What are the habits that you have and are they productive or are they just keeping you busy? Your success depends on the routine you follow and whether or not it is set in the right direction. The most successful entrepreneurs have habits that can be credited as the reason behind their continual achievements.

Here are the top 10 habits of very successful entrepreneurs:

1. Service: The ultra-successful entrepreneurs come from a place of service, and what they are trying to do is make an impact on the lives of people. So, you should schedule your activities not just for financial reasons but in order to have a positive effect on the society and the people around you.
2. State: Along with the state of their mindset, they have their health, vibrancy and energetic state in the highest levels. So, it gives them the energy and resilience to manage and deal with high-stress obstacles in their journey.
3. Self-aware: As they dedicate time to evaluate themselves, they are aware of their strengths and weaknesses. If there are gaps, they invest their time in self-development for a continuous personal growth.
4. Strive: They are goal-oriented, and very clear on what they want, what success is for them and their process to get to where they want to be.
5. Standards: Successful entrepreneurs have a set of standards and after they put it in place, they don’t compromise it. They follow it and raise the bar to a very high level.
6. Strategic: Making flippant choices or having their decisions squandered is not something that the uber-successful entrepreneurs do. Their decisions and actions are strategic and it aims to push their mission and vision in the right path.
7. Search: They constantly search for opportunities to grow and their desire to be better is continuous. You will find them looking for new and better ways to serve.
8. Survey: They survey internally and externally to get feedback. So, they look at their business and customer continuously. The information helps them move up.
9. Support: The most successful entrepreneurs always have mentors who help them avoid pitfalls with the help of real and related experiences of their own.
10. Schedule: They schedule everything—from achievements to success—so that it is all in place and has been calendared. Everything is planned and assigned a date.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution, the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize for more impact, more time and more income.

And welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this episode, we’re going to keep going along the lines. The last episode was a little bit longer and I am going to try to keep it a little shorter this time but I hope that you found The Ladder of Achievement and The Achievement Ladder helpful because it’s really about that process that starts to drive things from goal setting to goal getting.

But in this episode, I’m going to talk about the 10 key habits that the most successful entrepreneurs and people have. I’m going to walk you through that process and we’re going to talk a little bit about habits although I talked about it in an earlier episode but that’s the key.

And we’re going to talk about The Habit Builder and if you want to get The Habit Builder, just go to MelABraham.com/session052 or just text me. Text me at MYLEGACY one-word MYLEGACY 38470. I’ll make sure I send you the download link so you can get access to that tool, to The Habit Builder.

And I’ll see you back here right after this brief introduction. See you here. Bye.

Alright, welcome back. I’m Mel Abraham the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy and welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. And it’s going to be cool to really talk about this because I want to talk about habits. I want to talk about,

• What is the difference maker?
• Why is it that some people are able to accomplish their goals, to get what they really want in life?

And I think it comes down to routines and habits. That’s the bottom line. And the question that I have for you is,

What habits do you have?
Are they productive habits?
Are they habits that are moving you towards what you want?

Or

Are they busy habits: Things like surfing the internet and doing things like that, or playing on your phone or sitting around watching TV?

It’s been said that the average American watches 4 hours of TV every day; 4 hours every day. We got to look at how we use our time and the kind of habits that we have, the kind of habits that we create to see what we can do to shift our results.

Now, I talked about habits in a prior episode. It was Episode 34. If you haven’t gone through that episode, make sure you go through that episode. I’m going to touch one some of the concepts from there really quickly here but I go much deeper in episode 34.

So, go back to episode 34 on habits. It’s going to talk about some of the elements of habits in that context but what I want to talk about here—once I summarize that—is the 10 habits of the most successful entrepreneurs. What really is driving them?

So, when we talked about habits, we talked about The Habit Loop. This was something; it was a concept that was introduced in the book, The Power of Habit. If you have not got this book, make sure you get it, make sure you read it.

I know a lot of people get books and they don’t read it. There’s a habit that you need to think about is start reading. Read a book a week, a book a month, something. Think about the knowledge that you would soak in if you made that a habit. And so, what he talks about, Charles Duhigg, in the … and I hope I pronounced his name correctly.

