This is a question that many people start to ask themselves before entering into the business world. How do I start out? There is many reasons to why you should start a business and become an entrepreneur. It’s most about earning more money and having more time. The benefits you get are freedom if you are able to tap into a field that gives you all the customers you would ever need. But that’s the tough part. You should also realize that just becoming an entrepreneur because of money is not lasting very long. Because you have to get or have a passion for your customers. They become your new boss. Do as they say and you will get paid a lot.

So what is an entrepreneur? It’s a person who starts a business based on an idea, and make the business work. When the business is going by itself you have been a successful entrepreneur. But most business startups by entrepreneurs fail, about 90% fail in their first 10 years. The statistics are working hard against you. But it’s more likely to be become a successful entrepreneur than winning the lottery.

How to become an entrepreneur? Well, as you read about many successful entrepreneurs, they have quit school or university. That may lead you to think that they stop studying. But if you know anyone that has started their business, you will know that they keep learning every day. Reading books, papers, blogs, listening to audio books, attending seminars/webinars and paying big bucks to learn the latest tactics and best practices of business, psychology, sales, marketing and how to keep motivation.

I have prepared a little list here for you of the TOP 20 bullet points of how to become an entrepreneur:

1. Find a need in the marketplace.
2. Find a solution to that need.
3. If there are solutions in the marketplace, can you make a cheaper, better or an improvement to that solution? Do it! Or skip to the next need and start over.
4. Study as much as you can on every topic your business evolve around. Especially marketing and sales. No sales = Failure.
5. Surround yourself with smarter and better people as soon as you can. Don’t be the best yourself, manage the people you hire.
6. If you hate managing, hire a manager and become a leader instead.
7. Be BOLD. Sometimes you got to make tough decisions. It’s these moments that will define your success or failure.
8. Change fast! If something doesn’t work. Change. Try something different.
9. Build a network. Almost all big cities have some sort of masterminds or business groups you can be part of. Then you can discuss business strategies with likeminded people and get free advice. But you got to contribute yourself, help were you can.
10. Be coachable. Learn from others and listen to what successful people are telling you. It’s easy to think that you know best. But it usually doesn’t matter what product or service you got. The business aspect is the same.
11. Track everything you do. Because then you can go back and replicate the process if it works. Take notes all the time.
12. Interview your customers on a regular basis of what they need. Maybe you could add a new product or service to make your profits bigger and customers more happy?
13. Be transparent. Things can go wrong, but be open and solution oriented about it and make your team work with you.
14. Are your business scalable? What I mean about that is it possible for you to have 1000 customers more tomorrow? Can you handle it? Have a plan for growth and you will not have a problem with more customers and hiring people to do the work, even better if it can be automated with computers or robots.
15. Break your business into 5 different parts. Improve them by 15% each. Like getting 15% more customers, convert 15% more leads, raise your price by 15%, you get it. If you do that with 5 parts of your business, you will have a 100% growth!
16. Have fun! Don’t be too serious and laugh much. If you and your employees have fun, productivity will skyrocket and you will easy of the stress.
17. Take vacations. This is the best test for any business to see if you can be away and still have the business running. Note down anything that goes wrong or something you got to fix while you are away. Then make processes for all the things to run without you, then you get more free time to think and improve the business when you are working.
18. Don’t take your work home! This is important if you got a family. It will destroy it. Be done with everything that needs to be done before you go home. Write down a list of all the things you think about doing, that you have to do tomorrow, this will free your mind and you can focus 100% on the family.
19. Get a great accountant and banker. This way you will have some people that are good with numbers and can help you when you need loans or need to save taxes. You never know, become friends with them.
20. If you are tired of the business and its doing great. Try making it run without you or sell it to free up time, your mind and liquidate the asset you built. You deserve it by now!

So now you know how to become an entrepreneur, or the skeleton of it. All this bullet points have a lot behind them. You need to study each bullet point and get to know them, search them up, read, listen, attend seminars and practice the knowledge. A business is a process and entrepreneurship is a process.

What if you become an entrepreneur? What is your ultimate goal with it? To become your own boss, be a millionaire, billionaire or just to have more free time with the luxury of being financial independent? It’s important to set an end goal. Would you watch a football game if there was no ending time?

*Image from bruno-free: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/493668