I've been a Business Man

Would you consider yourself a success? An insightful look at what it really takes to be a successful business owner.

I've been a Business Man most of my adult life. Recently, on a long business flight, I began thinking about what it takes to become successful as a Business Man—and how I would even define the meaning “success” itself. The two ideas became more intertwined in my thinking: success as a Business Man, Business Man success.

I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of Business Man ship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that Business Man success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas. I've found that Business Man success usually comes through great execution.

But what else does it take to succeed as a Business Man—and how should a Business Man define success? Here's my top 10 list, in descending order, for success:

How to Be a Success

10. You must be passionate about what you're trying to achieve. This means you’re willing to sacrifice a large part of your waking hours to the idea you’ve come up with. Passion will ignite the same intensity in the others who join you as you build a team to succeed in this endeavor. And with passion, both your team and your customers are more likely to truly believe in what you are trying to do.

9. Focus intensely on your opportunity. This focus and intensity helps to eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation—in other words, companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well. Stay focused on the mission.

8. Success only comes from hard work. We all know that there is no such thing as overnight success. Behind every overnight success lies years of hard work and sweat. People with luck will tell you there’s no easy way to achieve success—and that luck comes to those who work hard. Successful Business Mans always give 100 percent of their efforts to everything they do. If you know you are giving your best effort, you’ll never have any reason for regrets. Keep your focus on things you can control.

7. the road to success is going to be long, so remember to enjoy the journey. Everyone will teach you to focus on goals, but successful people focus on the journey and celebrate the milestones along the way. Is it worth spending a large part of your life trying to reach the destination if you didn’t enjoy the journey along the way? Won’t the team you attract to join your mission also enjoy the journey more as well? Wouldn’t it be better for all of you to have the time of your life during the journey, even if the destination is never reached?

6. Trust your gut instinct more than any spreadsheet. There are too many variables in the real world that you simply can’t put into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security. In most cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide. We’ve all had experiences in business where our heart told us something was wrong while our brain was still trying to use logic to figure it all out. Sometimes a faint voice based on instinct resonates far more strongly than overpowering logic.

5. Be flexible but persistent. Every Business Man has to be agile in order to perform. You have to continually learn and adapt as new information becomes available. At the same time you have to remain persistent to the cause and mission of your enterprise. That’s where that faint voice becomes so important, especially when it is giving you early warning signals that things are going off-track. Successful Business Mans find the balance between listening to that voice and staying persistent in driving for success—because sometimes success is waiting right across from the transitional bump that’s disguised as failure.

4. Rely on your team. It’s a simple fact: No individual can be good at everything. Everyone needs people around them who have complementary skill sets. Business Mans are an optimistic bunch of people and it’s very hard for them to believe that they are not good at certain things. It takes a lot of soul searching to find your own core skills and strengths. After that, find the smartest people you can who complement your strengths. It’s easy to get attracted to people who are like you; the trick is to find people who are not like you but who are good at what they do—and what you can’t do.

3. Execution, execution, execution. Unless you are the smartest person on earth, it’s likely that many others have thought about doing the same thing you’re trying to do. Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling. All of us have seen Business Mans who waste too much time writing business plans and preparing PowerPoints. I believe that a business plan is too long if it’s more than one page. Besides, things never turn out the way you envisioned them. No matter how much time you spend perfecting the plan, you still have to adapt according to the ground realities. You’re going to learn a lot more useful information from taking action rather than hypothesizing. Remember—stay flexible and adapt as new information becomes available.

2. be honest and show integrity. I can’t imagine anyone ever achieving long-term success without having honesty and integrity. These two qualities need to be at the core of everything we do. Everybody has a conscience—but too many people stop listening to it. There is always that faint voice that warns you when you are not being completely honest or even slightly off track from the path of integrity. Be sure to listen to that voice.

1. Appreciate your success by giving back. Don't ever forget this part, arguably the most important part, of defining yourself as a true success. By the time you achieve your success, lots of people will have helped you along the way. You’ll learn, as I have, that you rarely get a chance to help the people who helped you because in most cases, you don’t even know who they were. The only way to pay back the debts we owe is to help people we can help—and hope they will go on to help more people. When we are successful, we draw so much from the community and society that we live in, we should think in terms of how we can help others in return. It’s our responsibility to do “good” with the resources we have available.  

How to Measure Success?

Hopefully, you have internalized the 10 lessons of becoming a successful Business Man. The next question you are likely to ask yourself is: How do we measure success? Success, of course, is very personal; there is no universal way of measuring success. What do successful people like Bill Gates and Mother Teresa have in common? On the surface, it’s hard to find anything they share—and yet both are successful. I personally believe the real metric of success isn’t the size of your bank account. It’s the number of lives where you might be able to make a positive difference. This is the measure of success we need to apply while we are on our journey to success.