What Makes Famous Entrepreneurs Successful?

The Common Factor for Successful Entrepreneurs

Famous successful entrepreneurs like Ann Sieg of The Renegade Network Marketer, Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Mike Dillard of Magnetic Sponsoring, and my own father, Wallace March who founded IDC, the first international drilling company, all had one particular thing in common. They all started with nothing.

Ann Sieg was a frustrated network marketer going nowhere fast in a long line of MLMs. Mary Kay Ash was a single mother of three working in a man's world, constantly losing out on promotions to the men who she herself had trained. Mike Dillard was waiting tables. My dad was a bookkeeper.

Of course they all put in countless hours and ingenuity into developing their businesses. But what was it that kept them going in those early years that enabled them to overcome the odds and build business empires? They all possessed the mindset of the entrepreneur.

If you have ever attended a motivational meeting, you have probably heard phrases such as "believe to achieve" or "establish your why" as if this kind of magic thinking will have an effect on your ability to succeed.

Guess what? It does!

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

What you believe about yourself can set you up for success or failure. If you envision yourself as unprepared, ill-equipped or incapable of doing something, you have unconsciously set yourself up for self sabotage. A student who announces, "I'm no good at math" will probably have trouble in math class. We call this "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy."

During my long career as an educator I have worked with a wide variety of populations studying how they learn. While working at the USC School of Medicine, I helped research effective continuing education programs for physicians. I have worked with adults who couldn't read. I was part of the pilot program for the proficiency exam in the California school district. I assisted in teaching introductory courses at Pepperdine University, and have taught high schoolers down to preschoolers.

The biggest obstacle to overcome in ALL of these scenarios, was the belief that the task couldn't be done.

Sometimes this self sabotage is referred to as the inelegant "stinkin' thinkin'".

Stinkin' Thinkin' Sets in in the First Few Years of Life

This lack of self confidence frequently sets in at an early age. A huge percentage of our psychological personality is formed in the preschool years. How we learn to view successes and failures as youngsters can have a profound effect on how we deal with challenges later in life.

When in a preschool classroom, I would frequently make a deliberate mistake, spill my juice for example. Then I would exclaim, "Oh look what I did! I spilled the juice! Oh well, I can't learn if I'm not willing to make mistakes!" Then I would calmly clean my mess and move on.

If you are parenting a young child, this kind of lesson is critical to their future success. They must internalize the concept that wrong answers are merely stepping stones to right ones. The fear of being wrong, or looking foolish, can be overcome when the child understands that the act of taking the action is what's important. Give your child this gift of understanding on a daily basis.

Famous successful entrepreneurs will say things like "you fail forward," in other words, failing is merely a step to success. This belief system is what allows them to move beyond disappointments.

Your Mindset Influences How Others See You

When I was in seventh grade, I attended the Westlake School for Girls. I had to take several placement exams to be accepted into the school. Due to some kind of clerical error, even though I had tested out as "gifted" on all of the tests, I was placed on the "C" track, which was for children who were what was then described as "slow."

As I sat, day after day staring at the same page in my French book, my mind would wander. The teacher would ask a question and I would have no clue as to what she had been talking about. She would impatiently tell me to try to stay focused and I felt dumber and dumber. I can remember thinking to myself, "I used to be smart. I wonder what happened." At the first grading period came to a close, I was failing every one of my classes.

My parents came in and met with each of my teachers one by one. The first one up was my French teacher. She gently tried to explain to my parents that some children simply do not have the capacity to learn another language as evidenced by my inability to concentrate in class. My father asked if she had ever spoken to me in French and she replied that the class was no where near ready to attempt actual conversational French.

"Ask her a question in French," my father prodded. So the teacher reluctantly asked me what I had done the night before. I still remember her facial expression as I rattled on about the television show I had seen and how my roommate at school had gotten into trouble for not doing her laundry. You see, I was fluent in French. But the teacher never knew that because she believed I was incapable of learning a language. And despite my fluency in French and Italian, I came to see myself as incapable as well!

This is the power of our minds. We will live out the experience we envision for ourselves. Just as I was convinced in a very short period of time that I had somehow lost my learning abilities, things can be turned the other way as well. Lead a learner of any age to believing in their own ability to achieve, and achieve they will! Encourage creative thinking, seeing failure as part of the adventure on the way to success and you will have possibly fostered the mindset of a future successful entrepreneur!

And With Its Head He Went Galumphing Back

This line from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky was in the coded telegram my father sent to my mother when he closed the deal that was the beginning of IDC.

Even with a full scholarship, my father was unable to attend college not only because he couldn't afford the textbooks, but because he couldn't attend school and support his parents and four siblings at the same time. Through highschool, he wore the same checkered slacks every day that all his peers knew had been given to charity by one of the rich students in the community. His family spent one summer eating nothing but potatoes and his baby brother literally died of starvation in his arms.

But he had a vision. Working as a bookkeeper for Drilling and Exploration Company in the states, he could see the need for international relations in the oil drilling world. He was instrumental in helping to heal the strained relationship between the US and Japan when Japan had to battle an oil rig fire that threatened to burn up its oil resources. My father convinced two Americans, world renowned as the best in the business for putting out oil rig fires to offer their help. Fifty years later, there are still news clips shown on this historic event and the role my father played in it.

Pretty good for a small town boy from Guthrie, Oklahoma.

How To Develop the Mindset of Successful Entrepreneurs

Are you lacking the self-confidence you need to make your business a success? Are you overwhelmed with all the training materials, tax laws, internet strategies, marketing materials to be mastered? Is it keeping you from going after what you want?

The first thing to do is to take action. You can refine your goals and strategies as you go, but you have to take the first steps. Lay out a plan for yourself as to what you want to accomplish. Then begin, one step at a time to put your plan into motion. Educate yourself. Keep your goals in front of you all of the time. If you are willing to do the work, learn from the people who have been successful, and lay a solid foundation for your business, you CAN succeed.

See it. Believe it. Achieve it. It's not just trite rah-rah. It's harnessing the power of the human mind which is limitless.

Barbara Silva is a network marketing coach at Renegade University. Learn how to generate leads for your home business, mlm or network marketing business using the Attraction Marketing Business Model.