Entrepreneurship is a very exciting career prospect. It screams of liberty, choices, power and freedom. Hence, it should come as no surprise that the entrepreneurial craze is strong and growing steadily, amongst the millennial population of the world. However, every career prospect has its ups and downs. For every successful entrepreneurial story that you have heard there are at least a hundred, if not thousand failures, that loom in the shadows of these success stories. Being an entrepreneur is great. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a very, very liberating career choice but there is a certain discipline to it even that most entrepreneurs fail to respect. A successful entrepreneur is a focused entrepreneur. Their goal is their only guiding principle. Regardless of the distractions and deviations that come across their path, they succeed. How? Because a successful entrepreneurs know the importance of ‘staying on track’!

All entrepreneurial stories aren’t the same yet, they share certain common deviations and distractions that can shake the confidence of a young entrepreneur. Let’s now take a look at how to successfully overcome these so-called ‘deviations and distractions’

1. Failures: Every successful human being, be it an entrepreneur, a celebrity or sporting champion face failures multiple times in their lives. What separates a successful individual from an unsuccessful individual is how one copes with these failures. One’s mindset is extremely important in dealing with failures. One has to be strong and has to look at a failure as something that’s temporary in nature but something that brings in valuable lessons. Failures have a certain motivating factor attached to them. When faced with failure, use it as fuel to fire you up and accelerate your strive towards growth, learning and all-around success.

2. People Management: Entrepreneurs are stereotypically taken to be loggerheads. The extreme perceptions can be “They are mean, abrasive people who do not care about their employees”. If that’s the kind of entrepreneur that you are, something needs to be done to spark a change. A successful entrepreneur has to focus on not only their goals but also focus on holistic people development. People management is a very important skill to an entrepreneur. It’s imperative for one to understand and fully comprehend the value that people bring to your organization. They are the real assets of your organization; they are the reason behind an entrepreneur’s success. Investing in people management means investing in employee development by undertaking training, coaching and self-development classes that enhance employee skills and thereby, indirectly add more value to your organization.

3. Micromanagement: An inexperienced entrepreneur often likes to assert authority wherever possible for the simple fact that, such authority and power is new to them. This inherent entrepreneurial problem is called micromanagement. Micromanagement is a leadership or management style wherein the manager or leader looks over all the work done by their subordinates in detail. A major drawback with this management style is that managers waste a lot of their time and energy catering to non-crucial business factors. Young entrepreneurs in particular are susceptible to implementing this kind of management style. To overcome this ‘distraction’, it’s important to develop a strong, capable and trustworthy second-line of management to whom delegation of work and authority can be given with utmost confidence. By doing so, entrepreneurs allow themselves to focus on the critical business issues that really matter and ‘stay on track’.

4. Poor Learning Attitude: Having the ‘know-it-all’ attitude is cancerous for an entrepreneur. Correcting a poor attitude is perhaps one of the hardest and yet, most important challenge as it involves a great degree of introspection. A successful entrepreneur needs to have a positive outlook towards life accompanied by a great attitude towards learning. Knowledge is an endless body and an entrepreneur should never under undermine its value.

5. Narrow-minded Approach: With a view of earning profits, entrepreneurs often lose track of their long-term goals. This has a detrimental impact on the growth of their organization. While profits to a business are extremely important, the long-term growth and health of a company is equally important, if not more important. An organization is more than just its profits. It’s measures by its contribution to its stakeholders and society, equally. The long-term goals in an organization are always more important than the short-term ones and that’s something that every entrepreneur has to understand and learn. All entrepreneurs start from ground zero. Through tireless struggle and hard-work, they build themselves up along with their companies. It’s a glorious profession, if one performs and succeeds. To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have discipline, tact, knowledge, a good attitude, perseverance and passion.

It’s these very virtues that ensure that an entrepreneur remains on track of their entrepreneurial journey despite all the distractions and deviations.