by Case Lane

Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn about entrepreneurship by reading about or listening to successful entrepreneurs like Bill Gates or Martha Stewart or Oprah. 

But hearing about success sometimes leads to a limiting belief that what those people did is not possible for everyone.  There is an idea that the successful are wired differently, and therefore have capabilities that do not apply to the average person.  Aspiring entrepreneurs are left wondering, how the successful are able to actually do the work they do.

Famously Bill Gates spent endless hours tinkering with computers; Martha Stewart obsesses over every tablecloth; Oprah chased the good stories.  They all seem to have some sort of special trigger inside them that propels them forward to success down the entrepreneurial path.  If that’s true, how does the average aspirant to entrepreneurial wealth and achievement become one of the them? 

Is it possible to make yourself…force yourself to become the successful person you’ve always wanted to be?

The Success Words

The chapter headings from Lewis Howes’ book The School of Greatness, read like the step-by-step lines from any familiar success manual.  The headings are: create a vision, turn adversity into advantage, cultivate a champion’s mindset, develop hustle, master your body, practice positive habits, build a winning team, live a life of service.

The book emphasizes greatness in general, in how you live your life. 

But the challenge for so many is that those success lines and even the tips that come along with it are all great advice that so many people have difficulty implementing.  These are the actions and ideas you need to develop if you want to reverse the struggles of your life, or any type of past backwards pace.  But understanding that fundamental fact is often only the first step.

Understanding the intention of the advice helps you realize what you need to do.  The next, and more complicated step is to determine ‘how’ you are going to fulfill those success goals.  And the ‘how’ must be compatible with your personality, your lifestyle and your best efforts.

The step to learn next is to figure out how you do the activities that you know you want to do because you want to achieve greatness by building your entrepreneurial dream.

Here are 4 strategies to help you achieve the ‘how’ for making yourself that person you wish you were…

1. Think about Your Plan all the time

The best way to cultivate your entrepreneurial mindset is to think about your business idea and your plans 24/7/365.  Immerse yourself in your own vision of being a successful entrepreneur with a business you own, and control of your lifestyle.

The most successful entrepreneurs think about their business – the opportunity, scope for improvement, operations, the team, all aspects of the enterprises – in all situations.  You can do the same with your business idea, and the plan for your business.

You become an entrepreneur, by being an entrepreneur.  Transforming to your dream life through entrepreneurship is about reinventing yourself, changing who you imagine yourself to be, and doing what you have always wanted to do.

You may feel that constantly thinking and talking about your business will alienate you from your friends or family.  But you are on a mission to improve your life.  If those around you do not support your actions, they have alienated themselves from you.

Create a vision in your mind of your future as an entrepreneur, and hold to that vision in your present.  Think it, operate in it, push it all the time as your singular purpose.  At a certain point, you are going to want to be living that vision.  You are going to want it as your reality because you have made it possible.

2. Clear Your Space

With the minimalist movement gaining support and adherents the idea of working in a less-cluttered environment has become a trend.  But the clean-up is also a proactive way to set yourself up in a success-promoting environment.

You want to operate in an environment without distractions.  Sometimes our inability to do the activities we need to do to become successful are a reflection of being around too many things we do not want to do – like cleaning up – that all provide an excuse for not moving forward.

Begin your movement towards being your own champion by clearing away a piece of clutter each day.  Pick up the piece of clutter you have been seen in the same place for more than six months and…throw it away.

Top performers work in an environment that focuses on their business.  You need the tools and resources you will use to be close at hand, and all other diversions to be tucked away.  You are trying to put yourself in the same shoes as the most successful entrepreneurs you know.  People who focused on building their business.  If you want to be one of those people, you have to focus too.

Any item that is truly meaningful or beneficial to you should be appropriately organized.  You may already have shelves, boxes or envelopes where you can put items of value.  Everything else can go.

Clearing your space can reduce your sense of overwhelm by giving yourself room to function in the best environment you can create.

3. Look for allies

Setting out to build your own business can be lonely and difficult. You may not have any support among family or friends.  You may be afraid to talk about entrepreneurship at work because you think people will think you’re out of your league.  And you may be tolling away with trying to create your business idea without any help.

