Direction: The most important part of running a business is having a sense of direction. No two businesses are alike and so cannot be run with a business model. As an entrepreneur, you must have a sense of direction; the path you want your business to travel. Now, I call this business road map. A map is an integral part of every explorer’s gadgets. With every other necessary gadget, but a map, the entire exploration will be meaningless and fruitless. Same applies to your business. Without your personal business map (business model), the running of your business will lead to chaos, losses and eventually bankruptcy. So it is important that you have your business map when you are starting or running your business. Again, like I mentioned earlier, you cannot run your business with someone else’s business map or model. Take for example; Yahoo! and Google are offering almost the same products and services, but their business models are different. Also, do you think Coca Cola and Pepsi are running on the same business model? Of course not! So your business model must be uniquely for your business and should be guided jealously.

Mindset: another secret to running a successful business is your mindset. Mindset simply means your fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines your response and interpretation of situations. Different types of situations, good, bad and ugly, will befall your business, but your response to these circumstances will determine the success or failure of your business. We have heard of entrepreneurs who were heavily in debts and yet went on to build successful businesses. Also, we have heard of those who died of heart attack when their businesses hit the rock. If you want to stand the test of time to eventually build a successful business, you must have a positive mindset or approach to every situation. An entrepreneur does not know the difference between failure and success; he uses both to his or her advantage.

Approach: this is simply your way of dealing with circumstances. This is where most entrepreneurs get it all wrong. When you don’t have the right approach to dealing with good or terrible situation, your business is subject to fail. This is a very fragile part of running a business. Your approach to every situation requires that you sit and plan. My advice is this; don’t take any decision until you have taking quality time to really plan how you want to go about the situation confronting you. Don’t be a spontaneous decision taker even if your gut is 100% right; make sure you plan a way out with your strategic team (not staff) or whoever is in the boat with you and you are sure to minimizing your mistakes and failures. Yes, we have entrepreneurs who make decisions based on their gut feeling. It is because overtime, they have developed instinct for taking right decision on their toes. As you plan before taking decisions, over time, you will be very good at taking decisions on your toes.

Preparation: I like this definition of preparation, which is the state of having been made ready beforehand. In business, you must be very proactive; you must create or control situations by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened. Every successful entrepreneur is extremely proactive; they are always on top of their game. And that is what you must become. See a situation before it arises and design possible solutions to handling it. Read that last sentence again. I said “possible solutions”. It is foolishness when you have a single solution to solving a problem. You must have multiple solutions when you want to solve a problem. That way, you are sure to eventually solve the problem no matter how tough it is. Successful entrepreneurs don’t run away from problems, they always find solution to them. You don’t have a choice than to always “be prepared” like the boy scouts motto. If you can consistently put these amazing business secrets to action, then your business will experience a dynamic breakthrough.