Selecting the top ten most successful entrepreneurs in the last century is very subjective. Some persons measure importance on net worth alone while others measure how meaningful the entrepreneur’s efforts have grown to be. The finest way to actually select the best group is to mix the two.

Following is a list of ten crazily successful entrepreneurs who are acknowledged as icons all over the world. Their lucrative accounts are nothing short of astonishing and are the material dreams are made of.

1. Bill Gates
2. Michael Dell
3. Larry Ellison
4. Ted Turner
5. Phil Knight
6. Vince McMahon
7. Rupert Murdoch
8. Steve Jobs
9. Oprah Winfrey
10. Martha Stewart

Reaching for the Stars

Why are these persons so successful? Why are they unique? What makes them shine? Whilst the products they present, their private lives, their upbringing and even their business approaches contrast greatly, all of these persons have established empires that will exist for a very long time. They are all self-developed persons that did not use a family name or exclusive favors to find success. They all possess a relentless drive to be successful.

Dreaming the Unachievable Dream

When we observe these persons to understand where their excellence rests and what we should be taught by them, there are some qualities that should be observed. Every one of them are real achievers. “No” simply isn’t an answer they will agree to, if they see something they think has to be “yes.” They are persistent and never renounce on their purpose. If a door closes on them, they simply discover another solution—even if they have to make up that solution!

Making Dreams Come True

Clearly all of these successful entrepreneurs are not inactive ersons, nevertheless very frequently we take this truth for granted. Lots of individuals expect to be a massive success in their business projects without actually working especially hard. None of these individuals are what they are now by resting on their laurels or hoping for someone else to get things done. They sacrificed everything for their business ambitions and lived each breath working to move one step forward. While all successful entrepreneurs are certainly intensely competitive, they are still flexible enough to correct as and when required.

We can all be trained by studying these persons and how they attained the top quantity of success that they did. Not only are these traits significant for business success, but without question are fantastic skills to study and traits to hold to be successful in any expression of life.

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There is no doubt that having fresh, new ideas is one of the important things you have to have if you are creating an innovation effort. With no ideas, after all, there is nothing to work with. But the problem is that almost everyone forgets it takes more than a great idea to create an innovation which is actually valuable.

In addition to ideas, you need to have a program of execution. It is execution that converts an idea into a real product, service, or process. Execution, of course, is where the hard work starts.

The reason people forget this important detail is simple. It’s because the process of generating new ideas is inherently creative. It’s fun, and you get a feeling of accomplishment just because you’ve dreamed up something unique. Everyone has had the experience of an energising brainstorming session, resulting in full whiteboards: you leave the room feeling you’ve accomplished something amazing.

Most of the time, though, nothing further ever happens. People are so satisfied with their work in creating new ideas that they allow themselves to forget there’s still much more to do. Then, when someone else not only has the same idea, but executes it will, there is universal teeth gnashing as people wonder “why didn’t we do that?”. Regret is the order of the day, and it is a lesson hard learned. Especially when the opportunity cost turns out to be significant.

The answer is a systematic focus on execution, and the best way to get that is an innovation program. An innovation program allows creative people to focus on ideas, whilst taking away the detail steps of turning those ideas into something practicable. Creating an innovation program isn’t necessarily simple, but it is an investment that reaps significant and sustained rewards over time. And it is an investment many companies are making these days in order to ensure they remain competitive.

Angel assets are an up-and-coming part of the financial order, similar in significance to venture capital in the Seventies, according to experts in the field. Angel groups are starting to be viewed with importance by the present financial companies.

An important angel investor group is the Band of Angels, a formal assemblage of 100 current and former high-tech executives who put in their time and money into fresh, progressive startup companies. Band members have established reputed companies like Symantec, Logitech, and National Semiconductor.

Angels are characteristically high-net-worth persons or “cashed out” entrepreneurs who are involved in nurturing other entrepreneurs and are vigorously associated with the ventures they support, both pre-funding and post-funding. Recently, a growing number of angels have come together to develop angel groups, with a view toward putting together capital and investment proficiency.  There are an estimated 200 such angel investor organizations in the United States.

Angel investor groups have emerged as important participants in offering equity capital to early-stage ventures. Angels have developed from investing as individuals and at times fashioning informal groups for particular investments, to forming official groups with vigorous venture-capital-like procedures.

With the venture capital society becoming more complicated, angel investor groups have also changed according to the needs of the new situation. A majority of present day angel investors are highly enlightened about investments, due to the presence of experienced angel groups who have common performances.

Any individual angel investor can obtain an immense advantage from the group’s expertise if he decides to become a part of a considerate group of angel investors.

This creates a significant challenge for owners of small and midsize businesses. The problem is simple. Your clients want to pay you in 30 to 60 days, but you must pay rent, payroll and your suppliers now. As you can see, the math does not work. Unless you have a substantial bank account, this leads to an almost impossible situation.

If you are in this situation, it is also very likely that the bank will not be able to help you. As you well know, banks only lend to businesses that have three years of profitable operations and significant hard collateral. If you do not qualify for bank financing, your best bet may be to consider factoring.

Factoring is a business financing tool that helps business owners who cannot afford to wait 30 to 60 days to get paid by their commercial customers. Factoring provides you with the necessary funds to meet payroll, make rent and pay your suppliers on time.

As opposed to bank financing, factoring is easy to qualify for. The main requirements are that you have a profitable business with a strong roster of commercial clients. For the factoring company, your best collateral is the invoices from your strong customers.

