Johannesburg, 25 Aug 2011
There are 10 core principles that differentiate good entrepreneurs from great ones, says Sandra Swanepoel, a Director of Softline VIP Payroll.
“It is important to nurture an entrepreneurial spirit within an organisation and to empower the business to operate as if each individual works for themselves,” says Swanepoel.
Swanepoel's top ten tips for entrepreneurs are:
* Have stamina and work hard - be relentless in pursuing business. Make sure you have the stamina to spend all the hours that you can on pursuing your dreams.
* Always spend your time on activities that are closest to cash - Certain hours are high income generating hours, spend them wisely.
* Be an expert in what you do - invest time in yourself in order to be extremely well informed.
* Deal with people effectively - if you had to think of a leader who really had an impact on you and who influenced you in a positive way, you will find the qualities they possessed were mostly emotional intelligence qualities, and very seldom technical or IQ-related. Make sure you develop your emotional intelligence to be able to deal with people efficiently.
* Do things differently - ask yourself what you can do differently so that customers will do business with you? How can you add value to their business? Be innovative, and take bold steps to distinguish yourself from the competition, be it with product service or your operations.
* Be driven - set targets for yourself, your business and your staff; your business will only do well if you are driven to achieve results. Make sure your targets are realistic. Unless you set goals, you will find that time goes by that you cannot account for.
* Do you have an immensely positive attitude? How you think is extremely important when you are a business owner. If you are able to stay positive and have a great mindset, you are already on the right track.
* Measure as much as possible - if you do not know your business, you will not be able to improve year-on-year. An example would be to measure what employees do and to give them goals, motivate them and pay them accordingly, resulting in greater buy-in, more ownership and accountability.
* Read, listen and learn - make sure you have a culture where you never think you know enough. Be open to learning and hungry for knowledge, whether from people who are younger, older, in different places or culture groups.
* Admit mistakes and manage poor performers - if you do not manage people who perform poorly, you will lose the whole room. At the same token, if you have made a mistake by admitting it, you will create a platform for peers to also admit mistakes. Keep the best employees and surround yourself with strong players.
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