Building a Pyrotechnic Business - 7 x 7 ‘Sure Fire’ Accelerants for Entrepreneurs

Accelerant 1: Lighting your own Fire

1. Passion: Passion is a key ingredient if you are running your own business. You cannot expect anyone else to care more about what you do than you.  Your passion is an accelerant that is transmitted like wildfire through everything you say and do. People will notice it and respond positively – this is how you start to create a presence and build your business.
2. Motivation: If passion is a high revving engine, then motivation is the drive train. Without either you and your business will lack direction and energy. Motivation is not something you can outsource. So when you get out of bed in the morning get yourself into a positive frame of mind. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is high. You need to be about an 8!
3. Half empty v Half full: How do you see the world – are you an optimist or pessimist by nature? If the latter, frankly you’re in for a very tough time. You need a positive mind set - seeing opportunities and challenges rather than problems and barriers. If you have a negative thought, think about how you might re-frame it in a positive way. Teach your mind to see the good before the not so good – it can be done!
4. Handling Rejection: There’s going to be a lot of this and it doesn’t really go away. The temptation is to view all rejection as personal but this is not usually the case. There’s a saying that there is no such thing as failure – only learning! It’s important then to understand where you can what the basis of the rejection is – it may cause you to revisit what you do and the way you do it.
5. Planning for Success: One of Stephen Covey’s ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ is to begin with the end in mind. If you’re just starting out then it clearly helps to know where you want to end up. Why? Because it will shape what you do and how you go about it.. It’s often helpful to think about what you yourself might be doing when the business is successful and capable of running itself.
6. Bias for action: Frankly it’s no good waiting for other people to do things for you – for just the right moment – you just need to get on with what needs to be done. Banks, governments, friends, family will all have their own agendas and go at their own pace. It’s no good thinking if only this, if only that. You need to take responsibility and make things happen. It’s very rarely that things are absolutely perfect – so make the most with what you’ve got.
7. Reaching Out: Are you one of those guys who doesn’t like to stop and ask for directions? If so, think again and next time give it a try. You won’t know all you need to know to run your own business. Successful entrepreneurs build a support structure around them – people they can turn to for knowledge yes, but also people they can turn to for empathy. Choose your people and networks carefully to make sure they can deliver on both counts

And finally, if you’re so inclined score yourself on a scale of 1(low) to 10 (high) against these accelerants. I’m going to ask my network what they think a good score should be.

Note: Accelerant 2 will follow shortly