In The Power of Habit, he talks about something called The Habit Loop and what he says is that there’s typically a Cue—this is the initiator, this is the driver. There’s something that gets you to move forward into doing something. It initiates an action or a habit or a routine or a set of patterned responses, if you will, by some trigger.

• It could be walking in the door.
• It could be an emotional state.
• It could be a location.

Have you ever … you go back to a location where maybe you and your loved one, your spouse, your significant other; where you first met, where you fell in love. I know with me, with Stefanie, we actually met—believe it or not—we met in an airport, in the San Francisco airport one morning, early morning. I know the gate and when I go to the gate, it sends me because I travel in and out of San Francisco a lot.

There’s a trigger there because it still takes me back to that moment, to that day that her and I met, and when you have those kinds of things there is a cue in that and if we understand the cue, we can then either

• Shift the cue
• Change the cue
• Add a cue
• Delete the cue

Do something to affect the habits but that cue triggers a Routine and from there that routine is the set of patterned responses. It’s what we do repeatedly after that cue.

Sometimes, you’ll go in (maybe it’s travelling). I used to be that. I would get into a hotel room and I’d automatically order room service. That was something about that cue. Now, I wanted to break that because it really wasn’t a healthy thing to do that. If I wasn’t hungry, eat properly. So, I shifted that habit.

And I’m telling you this to understand what he talks about in the book and to realize that when we get conscious of our routines, when we get conscious of what triggers the routine, and what the routine is; we can then start then to adjust and tweak it.

But a lot of times, we’re completely unconscious to the habits that we have and we’re unconscious to the triggers or the cues that we have.

And then he talks about the Reward. Typically what’s happening when we’re moving through a habit, through a routine, a set of patterned responses is this element of a reward. It’s what we gain from the habit. It’s why we do it.

And habits can be positive; habits can be negative. You could be a smoker, you could be all kinds of things that are negative, that there’s still some sort of personal gain that comes out of it that will be driven by it.

So, the question then is what is the reward when it comes down to that habit?

So, these are the three primary things that they talk about in The Power of Habit, and if we can control any three of those, we have the ability to adjust and tweak the habits or manipulate; if you will; the habits

• To allow us to be more successful,
• To allow us to accomplish what it is we want,
• To allow us to elevate ourselves at a different level.

By understanding:

• What is the initiator and what’s the driver?
• What’s the set of patterned responses in interrupting that pattern?
• And what’s the reward, the gain that maybe I can substitute something more positive in its place for.

Now, when we look at this, I thought about it and I go, the challenge with this is: It’s great to understand it. I added one more piece to this framework because I think that it’s important for us to understand if we’re really going to change and shift our habits.

And that is what I call the Reflection period. If I become self-aware, I need to become self-aware through reflection. I need to become self-aware of

• What the trigger is,
• What the cue is as he calls it in the book,
• What the routine, the set pattern is, and
• What the rewards

And through a reflection process it is our moment where we could shift and change. When I acknowledge that, when I walk into that hotel room and I’m picking up the phone to order room service; that cue and I say, “Um, I got to turn that off, we’re going to shift and we’re going to do something positive.”

So, what do I do?

– I go on, I get changed and I go down to the gym instead.

So, now I’ve adjusted that cue so now when I go to a hotel, I typically want to go work out. And so what I did is I redirected by reflecting on what the trigger was, and adjusted the trigger; adjusted the reward and the trigger in the process, and in-between the routine shifted and changed.

So, I think what we need to do with our habits is to look at it from that context.

• Be aware of the triggers that we have in our life.
• Be aware of the cues that come in.
• Be aware of the set pattern of responses that seem to go unconsciously because that’s just the way we’re running our lives.

We’re all running fast, we’re all running hard—I totally get it.

• But what are the patterns that are not serving you?
• What are the patterns that are serving you?

And let’s figure out,

• How we can continue the patterns that serve me,
• Bring more patterns in that to serve me and
• Eliminate the patterns that don’t serve me.

But the only way to that is through reflection, is to be able to understand:

• What is going on?
• Why it is going on (which is the reward piece)?
  (What’s going on is the routine)
• And then the trigger.

So, the process I kind of talked through is this concept of The Habit Builder and like I said, you can download that at MelAbraham.com/session052 to get that.

