its users’ trust. Popular opinion on the company has plummeted over the years. Facebook grew to its mammoth size when people still believed they could trust it with their data. Being trustworthy doesn’t mean you can’t make mistakes. It means you’re honest about those mistakes and do your best to address them. Confidence in your brand is something built over time, and the more confidence it has, the larger your business will become. Maintaining a transparent blog where you openly discuss issues of trust can help build the necessary faith in your brand for it to keep growing stronger. Cleverness You don’t need to be intelligent, but you do need to be clever. You need to be on the ball constantly. You need to look at your competition and try and fathom what their next move will be. 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