“What are the top 5 habits of entrepreneurs?”

I get asked that question a lot by the media and podcasters, so I thought I’d share my top 5 list with you. Here it is:

1. Self-Education – Daily self-education is the foundation for every entrepreneur. Specifically, acquiring knowledge in whatever industry your business falls into. Learn everything the leaders in your industry know. This requires not only reading every day, but also attending seminars listening to podcasts, and jumping on webinars.
2. Take Action – Stop over thinking and take action. What you don’t know, you’ll learn from the mistakes you make. You cannot possibly know everything you need to know, so take a leap of faith and learn as you go.
3. Find Apostles – Every successful entrepreneur finds apostles for their cause. These are individuals who believe in you and your dream. Set a goal of finding just one apostle because 1 + 1 = 3. As you become more successful, others will jump on board. The more apostles you surround yourself with the easier it becomes to pull the cart.
4. Don’t Follow the Herd – Successful entrepreneurs are leaders. They separate themselves from the herds of others and create their own herd. In the beginning they are all alone. But eventually, as they figure out what to do and what not to do, others take notice and become customers or clients. Millionaires have hundreds of members in their herd, deca-millionaires, thousands and billionaires have millions.
5. Build Valuable Relationships with Other Successful People – Successful entrepreneurs surround themselves with other leaders who are experts in their industry. They exchange information, share trade secrets and help mentor each other.

In all of the self-made millionaires and billionaires I’ve studied over the past twelve years, there are some universal truths that are evident within each success story. These twenty Universal Truths of Success were the common denominators of every successful individual I studied:

1. All success requires passion
2. All success requires unrelenting persistence
3. All success requires luck. Persistence creates luck
4. All success requires taking risks
5. All success requires action
6. All success requires hard work
7. All success requires a team of apostles who believe in you and your dream
8. All success requires continuous daily self-education
9. All success requires a leap of faith
10. All success requires patience
11. All success requires good daily habits
12. All success requires an optimistic, positive mental outlook
13. All success requires the development of processes that work
14. All success requires adding value to the lives of others
15. All success requires creating a herd of followers
16. All success requires stepping outside your comfort zone
17. All success requires laser-like focus
18. All success requires developing unique skills and the acquisition of knowledge specific to your industry
19. All success requires the ability to pivot around obstacles, pitfalls, mistakes and failures
20. All success requires the ability to survive until you thrive

“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.” – Steve Jobs

Nick Woodman is the CEO and founder of GoPro Cameras. A surfer, Woodman had pursued several business ventures that had failed. Then he started GoPro and at age 36 became a billionaire. What made GoPro succeed, where his other ventures failed?

Passion. Woodman’s previous ventures were unrelated to his passion – surfing. The idea for GoPro came about while Woodman was surfing. He thought it would be awesome if could film his surfing exploits from the perspective of the surfer.

When you tap into your passion, everything changes. Passion gives birth to persistence. Persistence is actually passion in action. It is the grit that helps you overcome all of the pitfalls, hurdles and obstacles you encounter along the way. But persistence is dependent upon passion. Passion must come first in order to unleash persistence.

Over twenty thousand years ago the last ice age blanketed most of the northern hemisphere. Rather then perish, humans somehow found ways to adapt and survive the arctic conditions.

Human beings are hard-wired for overcoming obstacles. We seem to have this innate ability to adapt and thrive. Our very existence is clear evidence of our unique ability to pivot, in order to survive. This is why it is so important to continuously push the envelope of our comfort zone. Only by challenging ourselves are we able to dig deep and find the greatness that is inherent in each one of us.

When we push ourselves into new areas it creates discomfort. But inside this discomfort zone is where true growth occurs. Taking on responsibilities that seem to exceed our current skills and knowledge forces us to develop new skills and gain new knowledge. Hence, we grow as individuals. The skills and knowledge we acquire during this growth period change us forever. We become more. We become better. And the more we push ourselves into this discomfort zone, the more we grow and improve.

In order to become wealthy, you must push yourself into new areas. You must embrace discomfort in order to grow into the person you need to be in order to succeed.

We all have dictators who control our lives. Dictators are those bad actors in your life who prevent you from living the life of your dreams. They hold you back. Do you know who or what your dictators are?

• A bad boss or supervisor
• Controlling family members
• Controlling friends
• Email
• TV
• Internet sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
• Cell phone and cell phone apps such as Snapchat or Instagram
• Addictions such as gambling, alcohol, drugs, Internet porn, News, etc.
• Negative emotions such as anger, resentment, hate and envy
• Negative, limiting beliefs

Understanding who or what is dictating the course of your life is the first step in changing your life. You must become aware of the people, habits, thinking and emotions that are influencing your life. Awareness opens your eyes and allows you to truly see for the first time those factors which are responsible for the life you have.

Make a list of all of your Dictators. Then, one by one, start eliminating them from your life.

I get a lot of emails from people asking me what’s the difference between a dream and a goal. I get asked this question often because so many fail to achieve their goals. The reason so many fail to achieve their goals in life is because they are confusing dreams and goals.

A Dream = Some Future Outcome. A Goal = Some Future Action

Dreams provide you with the vision of where you want to go. They are your blueprint for your future life. You can’t achieve a dream. You can only realize a dream.