But first is to be specific and intentional in defining what your cue is. By defining what the cue is and this is what I did with the hotel room. I had that cue and it was originally triggering of the patterned response of ordering room service.

Now, I said, “No, this is my cue for me to get changed, and go and work out at the gym.” Define the cue, and I’m not going to take you through the details that I did in episode 34. Go back to episode 34 because I want to get to the 10 habits of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Define your reward and make sure that there’s an Expectation Association with this. Now, what I mean by that is having positive expectancy associated with the outcome. What is that association that you’ve created in that process?

And last is a Belief Community. In other words, I want to surround myself with people that support the habits that I want to create. If I’m trying to break a bad habit but I’m hanging around a lot of people that have that bad habit, I’m not going to say it’s impossible; it is going to be a little more difficult.

So, I want you to download The Habit Builder but I want you to download The Habit Builder and I want you to use it to start to create the habit. Some of the habits that are the 10 most successful habits of entrepreneurs which I want to touch on now.

So, let’s get to it. It’s what I call The Entrepreneurial Ten.

And I’ve had a chance to spend a lot of time. If it weren’t first me being an entrepreneur for decades; 3+ decades as an entrepreneur working with boards of directors, working with my clients and my high-level mentoring clients, and strategic work, working in my workshops.

I’ve had a chance to see what happens and I’ve been able to dissect what I think are the 10 typical habits of very successful entrepreneurs. And we’re talking about entrepreneurs that could be mom-and-pop shops that are solopreneurs, thoughtpreneurs (as I call them). They’re doing some of the things with their expertise to a large company, large scale companies like people like Tony Hsieh, Gary Erickson (the founder of Clif Bar). Tony Hseih with Zappos and even some that aren’t with us any more: Steve Jobs.

What are their habits?

And so, what I want to take you through is these 10 habits and as we go through them, what I invite you to do is to focus on what, “not only do I have it in my life” but score yourself. Rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. And if on a scale of 1 to 10, your average score is less than an 8, we got some work to do. Alright. So, score it on a scale of 1 to 10 as we go through this.

The first habit is Service. Those entrepreneurs that are ultra-ultra-successful, they come from a place of service. They come from a place of making an impact. They come from a place of making a difference.

How is it in your life?

• The things that you’re trying to do,
• The things that you’re trying to create,
• The things that you’re trying to build,

Is it from a place of service?
At what level is that?

I know that I feel totally honored and blessed to have the opportunity to do the things that I’m doing. To be able to speak to you. To be able to share my time with you. To do this in a way that for me is one of the greatest gifts in my life. To be able to serve at that level and to have that impact because I see what it has done for the people that I’ve worked with. Directly for the people that I’ve worked with and indirectly.

In fact, I just had someone post a YouTube video just the other day talking about some of the elements in the book: in The Entrepreneur’s Solution and everything. And I say, “That’s what energizes me”. And granted, yeah, I make a living out of it. But I make a living doing a lot of different things. So it’s not just this. So, this allows to me to be of service.

But at the same time, I look at my beautiful wife and here she is leading an incredible sales team. She has been responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of sales. She’s been doing it for decades. She says she is a child protégé.

But she’s been doing it for decades and she’s been incredible at it, and the reason I believe she is so incredible—it’s not only because she is intelligent and smart and articulate and she understands, she’s in the medical field, so, she understands the science but she comes from a place of service.

Her team is like her family and she’s there to serve them. She wants to see them grow and that’s her sole focus. She wants to see the doctors that she serves grow and that is a big deal.

So, what is it with you?

• Is it coming from a place of service?
• What’s your score on a scale of 1 to 10?

If it’s below 8 we need to find something because that’s going to drive passion.

Here’s the second one that I found is they manage their State, and when I’m talking about state, I’m not just talking about psychology which is absolutely imperative. I talk about mindset a fair amount. Getting the mindset right is huge but I’m also talking about

• Your health
• Your fitness
• Your vibrancy
• Your energetic state

All of that has an impact on your ability to succeed. Fact of the matter is that as an entrepreneur we are in high-stress positions. We’re constantly dealing with obstacles, challenges and issues that come up, and we need to be resilient enough, we need to have the capacity internally enough, to be resilient enough:

• To withstand those,
• To navigate those,
• To be able to think through them.

