The difference between business owners and entrepreneurs is that when a stream of revenue gets cut off, a business owner doesn’t know what to do while an entrepreneur will either turn it around or build another one. That’s because entrepreneurs don’t build businesses, they build empires.
If you want to go from a business owner to a successful entrepreneur who can continue to thrive in any economy, no matter what, here are four tips to help you make that happen:
1. Create something new
If you just want mediocre success, you can always start a business that sells someone else’s product, or sells a standard service like opening a mail center, a pizza place, or a dollar store. While these businesses have the potential to make money, they will almost always become full-time jobs.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, you won’t find success by copying someone else. You need to create something new. Something that will capture the attention of your customers and fill a need nobody else can fill.
The Sock Aid is the perfect example of a product that is completely unique and fills a need that no other product can. This is a device that helps people put on socks when they can’t bend over to reach their feet. The sock stretches over the unit, you put your foot inside, and the sock is gently pulled off the device as it slides onto your foot.
2. Innovate an existing product or system
If you have an idea for how to make an existing product even better and easier to use, that’s a project worth pursuing. Just think about how Facebook innovated social media and kicked MySpace and Friendster to the curb.
When it comes to business, Sam Ovens, a young millionaire entrepreneur from New Zealand, innovated the world of property inspection when he launched his app called SnapInspect. This app has a unique feature you won’t find with other property inspection software.
The feature called “Convert Inspection” allows property inspectors to convert their last tenant’s move out inspection into the next tenant’s move in inspection. Or, vice versa.
This conversion feature retains the photos, comments, and ratings and ports them over to the new report. Because many properties are left in the same condition they were in before the tenant moved in, this feature can save property inspectors time if there’s no need to go visit the property in person. And if there are any differences, those parts of the report can simply be updated without having to redo the entire report.
3. Spend more time planning—but don’t overdo it
There is a lot of debate around just how much time you should spend planning your business projects. If you spend too long planning, you’re likely to suffer from inaction and your business will never get off the ground. On the other hand, if you don’t spend enough time planning, you could end up wasting time, resources–needing to redo large portions of your work.
Successful planning isn’t always about fully developing every detail you possibly can. If you have to develop all of the details before you take action, you could find yourself sitting idle for too long.
4. Don’t just enter an industry or niche—dominate it
If you’re going to enter into an existing industry or niche, you have to dominate it to be successful. If you don’t dominate your niche, you’ll be just like everyone else—another option in a grand sea of choices.
Why would anyone choose you over the rest? Being the only local option is one way to dominate a niche with a physical location. But if you’re an online business in an existing niche, you’ve got to crush the competition.
Entrepreneur.com outlines some wonderful tips on how you can dominate your niche, just like Mozart dominated the world of musical composition. According to the article, Mozart had put in about 20,000 hours of work by the time he was 9 years old. No wonder he became one of the best!
Be relentless with pursuing your dreams
If you want to dominate your niche and build an entrepreneurial empire, you have to work hard for it. You have to be creative and you have to be relentless in your passion and pursuit of success. Your success (and your streams of income) will come mostly from how you operate, not just what you sell.
The more you develop the mindset to innovate rather than copy, as outlined in these tips, the easier it will be for you to recover from unexpected losses and build the empire you’ve always dreamed of.
