Tips for success
There’s plenty of advice available on the internet, in the library, in the bookshop, from friends and colleagues. In fact, there’s probably too much advice to follow. You need to be selective and sort out what will work for you. Perhaps the ‘be good to yourself’ school of candles and flowers will suit you; or perhaps you need something a bit more substantial in terms of real advice for specific problems or strategies for coping with specific issues; or perhaps you feel comfortable with the ways and words of a guru or a well-known iconic figure or a role model closer to home, your mother, perhaps! You need to develop your own ‘toolkit’ of mechanisms for dealing with successes and failures, decision making and the myriad of situations you will encounter in your journey through life and the business world.
Be inspired by Covey's seven habits:
- Be proactive: You can make your own choices; take responsibility; don’t blame others for your situation
- Begin with the end in mind: you can shape your future by creating a mental image of the end result
- Put first things first: organise your most important priorities first; go with what’s important to you not what’s happening around you
- Think win-win: think positive, not negative; don’t think selfishly win-lose; or martyr lose-lose; think we not me
- Seek first to understand and then to be understood…listen to understand rather than reply builds good communication and relationships
- Synergise: Look for a third way: not my way, or your way, but another way that’s better than either
- Sharpen the saw: constantly renew yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually (Stephen R Covey (1989) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
And now consider his eighth:
Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs, empowering of all.
However, although there is something in his approach for getting the best out of your staff and involving them in your vision and the business, you may find that you need to be rather more established in your business and rather more experienced as a manager and a leader before you start empowering the cleaning staff to run the company! (The Eighth Habit from Effectiveness to Greatness, Stephen R Covey, Simon and Schuster, 2004).
There’s a whole range of tips you can accumulate from self-help books, management and leadership books, biographies of successful entrepreneurs, magazine and journal articles, government help for start-up businesses, and banks and other bodies that offer advice and publications to start-up businesses. The list is endless!
Let's consider a few more tips that might be helpful:
- Foster 100% honesty; dishonesty is costly
- Liquidate superfluous assets
- Terminate courses/relationships/friendships/contracts/routines that don’t make you happy
- Finish off unfinished business
- Use ‘expert’ advice carefully: take responsibility for your actions based on the available information