But you can find motivation and support by quietly, and confidently, asking around to find out if anyone is doing, or wants to do, what you want to be doing.

Unless you’re in Silicon Valley, finding people who support the idea of starting their own business may be a quick way to lose friends.  But you can carefully begin looking for allies by speaking about your business whenever it’s appropriate.  Learn who responds well and who quickly changes the subject.   You may be surprised to learn who your allies are.

Say to your spouse, partner, sibling, colleague, friend a statement like: ‘hey, I’m doing some research about the business idea I’ve had for years, would you be interested in the things I learn?’

For every person who replies ‘no way,’ there may be one who says ‘yeah, I’ve always been interested in starting a business, tell me more.’  The idea is to find someone who aligns with you.  If that person becomes your accountability buddy that’s even better.

To help you stay on track with your dream, and make your plan a reality, you can make a commitment to someone other than yourself.  If you form an alliance with someone, you’re more likely to get things done.

However, if you come from a world where no one at all responds favorably to your low-key approach, you can still form alliances – with virtual mentors.  Your virtual mentors are the people whose books, videos, speeches, interviews, courses and shows become part of your life when you are researching how to be successful with your business.

You can listen to hours of someone encouraging you to be strong, stay committed to your dream and so on.  This provides you with effectively the background soundtrack to your aspirations.  And a chance to be aligned with people who are on your side, even if you’ve never met them before in your life.

4. Plan to Work

Writing down goals you plan to complete is much easier than actually doing the work to see those goals finished.  To make the exercise more tangible, write down goals, that are accompanied by specific action.

Step-by-step, hour-by-hour goals are designed to take you exactly where you want to be in an orderly and planned fashion.  Instead of a lofty ‘I want to be a millionaire’ goal, write down exactly what you would have to do to become a millionaire.  What would you have to do every day?

For example, in my book A Better Plan, I encourage financially challenged readers to calculate exactly how many hours they would have to work, at their current wage to earn one million dollars.  If your current wage is $12 an hour, you would need to work eight hours a day for about 83,000 hours or 40 years.  Once you have that baseline, you can figure which variables to change to reach your goal faster.

But at the same time, each hour that you’re working is still getting you towards your goal.   

A detailed plan for building your business may take you months to write, but the goal is to get started.  Think of the plan like the notes for your autobiography, how would you describe the detailed story for anyone who wanted to ask.

The plan becomes your blueprint for how you are going to create the business.  Write the story in all its detail.  For example if you get a loan for one million dollars, write out how you would go about procuring that loan.  Who would help you and why?  Write out every word.  And take all the time you need on doing it. 

You can write a line or two in the morning, or at work.  Buy a planner or desk calendar and write on each of the days of the week.  Lay out your plan in all its glorious detail.

The point is to give your a roadmap, a point of reference, a vision that you can use to lead yourself exactly where you want to go.  And to help you to move forward on achieving your life dream.

These four strategies can help you think clearly about yourself as an entrepreneur.  You can force yourself to do what you really want to do – which in our case is transition to lifestyle freedom by becoming an entrepreneur – by making strategic moves towards your goal.

Even if you’re still saying – but how? – think of these four strategies as the activities that help you identify the ‘how.’

If you want to know how to literally force your fingers to start writing, or how to open your mouth to ask a friend if they’re interested in business, you may not be committed to the goal of achieving the life you want through entrepreneurship.

If you are sit on the couch and do not move in any form or direction because you believe your dream will materialize without effort, then neither these strategies or any others will help you.

But if you’re ready to move forward, to take the initial steps, then you are on your way.  Improve your life for yourself and take action to achieve your dreams.

To help yourself do what you really want to do:

1. Think about what you want to do all the time

2. Clear the space around you of distractions and diversions

3. Find some allies, either real or virtual, who will support you

4. Plan the work you have to do in specific detail

When you lay out your vision, you find you are compelled to move forward and bring it all into fruition.  And before you know it, you will be walking, talking and living as the entrepreneur you have always wanted to be.

Disclosure: links to Amazon.com are affiliate links. I participate in the Amazon Affiliates program and earn for eligible purchases