Goals are your construction team. They are the workers that help transform your dreams into reality. You can achieve goals only through action.

Too many confuse a dream and a goal. They seek to achieve a dream. Dreams can’t be achieved. They can only be realized. You realize your dreams by creating goals around each one of your dreams and then pursue each goal by taking action. Dreams require a vision of some future objective. Goals, on the other hand, require that you take actions that will transform your dreams into reality.

I get a lot of emails from subscribers, fans and followers who are trying to pursue something important – a dream, a purpose, or some big goal. Too often, embedded inside the emails I receive, are excuses why they failed.

The word BECAUSE seems to pop up frequently in those emails.

“I couldn’t do X because …”

“I tried but failed because …”

“I worked hard but had to give up because …”

Successful people have to overcome many seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Rather than make excuses, they simply find a way to overcome those obstacles. At some point in their lives, they eliminated the Poor Habit of making excuses. They stopped using the word BECAUSE.

It’s so easy to find excuses for why we fail, make mistakes or quit on our dreams and goals. Excuses give us an easy out. Excuses allow us to rationalize that it’s not our fault. But that’s a slippery slope. When we forge the Poor Habit of making excuses, we are essentially telling ourselves that we are not in control of our lives and that our circumstances are dictated by outside forces.

When you brainwash yourself into thinking your circumstances are outside your control, you will never be able to change the circumstances of your life. You’ll be stuck forever, comforted only by your ability to find excuses for why your life is as it is. Eliminate the Poor Habit of making excuses. Stop using the word BECAUSE every time something doesn’t go your way. Obstacles are only insurmountable when you let them stop you in your tracks.

How much do you know about those who matter to you? Your immediate family, you probably know everything about them. You know their birthdays, you know what schools they attended. You probably know the names of their old girlfriends or boyfriends. You know the names of their best friends growing up. You know what their favorite sports are.  You might even know what books they like to read, their favorite songs and favorite movies. When it comes to your immediate family, you very likely know everything there is to know about them. And that’s what keeps you so close.

So, how much do you know about the important non-family members of your life? How much do you know about your friends, the friends of your children, their parents, their teachers, your partners, your clients, your customers, your colleagues at work, their wives, their kids, your subordinates at work, their families, your boss and your boss’s family, your main vendors or your banker? How much do you really know about the most important people in your life?

Wealthy, successful people, the ones in my study at least, know everything there is to know about the people who are responsible for helping them become so successful. To the wealthy, relationships are like gold. They gather information on the significant people in their lives like squirrels gather acorns. And they do this because they figured out, a long time before they became millionaires, that relationships are one of the most important pieces to the success puzzle.

If you feel tired every day, it could be that you are bored with your job. Most people, I’ve learned from my research, do not like what they do for a living. In fact, 96% of the poor in my Rich Habits Study said they did not like their job.

You may think you’re just bored with your job, but in reality low-level stress, caused by job dissatisfaction, is forcing your body and your brain to exhaust it’s available supply of glucose, its main source of fuel.

When your glucose level drops, the body notifies the brain and the brain’s response is to put you to sleep, in order to reduce the need for glucose. That is why you feel tired on the job. So what can you do?

There are certain things you can do that add more fuel to the body:

1. Exercise aerobically every day for 15 – 30 minutes – Aerobic exercise increases oxygen levels in the body. Every cell uses oxygen to break down glucose within each cell for use as fuel. When you increase your oxygen level by aerobically exercising, you make it easier for each cell to convert glucose into fuel.
2. Take Vitamin D (1,000 – 5,000 IUs) – Vitamin D is actually a steroid. It has many benefits: It helps rid the lungs of bacteria and it boosts your immune system. Having less bacteria in the lungs means the immune system does not have to work as hard. Plus, because Vitamin D boosts your immune system, your immune system has more readily available resources (white blood cells) to attack intruders. It doesn’t have to reach out to the body asking it to create more immune cells, which means the body does not have to work as hard.
3. Eat 1 teaspoon of coconut oil very day. Coconut oil is a fat that gets converted into Ketones, a unique source of fuel used by the brain. Ketones are a healthier fuel source because they do not require insulin in order to be converted to fuel. Glucose, the main source of fuel, requires insulin in order to convert it to fuel. More ketones means the body does less work, since it reduces the work of the pancreas, which is where insulin is produced.
4. 2/3rds of your meals should be vegetables. Vegetables are easier to digest and that means less work for the body to convert into energy.

Success is not a single event. Success is a process. The process makes success possible. While dreams, and the goals behind the dreams, are important, even more important is creating a process that will lead to the achievement of your goals and realization of your dreams.

All self-made millionaires create some process that transforms dreams and goals into reality. Without a process, dreams and goals are unreachable. A process is something you engage in every day that improves the skills and knowledge required in order to achieve a goal and realize a dream. A process = daily, systematic action that makes you better at what you do.

When you focus on the process, the achievement of your goals and realization of your dreams are automatic. That is why habits are so important. Habits are the process. You process success when you forge habits that lead to success and eliminate habits that drag you down. Focus on your habits and goals and dreams become automatic.