By Books Author Denise Turney

As sweet as dreams are, it takes more than a dream to be a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs must have vision, tenacity, hope, agility, flexibility, endurance, and heroic determination. They must truly believe in what they want to do. If there’s doubt, the doubt cannot be prolonged. In a nutshell, successful entrepreneurs must have more than a dream, a lot more.

How Entrepreneurs Succeed from Within

Here are 10 must haves if you’re eager to create a rewarding life as an entrepreneur. See how many you already possess. Identify which of these must haves you’d do well to work on obtaining.

Clarity – Who doesn’t want to succeed? Regardless of your childhood programming, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that you don’t set out to fail. Yet, as notable as the desire to succeed is, it’s not enough to see you across the finish line. You need clarity, a strikingly clear vision of what you want to achieve. All the better if the vision surfaces to your consciousness from deep within you. The clearer your vision — your goal — the more motivating the vision or goal can be. The less clear the goal, the easier it is to get sidetracked, confused, and frustrated. Write about your goal. Listen to music that aligns with what you want to achieve. Sit still and meditate if you must. Just move forward with clarity.

Hope – Can a dream exist absent hope? That may be impossible. But you can’t just have hope at the start of a dream. No. Hope must remain. It must be there during the most painful challenges and setbacks. There must be hope even when you’re thinking about throwing in the towel. Like a riverbed, despite how your business, products, or services go, there must be hope.

Want to Entrepreneurial Winnings? You’ve Got to Believe

If you don’t believe in yourself or think that you don’t deserve goodness, it’ll be hard to succeed. And even if you do succeed, that success might be short lived if you don’t have the following two elements.

Faith – Call it trust, if you must. Just don’t move forward without faith (or trust). Should you get off to a victorious start, pulling in record sales and profits, if you want longevity as a successful entrepreneur, you’ll need faith. Why? A wealth of analytics, combined with a team of skilled analysts, won’t eliminate dark spots. Numbers and data won’t save you from experiences when you don’t know what to do now or next. That’s when the only element that will keep you advancing is faith.

Commitment – Entrepreneurs do what they do because they love what they do. Loving what they do allows them to be committed to their goals. It’s what keeps them committed to enduring success. Commitment fuels entrepreneurs’ efforts to continue developing new, improved products and services. Fortunately, consumers can spot commitment. When they do pick up that a business owner is committed to what they’re doing – offering the public – consumers respect the people behind the business, the developers of products and services that they, consumers, enjoy and support.

Successful Entrepreneurs Build Smart Teams

Although relationships might seem like an external element, they aren’t. Healthy, rewarding relationships are built from the love, care, and thoughtfulness that’s within you. Soon you’ll see how important relationships and courage are to your success.

Relationships – What is life without relationships? To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to establish smart relationships. At the start of your career, you might attend three to four networking events a week, building smart relationships. Later in your career, you might peel back on attending networking events but not to the point where you attend less than a large networking event once a month. However, you don’t stop at building relationships. You invest time in nurturing existing relationships, and not just with customers, but with family and friends too.

Courage – Introverted or extroverted, successful entrepreneurs are bold. If they feel fear, they don’t let it stop them. Yes. Rather than stop, they stir up courage and press forward. Admittedly, it’s not always easy to access courage, especially if you’ve been overcome with worry for several weeks. For you, accessing courage might require prayer, meditation, walking in nature, blessings counting, listening to deep success tapes, journaling, and dare I say it – faith.

Supporting Successful Entrepreneurs

Although entrepreneurs might spend a lot of time alone, to achieve their goals, they build smart teams. They bounce ideas off team members, seeking insight, feedback, and advice. Another thing they do is to sharpen their imagination, the heart of creative endeavors. Check out the below on support and imagination.

Imagination – At the core of product and service development is creativity, and at the heart of creativity is imagination. Build imagination by opening your mind and allowing ideas to surface without judging or silencing them. Writing in a journal is another effective way to strengthen your imagination. Let your inner child have fun. That decision could fuel the creation of more products and services, developments that keep you in the consumer mind, developments that keep increasing your sales and profits.

Support – Akin to relationships, to succeed as an entrepreneur, you need support. You must have support. No one achieves lasting or enduring success alone. Accept emotional and psychological support from family and friends. Avoid digging so deep into your work that you end up pushing people away. Also, support others. After all, to have friends you must be a friend. That shared, support may also come from other business owners. These people know firsthand about challenges you face. They’re familiar with the ups and downs of starting and running your own business. Because of this, they can be among your greatest supporters.

Determination is an Entrepreneur’s Friend

Without determination, you could fold when life in this world gets hard. Yet, determination by itself is not sufficient. Want to build a successful career, read the following on the importance of valuing your health and living a determined life.

Health – Managing a business, including a solopreneur organization, takes energy. Gaining and maintaining good health requires you to make good food, beverage, sleep, and exercise decisions. Therefore, you need to set strong love-based boundaries to avoid slipping into workaholism. Love-based boundaries also keep you away from getting out of balance.

Determination – It’s going to take strong determination to have enduring success. You must be determined to win to get your dreams over the top and keep them above the bar. Blend the above elements and you may discover that you’re more determined than you think.

Regardless of where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, to experience continued success, you’ll need to get to know yourself better. Keep digging within. Love yourself and give yourself permission to awaken. Working with journals, prompts that support your inner explorations, and writings that prompt you toward deeper thought, may also prove helpful. Do the work, gain the above elements, and celebrate and enjoy your success!