Success Doesn’t Always Come To Those That Wait
As an aspiring entrepreneur, you owe it to yourself to accept a very important fact at the beginning of your journey: success doesn’t come to those that wait. This philosophy is the central driving factor behind everything that a successful entrepreneur does and is a key element in the impactful entrepreneurial skill known as proactive execution.
When asking ourselves what makes for a successful entrepreneur, there are a number of skill sets that come to mind. Of these, proactive execution is by far one of the most important. Sitting around and waiting for success to fall into place isn’t the headspace that a successful entrepreneur operates in. Instead of remaining stagnant, you owe it to yourself to maintain the ability of proactive execution.
Today, Start To Do It will be providing you with an in-depth explanation of what proactive execution means, how it can benefit your entrepreneurial pursuits, and how you can incorporate it into your career goals. Proactive execution is one of the most useful tools in the toolbelt of success habits as they relate to entrepreneurship. At Start To Do It, we seek to equip you with the tips you need to move forward. Let’s get started!
What is Proactive Execution?
Before we get into how you can harness the success habit of proactive execution to climb to success, it is important that we define it first. Put simply, proactive execution is the ability to act with anticipation and determination rather than being moved only by arising situations. This is one of the most important entrepreneurial skill sets for an aspiring entrepreneur as, when transferred into a mindset, it can have a significant positive impact on your future.
Proactive execution is an integral part of any entrepreneurial pursuit and it starts from the moment you have that first great idea. The difference between a successful entrepreneur and someone who works a 9-5 office job that they hate can be summed up fairly easily. While the average office employee may have had a number of great ideas for a business or product, they fail to take the very first step in achieving their career goals by neglecting to practice proactive execution. On the other end of the spectrum, the successful entrepreneur accomplished their goals because when they had that million dollar idea, they were proactive and took the necessary steps to execute it.
Getting in Your Own Way
So what dictates whether or not someone with a million dollar idea takes the necessary steps to practice proactive execution? What separates those who harness this valuable success habit and use it to their advantage from those who stay stuck in place at a job that they hate? This can generally be attributed to a fear of taking risks. When you allow yourself to be dominated by the fear of failure, you simultaneously waste precious time that could be dedicated to taking action. In this way, someone who could have had a promising career as an entrepreneur simply gets in their own way, acting as their own obstacle in the path to success.
There are a number of factors that could be to blame for this fear of failure, some of which include:
- Situational factors such as physical and mental health, family, savings, dependents, ect.
- An unclear sense of self and what you want to accomplish
- A lack of entrepreneurial knowledge
- A lack of technical and/or cultural knowledge
Without identifying what tempts you to remain in your current job position rather than practice proactive execution in order to meet your goals as an entrepreneur, it is easy to let the fear of failure take over. In this way, many fail the very first test of a true entrepreneurial spirit. In order to be successful, you have to take the risk of failure and continue to practice the skill of proactive execution throughout your entrepreneurial endeavours.
If you find that you are having trouble identifying the factors that either positively or negatively affect your chances of success, you may find Start To Do It’s questionnaire helpful in assisting you along your journey. It is our goal to guide you along the first steps of your journey into entrepreneurship and the valuable insights that you can attain from our questionnaire will prove useful in the process.
The Difference Between Proactivity and Reactivity
In order for you to get the most out of our tips on how to best practice proactive execution as it relates to you as an aspiring entrepreneur, you should have a clear understanding of the difference between proactivity and reactivity.
We have already established that proactivity means making well-planned actions in order to achieve your goals and set your business up for success. To define proactivity further, you can think of it as dedicating attention to tasks that are important, not just tasks that demand urgent attention. This is an important distinction to make as many new entrepreneurs make the mistake of confusing important tasks with urgent tasks- resulting in a lack of focus that can have a negative impact on their business.
Reactivity is defined as a response to urgency. While an entrepreneur that is limited by urgent tasks may feel that they are practicing proactive execution by completing tasks such as responding to emails the minute they come in, this isn’t the case. The time eaten away by reactivity in the life of an entrepreneur can be costly as it steals time away from taking action to be proactive. At the end of the day, an entrepreneur ruled by reactivity will wonder where all their time went. An entrepreneur that practices proactive execution will feel a sense of accomplishment in completing tasks that move their business forward.
How to Practice Proactive Execution
Now that you have a good understanding of what proactive execution is and how it can benefit you as an entrepreneur, you may be wondering how you can most effectively practice it. We should start by saying that proactive actions require a balance of planning and involvement. You can ensure that you are practicing proactive execution by asking yourself if the tasks you’re completing are things that move your business forward. Here are a few tasks that could be considered examples of practicing proactive execution:
- Developing goals that will ensure a successful and productive upcoming year.
- Drafting a list of reasons why specific features, products, or services that your business provides are important.
- Take the necessary steps to implement things that you have learned. Learning is important (that’s why you’re here, after all) but all of the skills you have learned mean nothing if you don’t put them into action.
Stay Disciplined
In order to get the most out of the success habit known as proactive execution, you have to stay disciplined. A true entrepreneur knows that discipline is an important part of maintaining a proactive mindset and every proactive task has to be followed through to the end. All too often, startups fail because of a lack of discipline and this is where the “execution” aspect of proactive execution really comes into play.
A business that is all vision and no action will ultimately fall behind their competitors. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to practice discipline and maintain the perfect balance of proactive vision and precise execution. For every proactive idea you have for your business, put an equal amount of effort into transforming that idea into a reality.
This is particularly important when first stepping into your role as an entrepreneur as an accomplished business is built on the success of turning thought into action. As the head of your business, you can practice discipline by working on the frontlines of your business’s everyday operations. From marketing to the hiring process, jump in head first and give proactive execution your attention.
Think Long Term
While it is easy to operate with attention to the big picture in the earliest days of your role as an entrepreneur, it is important to maintain this mindset throughout your career. The key to maintaining success as an entrepreneur is remaining proactive and consistently reflecting on how you can improve your business. In order to best practice proactive execution, you need to complete tasks with a constant question in the back of your mind: “where do I want to see myself in 10 years?”.
By making every decision and action with this question in mind, you can effectively practice proactive execution. This will make it much easier to distinguish proactive tasks from reactive tasks and help you keep the momentum that will carry your business well into its glory days.
Start To Do It is Here to Help You Polish Your Entrepreneurial Skills
Now that you understand the importance of practicing proactive execution and are ready to start down the path to success, we are happy to let you know that Start To Do It is here to assist you along the way. We work to help aspiring entrepreneurs identify the factors that most directly affect their chances of success and provide valuable insight that you can implement into your everyday life. Don’t wait, act today! Your future as an accomplished entrepreneur is waiting.