3 Mistakes To Avoid As A Successful Entrepreneur

As a successful entrepreneur you need to leverage your passions to avoid failures!

As a successful entrepreneur loving what I’m doing, I often read blogs about my other passion in life – marathon running. In every single post, I always find one thing over and over again. Serious marathon training and running has a lot of similarities with serious entrepreneurship.

The latest article on the subject, three different topics are undergoing an analysis:

Long runs – Rushed training – Feeding and Energy Intake.

We all have a favorite hobby or passion. And to leverage it with your entrepreneurship is a fascinating and productive exercise. The effort and training you need to dominate your favorite hobby or passion, also will serve you when starting a business as an independent entrepreneur.

As you will notice very soon, to be a successful entrepreneur is very much about leveraging what you know. Later you will also leverage what you are going to learn.

As my marathon running is teaching me a lot of useful things, it sounds wise if I take advantage of such experience. To leverage with my work as a successful entrepreneur becomes a logical consequence.

It is amazing what I found out.

Long Runs – Long Working Sessions To Become A Successful Entrepreneur

One of the most important parts of the training program for a serious marathon runner is the weekly long run. You don’t need to be a runner to understand that it will be hard to run the 26.2 miles (42km) on the race day without training the entire body to be accustomed to such workout.

As an entrepreneur, you need to prepare yourself and your mentality of long working sessions. This is not an 8 to 5 job but a mission where the reward at the end will be the life of freedom every entrepreneur is dreaming of. In the same manner, as your long run days are scheduled, usually during the weekends, also the long working sessions have to be planned properly to fit into the rest of your life with family, friends and other social activities.

If you skip the weekly long runs as a runner, you will for sure have problems to cross the finish line on the race day.

If you ignore the important long working sessions as an entrepreneur, for sure, you will get into problems to achieve your business goals.

As a successful entrepreneur, you can plan in advance when those long working sessions will take place. The coordination with family and the rest of your environment has to be part of the planning as well.

Rushed training – Business shortcuts

As a marathon runner with several years of experience, I have seen so many times, people lining up in the starting blocks but only with a few weeks of previous training and preparation. It’s curious, but frequently I can identify these enthusiastic non-well-trained runners, running away as they were going to set a new world record.

Quite frequently, you’ll see these individuals off the track after less than half the race. They suffer from pain everywhere and sometimes they even need medical care. To run a marathon race, no matter the goal you have as to finish time, you need at least 25 weeks of constant training.

As an entrepreneur with the huge motivation and passion for the business you are going to create, the temptation is always there to find short cuts. Heads up! There are no short cuts.

Build you business on a solid foundation. You will get a business that will last for years and to grow as you want. The “short cuts” to use are more related to the automation part of your business. But also here you find the synergy and such tools can then be compared to, for example, better running shoes if running is the passion you compare.

In the Internet business, there are so many scams and false promises out there trying to get hold of your credit card number with the “hook” that you will become a millionaire in a couple of weeks. These “get rich quick” schemes do not exist but show up as a “carrot” the same way as the belief that you can run a marathon race with only a few weeks of training.

Feeding and energy intake – eating and health

A marathon race is a challenge in many ways, and the general health is an important topic. What you are eating will influence a lot on your general shape. The weeks and days before the race, all marathon runners focus very much on the necessary carbo-loading, to fill up the body with the maximum quantity of fuel and energy. If this part of overall feeding and carbo-loading, in particular, the days before the race not are taken care of properly, you will run into problems during the second part of the race.

The entrepreneurial lifestyle falls into the same category of basic body caretaking. The food and general health play an essential role in the “race” towards the success. A successful entrepreneur knows how to balance the food intake to optimize the energy level and health level.

Among friends and colleagues being entrepreneurs, we all take care of our health. We do eat healthy food to afford the hard job and sometimes long working days. To do some kind of exercise is almost a rule among smart and successful entrepreneurs.

Passion, correct mindset and hard work are three “must” characteristics for a successful entrepreneur. Use all the passions you have and leverage them. The experience you have from one activity will help you to be successful with the other activities.