So, I need to be real sharp in the mind, I need to be real healthy in the body, I need to have the energy and the vibrancy to continue to go and do this thing for the right reasons in the right way.

The third is being Self-Aware. Being aware of my strengths and weaknesses. A lot of them will be self-ware. They’ll take the time to evaluate themselves, look at things differently, and see maybe, they need to develop themselves and they spend the time with self-development and personal development and they want to continually grow. So, being self-aware is another one of the keys.

Now again, I ask you on these last two keys,

Where are you?
How often do you reflect on what you’ve been doing?
How you’ve been showing up and the kinds of things that you’ve done?

Remember, I talk about the three R’s in some of the other episodes that we do every 90 days of reflecting and reflecting is huge about self-awareness. So, we need to build that in if we intend to grow is to become self-aware.

And then the fourth here is to Strive. Very goal-oriented.

• They’re very clear on what they want.
• They’re very clear on what the definition of success is.
• They’re very clear on the process to get there.

And we go to this. This is what I call Standards. The entrepreneurs that I’ve analyzed, that I’ve worked with, that I’ve dealt with; they have a set of standards. It is “A Team” and that’s it. They’ll set the standard; they will not compromise and what do you stand for?

You’ve heard me ask that question over and over again.

• What do you stand for?
• How are you going to show up?
• What is this standard you’re going to bring in your life?

And I would tell you that society needs a higher standard. That’s just me. I believe that we need a higher standard. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We need to raise the bar of what we’re doing, how we’re showing up to make a difference in people’s lives; that’s what we’re doing.

It’s not about selling sunglasses or products or anything like it. It’s about shifting their lives and

What is the standard that you aspire to?
What is the standard that you have set not only for you, for those around you?
That non-compromising threshold that you will never ever go below.
And have you communicated affectively?

And those entrepreneurs that are ultra-ultra-uber-successful, they set a standard and they will not compromise. Now, some people say that they’re (pardon the expression) hard-asses about it but if you intend to be one of the best, if you intend to set a standard and set a threshold, well you then you got to be married to it. You cannot compromise on it.

Another way to look at it is: What are their values?

I talk about it a lot, driven by values and vision, values and vision.

Then the sixth one is they’re Strategic in all the choices they make.

• They don’t make flippant choices.
• They don’t squander their decisions.

They make a lot of decisions each and every day. So, being strategic to think it through and ask the the questions about:

• What is the pattern?
• Where does this take me?
• What is it going to do next?
• How does it affect this next step?

And think, just like a chess game, 3 or 4 moves ahead. Look at the alternatives and be strategic in every choice and every decision that you make and those that are not strategic and not in alignment, one with the standards that you set, the values that you set, the vision that you set and not in alignment with your purpose and your mission, then they should fall by the wayside and decisions we probably shouldn’t be making.

So, making all choices and decisions strategically in a way that

• Maximizes your upside,
• Maximizes your ability to get results, and
• Minimizes the risk.

Then we have: They’re constantly in Search.

• Search for opportunities.
• Search for growth opportunities.
• Search for more in the way of their own personal growth, and
• They’re on a constant, constant search.

How can I do this better?
How can I be better?
How can I serve my team better?
How can I serve the customers better?

And it is this constant desire to be better and they’re on this journey of search.

Then I think that this goes back to this self-awareness piece. They’re constantly Surveying. They’re surveying themselves and saying, “How did I do that?”

• But they’re also surveying the environment.
• They’re surveying the landscape.
• They’re surveying the customers.

They’re looking at the team and they’re willing to listen to the feedback to see what’s going on. And through that process they can then look at it and say, “I need Support.”

Now, a lot of times support comes in the form of a team but what I want to talk about here is what I’ve noticed with the ultra-uber-successful entrepreneurs is not just the team.

Because we are all … I am successful because of my team. I am successful because of my family, because of my son, because of his fiancé, because of my wife and because of all the great friends and colleagues that I have out there; that are supporting me and pushing me and energizing me to stay on test, stay on this mission and continue to do this—that is absolutely true.

But I’m going to talk about mentors and I did a whole another episode on mentors. I want you to make sure you find that episode and listen to that because there’s a whole kind of, there’s different—4 types of mentors that you can get, and you got to get the right one for the right reasons at the right time.

But all of the top entrepreneurs have mentors.

