4 Characteristics Every Successful Business Owner Has in Common

Hey, guys. Matt Paulson here. In this video, I want to talk about the characteristics that every successful entrepreneur that I've ever met has in common. There are a lot of different reasons that companies fail. They might not have enough capital. They might not have achieved product market fit. They might just not be working hard enough to make their business become a reality. They might not have the right skill set for the business they want to build. It just really wouldn't be hard to name a hundred different reasons as why businesses don't succeed. But you probably don't want to learn how to build a failing business. You want to learn how to build a successful business. There are a handful of characteristics I've identified, four of them that just about every successful business owner that I have ever met have in common. Successful business owners are constantly searching for new opportunities. They'll take speculative coffee meetings. They'll call up potential customers and business partners just to see if there's an opportunity to work together. They are researching their competitors constantly. They actually respond to some cold emails. They go to trade shows. They go to industry events. They're just open to new ideas and new opportunities that will improve their business and kind of their prospects in life. And one of the main reasons that people that work very hard all of their lives, that don't succeed is that they aren't searching for new opportunities. I can work very hard as a dishwasher my entire life, but I won't get to where I want to go if I'm just going to work very hard as a dishwasher. I have to also be seeking my next opportunity to move up in the world. So maybe I'm a dishwasher and I learned there's an opportunity to become a server at a restaurant. Then I become a good server, and that opens up the opportunity to be an assistant manager, and that opens up the opportunity to become a manager. And then I can open up my own restaurant, and then I can open up my own chain of restaurants. You have to be looking constantly for that next step in the world of how you can get to that next level up of success. And successful business people, entrepreneurs, even just people in the business world that aren't entrepreneurs, they work hard in their current opportunity, as many people do. They're probably putting in 40 hours a week into their business on top of their day job or any other responsibilities they might have. But they're also looking for what's next as well. So successful people are always looking for new opportunities. The second kind of characteristic that I've identified is that successful business owners focus on sales, marketing and customer development. The idea that if you build it, they will come. If you build a better mousetrap, people will be knocking down your door to buy it. That's just not true. You don't need the best product in the world to build a successful business. If you needed the best product in the world to succeed, Walmart would be selling $500 billion a year worth of plastic stuff and cheap consumer goods. Nobody would argue that Walmart sells the best anything, but they have done a great job of building out a network of stores and marketing themselves as the leading low cost retailer. Realistically, you probably need to have a product or service that's average or just a little bit better than average. But then you need to do sales and marketing better than everyone else. If you are working on your business for 40 hours a week, sales and marketing probably should be about 20 hours of that 40 hours. You should spend time working to bring in new customers to do marketing campaigns, make sales calls, do whatever you need to do to get people in the door and considering your business as an organization to buy from. Marketing is not just another aspect of a business. It's not like accounting or human resources or legal. It's literally half the work of a business. And successful people realize this. Successful business owners know that having strong sales cures a lot of problems. And that's one of the reasons they make sales and marketing and customer development one of the highest focuses of their businesses. You can have a great product, you can have great legal documents, you can have great HR setup, you can have great accounting, but none of that matters unless you have the sales to back it up. Third, entrepreneurs are successful. They don't blame other people for their lack of success. And they don't expect anyone else to to make their business succeed. I can't count the number of times I've heard somebody say something like, we were just on the cusp of building this great business. But my partner didn't work out, they didn't do their part and we didn't get anywhere because of my partner. Or somebody would say, I had this great thing going, it was doing really well, but then my top customer pulled out. Now I'm back at square one. Successful entrepreneurs, they recognize that other people can be unreliable. Partners can be unreliable, vendors can be unreliable, customers can be unreliable. That's just the nature of business. You can't guarantee that other people are going to do what they say they're going to do. Successful entrepreneurs realize this and then they make contingency plans. They actively monitor their partners, their vendors, their clients, and their ability to deliver on their promises. So if a customer says they can't pay, you know, it's not a surprise to anyone because you already have been looking at your customer's business and you know that they're having problems. Successful entrepreneurs have backup plans. If any specific relationship in their business doesn't work out. They might have a plan if the partner wants to get out of the business and do something else. If they're a key customer, they may have a backup plan for this. And you know, if something doesn't work out, the successful business owner, they don't hold grudges, they don't blame other people because something didn't work out. They don't stay angry, they don't badm off the other person. They just adapt as best they can and they move forward. Because if you continually hold a grudge or you feel angry about somebody who you feel may have wronged you in business or had a relationship go sour, staying focused on that failure is going to prevent you from moving forward. Successful people, they don't let anyone else be the reason for their lack of success. If market is going to fail, it's because of me. It's not because of Google stopped sending me traffic to my website. It's not because of our advertisers going out. It's not because one of my employees quits. It's none of those reasons. It's only on me. Fourth and finally, successful entrepreneurs, they don't give up on their dreams. As a business owner, you are going to face adversity in your business. Not everything is going to go right all the time. That is just the reality of building a business. You might have a key employee quit on you. You could have a lawsuit filed against you like I did. You could lose a key customer as I also have. You could find the markets moved on you. Businesses, they work because they have the right team with the right combination of a market need with the ability to meet that need and then the ability to market that product that you've developed. A lot of different variables have to work together to make a business succeed. And those variables that make up that formula for business success, they are constantly changing. What worked 10 years ago probably isn't going to work today. And when something stops working for you, you really just have to face that adversity for what it is and find a different way to make it work. If you feel sorry for yourself and you give up when something bad happens, woe is me. You're probably not going to be successful. The right response is to take a full understanding of what happened and then why the landscape has changed, and then adapt your business to meet that reality as best as possible possible. Your business may fail entirely, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on your dreams of owning a business. You just have to find the next idea and try it again. Those are the four things that I've identified that successful entrepreneurs have in common. One, they're constantly looking for new opportunities. Two, they place a heavy emphasis on sales and marketing. Three. They don't blame other people for their lack of success. And finally, they don't give up. If you've seen other characteristics that you've come across that you've seen just that embody successful business over and over again, I'd love to hear about them. So feel free to comment those or talk about those in the comments below. I'd love to hear your ideas and your thoughts because we all know there are lots of reasons businesses fail, but only a handful of reasons business succeed. These are four key elements that I've seen work in people that have been successful. If you've got others, I'd love to hear them as well. Thank you for watching.