Want To Sit Among The Top Entrepreneurs? Stop Making These Mistakes

“The road to success is never a straight line.”

How do the best entrepreneurs get to where they are?

One of the biggest misconceptions about success is that it exists in a straight line. To get to the top, you have to be willing to persevere and endure real setbacks and failures in order to achieve what’s truly satisfying.

So we asked our coaches to tell us the most common mistake entrepreneurs make. Here’s their advice on how to make the rise to the top a little less painful.

1. Your breakdowns from the past are your best education for the future.

Often, entrepreneurs think they have to have all the answers and they don’t want a team because they’re in fear mode. They’ve had things that didn’t work in the past but they don’t realize those are their best lessons for the future. It’s what makes you stronger.

The moment you try to do everything yourself, entrepreneurship becomes lonely and stressful. Put yourself in an environment where you can be true to yourself, and stop taking yourself so seriously. Be who you were made to be.

2. You don’t have to do everything.

Don’t make the mistake of feeling like you have to do and know everything.

Most entrepreneurs have big ambitions while their capabilities are actually quite specific, so it’s about finding the people who can help support you in achieving your goals. This is the key to a successful, thriving business.

3. Build relationships with people outside of your industry.

It’s critical to connect with people outside of your day-to-day—it keeps your thinking fresh. The best ideas, in relation to growing your business and your life, often come from people completely outside of your realm and competitive space.

The more successful you become, the more alone you can feel, so find a community of entrepreneurs and highly successful people you can rely on during these times.

4. Manage your business instead of your business managing you.

If you want more freedom in your business, don’t let yourself get caught up in the things that don’t give you energy or excite you. If you’re the creator of new ideas and concepts, and you’re trying to reach new levels of success but your organization is what’s holding you back—then your business is managing you.

Ask yourself when you really want and need to be involved in your business.

Do you want a Self-Managing Company? Download your copy of Dan Sullivan’s 60-minute ebook for the mindsets necessary to making this happen.

5. Don’t be overly optimistic about the future.

It doesn’t pay to be overly optimistic about how you think things are going to turn out. There will always be dips and valleys along the way, and if you don’t plan for the valleys, you’ll never get to the high peaks. Be prepared for things to go wrong, because often, they will.

Expect it, don’t beat yourself up, and relish the peaks when you’re on them. When you make the time to celebrate your accomplishments, your team will always regard you as a grateful leader.

6. Build your dream team.

When you start your own business, you have to handle a lot of things in order to survive. But there’s also a point when that becomes a limiting factor.

Take the time to think about what your dream team would look like and what it would mean for your business to be fully leveraged and supported. When it’s manageable, start putting those team members in place.

A team no longer has to look like a certain number of people in an office. There’s so much variety to what a team can look like today. If you’re clear on what you do well and how you need to be leveraged, you can be creative with regard to what kind of team works best for you.

7. Find out what you love to do and do best.

In order to grow, it’s vital to get clear on your own set of natural talents. It’s when you start spending time in this area that work begins to feel like play.

Learn to focus on your strengths and delegate your weaknesses—this is what joy really feels like.

8. Take care of yourself.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make in growing their businesses is not prioritizing time off—all they do is work.

You can’t be truly creative when you’re working all the time. It’s essential to take time away from your business and make sure you’re taking care of your well being.

Our biggest and most rewarding successes often come out of the failures we’ve experienced along the way, so lean in to those. Recognize how unique your journey’s been and use that to distinguish yourself. Real change comes from realizing that all success is a sequence of ups and downs that we have to learn from.