• Do you have mentors?
• Do you have life mentors?
• Do you have business mentors?
• Do you have relationship mentors?

Do you have the right mentors in your life right now to step-it-up; to raise the standard, to raise the bar? And if you don’t, let’s find them. Let’s find them and let’s get them in your life because in 12 months working with the right mentor, stuff will be different.

So, and that leads to the last piece and this is the one thing that I saw over and over and over again.

They Schedule stuff. They schedule their success. They don’t look at success as some complacent accomplishment that comes over time. It is scheduled. Now may be we don’t achieve the same success on schedule but what they have done is they have calendared it. They’ve planned for it. They set it in place and they’ve done it based upon all the other 9 elements that I have here.

So, let me ask you this, “Have you scheduled your success for this year? Have you figured out what success looks like for you?”

And I’m not talking about just financial. Financial is certainly one of them but health-wise, relationship-wise, spiritually, emotionally; all those things.

• Have you defined what that is?
• And have you scheduled it?

So, here’s what I’m going to invite you to do. Now these are the 10 that have found. I call it The Entrepreneurial Ten. These are the things that, the traits and the habits that I see, that exists in the ultra-successful entrepreneurs.

And here’s what I’m going to invite you to do. Go back to The Habit Builder. And take each one of these 10 and design the habit that you need to create in your life to bring each and every one of these up to an 8 or above.

Think about it. If I was coming from a place of service, I was managing my state at a level of my vibrancy, my energy, my psychology and all of that at a level that was above an 8,

What would that do for me?
How energized would I be?
What energy would I bring to the accomplishments, the tasks that I’m doing?

Think about this.

If I was self-aware and I set myself for striving and goal-setting and goal-getting and I set standards that were not movable, that were not compromise-able, that were high that I raised the bar; what would that do for me in 12 months’ time?

And then I take those standards and I take that vision and I look at things and say, “Strategically, here’s the choices I need to make.” and I may need to search for opportunities that fit those choices and I’m going to have to value it myself over and over again but I have the support of a bunch of mentors that are at the level of 8 and above, and we’ll schedule it.

What’s going to happen to your life?

Now, you could turn around and say, “Mel, ah this is bunch of hogwash and it’s too much work.”

• Is your life too much work?
• Is your success too much work?
• Is your business too much work?
• Is it too much work to create the life that you and your family and your team and everyone else deserves?

And I would tell you, “No”.

So, take the time. Let’s build The Entrepreneurial Ten. Let’s get these habits. Think about how that’s going to affect and infect your life in a positive way moving forward.

So, I hope that you found this helpful and I wanted to make this one a bit shorter than the last one. The last one was really long but I wanted to give you these, The Entrepreneurial Ten because I think that the more of this we can get in our life, the higher level of these kinds of habits that we can create in our life and I could dig down on each and every one of them and I may in future episodes to tell you exactly how but right now just be conscious of it and start to design it and say, “Where am I on that scale? Where am I on that scale?” and push yourself 8 to 10. Make sure you’re above an 8, make sure you’re above an 8 and stuff will change.

So, I hope that you found this of value to you. Remember to download the habit builder. Go to MelAbraham.com/session052 or just text me MYLEGACY one-word 38470 and I’ll send you the download link and do that.

And do me a favor. These habits work for (we built these habits) it works for anyone. They work for kids. They work for teams. I’ve worked with them with high-level executives and I’ve worked with them with kids at the karate school.

So, share this with a friend, share it with a family, share it with someone that you think this would help them understand that maybe there’s 10 habits. That if they only focused on 10 habits how their life, their business, and everything they do would change.

And if you haven’t done so already and I hope you have, Subscribe. Hit the subscribe button, stay with me because I got a whole lot more stuff coming your way and this is going to be an incredible, incredible year; we’ve got some things planned.

And if you have a question for me that I can help you with, just go to AskMelNow.com and leave me your question there. I’ll make sure that I get it one of the future upcoming episodes of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show.

Again, it’s a blessing to have you here. I feel honored for each and every one of you. The comments that you’re sending me, the notes that you’re sending me, keep them coming. Let me know what’s going on. Let me know what you think and let’s see what I can do to serve you and support you because that is a great gift to me.

So, thanks again and I’ll see you in the next going round and until we do,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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