Celebrating Entrepreneurial Success While Mentoring Others
Ever stood in what felt like a huge moment for your business and not known what to do next?
Ever been plagued by doubt about whether or not a campaign is going to do well? And followed that up with drowning in a whirlpool of fear and self-loathing about what would happen if everything went south?
Being an entrepreneur is scary. You’ve heard it before, and Niklas Zennstrom says it well.
“If you want to be an entrepreneur, it’s not a job. It’s a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 PM– last thing at night you’ll send emails, first thing in the morning you’ll read emails, and you’ll wake up in the middle of the night. But it’s hugely rewarding as you’re fulfilling something for yourself.”
And he’s right.
There’s no one to tell you what to do and when to do it so that you achieve predictable, scalable success. In fact, a lot of what entrepreneurs and small business owners do to learn how to be successful is on-the-job-training that comes at the expense of sanity, but it’s wildly rewarding when you’re able to follow your own passions and explore options that wouldn’t otherwise be available to you if you were working for someone else.
Nobody ever teaches you how to be an entrepreneur, how to weather the storm when things get hard, or how to face challenges and find opportunities in them. Although there were 20x as many college courses on entrepreneurship in 2008 as there were in 1985, (Source) there aren’t classes that teach you how to shoulder the emotional burden of being a small business owner. Instead you gather tidbits here and there that give you information on marketing, creating a business plan, and how to manage a team when you get to that part. (Source) And even when there is a course to take, like those that are required to graduate as an entrepreneurship major at any of the 283 colleges that offer the option in the U.S., only 0.7% of students say that they intend to major in entrepreneurship. (Source)
Lucky for you, you’re part of a community of business owners and entrepreneurs who are able to collectively answer some of those questions and provide solutions that have worked for them so you don’t have to spend time hunting down the resources you need to achieve success. That’s why so many business owners look to work with others who have achieved success, both big and small.
Now that your business has achieved phenomenal success, you’ve joined the club of people who have the opportunity to share your knowledge (and what you did to gain it) to help other entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve their own successes.
Studies have consistently shown that only two in 10 entrepreneurs make it past their first couple of years (Source), and only one in 10 makes it through their first five (Source). According to Bloomberg, Forbes, and Entrepreneur, failure seems to be the best friend of the successful entrepreneur. In fact, most entrepreneurs fail multiple times before they ever achieve scalable or predictable success.
They’re able to use their failure to fail faster and fail better. As Richard Branson once said,
“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn to walk by doing and by falling over.”
But there’s a lot to be said for learning from others on your way to success. That is why the ONTRApalooza Success Awards are giving entrepreneurs around the world the opportunity to not only show others what they’ve done right, but also to learn from others about what’s worked best.
In addition to celebrating the bravest and smartest entrepreneurs and small business owners out there, the ONTRAPORT Success Awards give aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners the opportunity to learn from the best of the best. Your submission will help teach others:
- Easy ways to take their business to the next level
- Practical tips about how to use technology to automate more of their manual processes
- Usable advice on why technology should be embraced by entrepreneurs and small business owners
- Support on what to do when things go south
- Achievable steps to take to increase market share and decrease the time spent working in their business instead of on their business
Not only will you be recognized for your achievements, but we’re also giving away $10,000 in prizes, including a free year of ONTRAPORT, that will take your business to the next level.
