How to Become Successful Before you Start your First Business

When starting their first business, most people generally wish (at some level) for that business to be successful.

Now, although "success" may vary from one person to another (for some, it's having more personal time and freedom, and for others it's money), most people don't just start a business for the heck of it.

However, there's often many factors that limit a person's ability to be successful. A lot of these factors are definitely external, like market shifts, consumer needs, economic prosperity, real estate, and many (in fact, countless) more. The kicker is, these external factors usually are not controllable.

You just have to roll with the proverbial punches and work around them.

However, some of the most crucial limiting factors when starting a business are internal, and very controllable.

Some of these factors include motivation, scheduling, your workspace, distractions and focus, planning your business, and others.

However, in our experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs around the world, there are in fact 2 factors that work closely with one another that can either make or break your ability to succeed.

The beauty of these 2 things is that they are well within your control, and can often dictate and almost ensure your success before you ever start your first business.

So, how can you become successful before you start your first business? Let's find out.

Concept 1 - Goal Setting

If you've been following ASC's content on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, you'll know that this month we're talking all about goal setting.

Goal setting is crucial when it comes to success as an entrepreneur. That's because when you set goals as an entrepreneur, you're not only able to plan, predict, and prepare for the future; but you're able to motivate yourself by chasing after that big reason you started your business in the first place.

When we coach our clients, we focus on 3 key aspects of goal setting:

1. Set massive goals

2. Set SMART milestones

3. Live your goals

(1) Setting massive goals

When we talk about setting massive goals, we mean setting truly motivating, and inspiring goals.

If you want to learn how to do this yourself, we encourage you to read the 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. This book has helped many people, including many of our clients to set bigger, better goals, and live by those goals.

To keep it simple, though, we teach people to set massive goals that are truly motivating. Think of it this way...

Is it more motivating to chase after $1,000 a month, or $10,000 per month?

Is it more motivating to chase after 1 free day with your family a week, or 4?

Is it more motivating to retire in the next 20 years, or retire in the next 5, and provide for the next generations?

The point is, when you set goals, you have to set goals that may seem unrealistic now, but help push you towards greater levels of success in the future.

(2) Set SMART Milestones

Most people have heard of SMART goals.

Although they have a time and place, we don't believe that SMART goals align with the concept of setting massive goals.

After all, one of the core components of SMART goals is that they be attainable. Or what we refer to as "Restricting".

However, SMART goals do create an exceptional framework in the world of goal setting. That's why we teach clients, entrepreneurs and business owners how to set SMART milestones.

That is, break your goal down into smaller pieces that follow the SMART framework, and use this to work towards those massive goals.

(3) Live your goal

This is the simplest aspect of goal setting, yet often the most overlooked.

Live your goal each and every day. This means think about it, work on it, write it down, and act like you deserve to achieve it. We recommend 3 actions every day to live your goals:

1. Have it written down in front of you somewhere you see it multiple times a day. Whether that's your bathroom mirror, your desk, or your fridge.

2. Every time you see it, say it out loud. And say, "I will" and "I am", not "I want".

3. Carry yourself, and act like you've achieved it already.

If you've read books like Think and Grow Rich, Million Dollar Habits, The 7 Habits of Effective People, and Atomic Habits, these are principles all of these books talk about. It's something you must do to ensure your success.

Concept 2 - Creating a Schedule

Concept 2 is in many ways created by concept number 1.

To create a schedule, you have to have a goal in mind, and you have to have milestones in place to help you break down what you have to do on a daily basis in order achieve those milestones, and your overall goal.

Two books that we recommend to better understand this include The Psychology of Selling, and The 5AM Club.

Instead of droning on about this concept, we'll simply lay it out as an example.

Say your goal is to make $10,000 per month in your business. You know that each new sale you make is on average $1,000, which means you need 10 sales per month.

To get just 1 sale, you need to send 100 cold emails or cold calls, and post 2 times on social media.

These activities allow you to get on average 5 demos, which leads to 1 sale. Let's break this down:

This means that every month, you need to:

• Make 1,000 calls or send 1,000 emails (or some combination).

• Take 50 demos, from those sales activities.

• Make 20 posts promoting your business.

Breaking this down to weekly numbers:

• 250 calls or emails per week.

• 13 demos (from the calls and emails).

• Make 5 posts per week.

Now let's look at the daily activity (assuming you're only working Monday to Friday)

• 50 emails or calls per day.

• 2-3 demos per day.

• 1 post per day.

Let's now assume that to either send an email, or make a phone call, it takes you on average 3 minutes. A demo takes 30 minutes, and it takes 15 minutes to create and post social media content.

Here's what your schedule can look like in 2 different scenarios:

The schedule on the left assumes that you have a full time job. We can break this down to spend about 2-3 hours prospecting, an hour on social media, and 2 hours taking calls before and after your full time job.

The schedule on the right assumes your business is your full time job. Here, we can take closer to 4-5 hours to prospect, 3 hours to take calls, and 30-60 minutes on social media, while still taking breaks and getting other work done in between.

You can see here that when you have a clear goal you can set clear milestones, and create a clear schedule on how to achieve that goal.

We hope you enjoyed this blog, and if you want to learn more about this, visit our YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@ASCBusinessConsulting

Disclaimer

The ASC Business Consulting Blog is a resource to help support, guide, and teach entrepreneurs and business owners. It is not meat to solely be used to develop business strategy or provide legal advice to businesses and owners.

If you are interested in working with our team to have a strategy or solution custom made for you, to be used to develop and guide your businesses' strategy and success, please contact our team.