How to become successfull?

I have been working at a remote place for a long time - about 10 years. During this period, I implemented about 7 projects and provided dozens of consultations.

Over time, when I gained more experience in entrepreneurship and broadened my horizons beyond the limits of ordinary programming, launching my own Internet portal and media, I am becoming more and more convinced of one thing:

The winner is the one who does something.

Many companies will say that they always do something. But the truth becomes noticeable with time. When I worked at the Information Technology Center, we were always proud of working with our clients and we always helped them to succeed. In the end, if we strive to be successful consultants, our clients need to see a return on investment. If things were moving slowly, then it would take a long time to see the profit from the investments and at that moment the consultant needed to maintain intensive contact with the client (and still the client!).

Here are some of the features that I have noted in successful companies and entrepreneurs:

Give priority to action, not planning.

Some companies like to plan work in advance. Others quickly move and break principles, working in fast cycles. Guess who, in 9 cases out of 10, ends up being an absorber and who is ultimately absorbed? In my experience, a company that moves fast and risks usually buys other companies and expands quickly. Acquired more processes and takes more time to enter the market.

The entrepreneurs I saw are successful if they give priority to testing things, quickly and, most importantly, constantly launch new products. Look at people like Brian Clark, who founded nine companies, who worked in various industries and became a master in creating an Internet audience, and then monetized this project and now he does podcasts for the unemployed, that is, he continues to do business. Look at people like Paul Jarvis, who is now an entrepreneur trainer, but also started his own business. In my case, I am proud to try to give people feedback as quickly as possible. If I have a successful meeting with someone, they will have an individual commercial offer until the end of the day. It works and the one who quickly returns to me - those that I want to work with.

They are successful. You will never see people saying, “I have an idea, but ...” and at the same time go upstairs. Such people tend to stay down and watch others.

Measure and make decisions as quickly as possible.

Successful people and companies are those who make decisions in combination with business intuition (or experience) and data analysis.

Andy Jones is one of the most famous marketers in the world. He collaborated with companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Quora. He cites the following tips for rapid growth:

Measure and track each metric applicable to your product and calculate customer growth.

Select the time period for which you want to measure these indicators: day, week, month.

Measure and study customer engagement scores.

Watch how these numbers change over time.

Use trends to inform decision makers about growth and product strategy.

Successful enterprises, as I see it, do the same. Weekly, if not daily monitor metrics. Change your tactics in accordance with them and let everything in business be visible.

Grab for new features

Successful people are those who take advantage of new opportunities when they see them. And act very quickly. Once you have learned how to scale one business, you will learn how to scale any other. Some of the tactics may change, but the skills that you acquire in attracting and retaining customers, how quickly you solve problems, focusing on the right decisions and rebuild the market vertically. Even a successful B2C professional can work well in the B2B sector with these skills.

When I launched Progress LLC, I decided to take this step because I saw the opportunity. I quickly made a decision, bought a domain name and hosting, rolled up the site. Move fast to take advantage of the new features that you see.

Small teams move fast.

If the project team can eat more than two pizzas, then it’s too big. Although sometimes we encounter major problems that require numerous teams to solve, we usually complicate the situation by trying to do too much work at a time. In most cases, we simply break big problems into small ones and charge small teams with them. This is how Amazon works. I attended many meetings where there were more than 40 people who studied strategy and planning. These meetings always take a lot of time and no decisions are made there. Meetings to prepare for a meeting are death on the road to success. When I see it, I understand that something has broken down inside, and middle managers are usually powerless to make any decisions or have not received these rights.

If you see your company, start trimming the number of these meetings. Reduce the number of teams and focus groups on projects, disband them. If you can do all the work in a week, but usually the whole iteration cycle lasts forever, then something went wrong.

What other aspects of a successful entrepreneur can you point out?