CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

Research has shown that about 40% of all businesses fold-up within the first year of starting. A staggering 80% of businesses fail within the first 5 years and of the remaining 20% that make it past the 5 year mark, over 80% of that 20% fail by the tenth year. In other words less than 10% of businesses that start up ever succeeds beyond 10 years.

Many people look at these statistics and say to themselves that with only a 10% chance of success, they are better off staying in their job for the rest of their life. It would be a lot safer. After all, they can never be smart enough or good enough to be in that small minority of 10%.

Firstly, I want to say that being among 10% of successful entrepreneurs is not only possible, it is very much achievable when you know how! You can be in the successful minority if you follow the critical SUCCESS FACTORS.

The reason most people fail in business is not because they lack a superior IQ. It is not because they lack luck or a special talent. The reason for all these failures is simply because they are making the same mistakes over and over again.

After starting so many businesses and consulting many business friends, I can tell you that success in business has nothing to do with your age, nothing to do with your level of education, little to do with how much capital you have and very little to do with luck.

It has to do with two main critical success factors that anybody can learn.

The critical success factors are entrepreneurial Mind Set and Entrepreneurial Skill Set.



ENTREPRENEURIAL MIND SET:

The first thing that sets successful entrepreneurs apart is their way of thinking (MINDSET). I have found that time and again, successful business owners think very differently from the rest of the crowd. When employees are given work to do, they see it as a problem. When an entrepreneur is given more work to do, he sees it as an opportunity to learn and grow from it. When a person with the employee mindset is sent for training, they often see it as a waste of time. The successful entrepreneur sees it as a valuable investment. When more people look at something challenging, they think of all the reasons why it cannot be done and avoid it.

Our mind set is the most important key to our success as a business owner. In fact, I would say that your ability to succeed in business is 70% psychology and 30% strategy. Your mindset affects your thoughts, which affects your behavior & actions and these ultimately affect the results you produce.

HERE ARE 3 ESSENTIAL MINDSETS OF A MILLIONAIRE ENTREPRENEUR:

MINDSET 1. Taking 100% responsibility & ownership.
MINDSET 2. Failure leads to success.
MINDSET 3. Constant and never ending INNOVATION.

FAILURE LEADS TO SUCCESS

FAILURE LEADS TO SUCCESS

Once you have the first mindset of taking 100% responsibility and ownership, the second mindset you must possess, is the attitude to manage failure, setbacks and massive frustrations. What stops most people from starting a new business, innovating a new product or entering a new market is the fear of failure. This set back is what kills most entrepreneurs. In the world of business, lessons do not come in text books (like in school). But they come in the form of failures. By failing is something, we know that what doesn’t work. And yet, experiencing failure, frustration and set back is all part and parcel of being an entrepreneur. In the process of building any successful business, you will go through times of failure, rejection and intense frustration. Things rarely go according to plan or work out the way you would expect them to.

All successful entrepreneurs have the ability to stay calm, optimistic and confident. I believe that before we can succeed in anything, we have to first learn to fail, make mistakes and deal with setbacks.

Success never takes a straight line. If you study the paths off all successful entrepreneurs, you would see that all of us had to go through many set backs before ultimately achieving our dreams.


* While building DISNEY, WALTDISNEY went through near bankruptcy 12 times in the country’s history before establishing it as the largest and most successful entertainment company in history.

* DONALD TRUMP also went through near bankruptcy twice in his career as a real, estate builder before achieving world wide fame.

* LIM TOW YONG, founder of EMPORIUM was declared a bankruptcy at the age of 72 with debts in millions. He later started a new company and made back all fortune at the ripe old age of 82.

* When SIM WONG HOO started CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES, his first product, the CUBIC 99 was a huge failure. It was after multiple product failure that his company went to the billion dollar league.


* Nine years after STEVE JOBS started and successfully built APPLE COMPUTERS, he was fired from his own company by the very CEO he appointed. To make things worse, the following company he started (next computers) also went down in flames.

It is only after a string of major set backs that STEVE JOBS built PIXAR (the most successful animation studio in the world) and brought APPLE back
From the verge of bankruptcy onto become one of the most successful technology companies in the world.

After all, success comes from exercising good judgment. Good judgment comes from experience and experience often comes from making bad judgment and paying the price.

Of course there are always things we can do to minimize these failures. The trick is to learn from other people’s experiences and other people’s mistakes. This is why it is so important to read biographies of successful business owners in order to gain the insights they have gotten after years of trial and error. However, no matter what lessons you learn from books and mentors, the greatest lesson you will learn will come from the “UNIVERSITY OF LIFE” THERE ARE NO FAILURES. THERE ARE ONLY LEARNING EXPERIENCES.