Factoring is also easy to use. It enables you receive a substantial portion of your billings within a day of invoicing. It reduces the time you wait to get paid from 60 days to 2 days. The transaction is usually structured as a two installment sale of an invoice. The first installment, called the advance, is paid to you immediately. The advance can be anywhere between 70% and 90% of the gross value of the invoice. The remaining portion (10% – 30%) is held as a reserve to cover disputes and charge backs. The reserve is rebated as soon as the invoice is paid in full.  The factoring company will charge a small fee for this service.

Factoring financing is an ideal tool for companies that are growing and that cannot afford to wait to get paid by the clients. It helps you to stabilize your financial situation and positions you for growth.

The problem with most peoples finances today is that they are not getting enough income to satisfy their needs and wants. People are naturally going to buy things they want even if it means spending more than they have (credit cards), and they know in the back of their minds that they cant afford it, but they will get it anyway. I think people will develop their own budgeting scheme when their income meets their wants then they will be budgeting masters, all by their selves. But till then there will ALWAYS be people in debt no matter how much you preach!

I think a solution to some people money problem is to teach them how to make extra money first, and then teach them how to budget and save it. Americans really don’t want that much; it is the hobbies that get people in trouble, bills, spending too much on golf clubs, car parts, computers, things around the house etc.

I don’t know about you but this is how I feel about life. Right now, I am working a 9 to 5 job making $3200 monthly. I don’t want to be stuck knowing that I will be ‘working’ for the rest of my life, taking orders from bosses, putting up with BS and other peoples attitude, having to get up in the morning when I want to sleep in and that fear of getting fired. Currently, I am in this situation but will not be soon. There are people right now making well over $20,000/monthly working for their selves and they are everyday people that you see walking their dog, in supermarkets or even that person arguing with the McDonalds cashier. If these people ever do go back to work for someone else they can do it “stress free” even if the job is stressful (think about that).

Before, you can work for yourself you have to decide one thing: If you really want that responsibility. If you said yes, you have gotten over the biggest hurdle and you will not be limited to the income your employer is giving you. I know what I am about to say will be over simplistic but I will save the details for you to research on your own. Here is a breakdown

1st: determine if you really want self-employment
2nd: decide what area of business you want or good at.
3rd: If step 2 requires money, their are program out there that can help you get started in internet business, selling or something else before you start in what you want to do. For example, “I want to own a photography shop but it costs $10,000 to get started. Well, if I sell product A for a year I can do it”. You never know, whatever you get into before your dream business may make you $50,000 a month and you may forget all about that photography shop. I can help you here too.
4th Research, research and do more research. Find out what you competition is. Find out how much money they are making. Find out where they are advertising. Find out what it takes to get started. Find out where your customer are etc, etc, etc..research
5th EXECUTE!! I mean once you have confidence go do it.

They say that 90% of home businesses fail for the first time. And you may fail, but all you have to do is try and try again, please don’t give up. Believe me, you will get it right and when you do, you will be very successful. The percentage of people who fail for the second and third time is much lower than the first timers. Well sorry to talk yall half to death, I can go on and on about this stuff.

It is owing to some far more basic fundamental principles which will determine your success or failure at anything you do in life.

They are your A,B,C’s, Attitude, Belief and Consistency. Taking them in reverse order.

Consistency
We get up every morning, we brush our teeth wash, get dressed have breakfast. We are consistent in our actions. We do it every day. We need to do the same in being consistent with our tasks associated with our business for the days that we have chosen we are going to work, be it 1 or 7 days a week. We need the 6 marbles in our left pocket or left side of our bag and transfer 1 marble to the other side every time we have carried out a positive action i.e. seeing a customer, talking to someone about the business, etc. etc. We need to do it consistently. We need to have transferred all 6 marbles (better still 10) by the end of the day. We need to concentrate on the actions not on the result. I’ll repeat that, we need to concentrate on the actions not on the results.

When we go mountain climbing, if we would continually look at the summit we would soon trip up and fall. We need to concentrate on every step at a time, one after the other and as surely as the sun goes down we will reach our summit.

Belief
An absolute and genuine belief in our business, it’s products and services and what it can give it’s customers.

Attitude
Possibly the most important of these three but useless on its own. It’s no good having the best attitude in the world if one’s sitting on one’s own in a closed room not talking to anyone. So what is attitude apart from how one feels about oneself and others. I describe it like this.

Your face is transparent, totally transparent and your attitude shines through whether it’s positive or negative. The first second that a prospective customer sees you maybe even before you see him, your attitude comes through. The customer sees it, maybe only subconsciously and will react accordingly. We all know that the first thing any salesperson has to sell is themselves even before they open their mouth. If they can’t sell themselves they might as well turn round and go home and go back to bed. If they can’t sell themselves they wouldn’t be able to sell packet of peanuts or a Mars bar.

Another description of attitude, when I took my 14 year old daughter recently to Disneyland Paris we went one evening to an aquatic circus. Very unusual, people diving, dancing and somersaulting on water. It was a spectacular show. What made it even more enjoyable (we were sitting on the front row) was the fact that all the performers without exception were obviously really enjoying themselves. They were loving every minute of it and gave it their all. Their attitude really shone through like a beacon and this made our enjoyment total.

So when we get up in the morning and do our consistency things let’s get a really big warm smile from within feeling good about ourselves and keep that all day. When we go about our business we need to keep out good attitude with us. If we can’t also be in the place where we are physically there’s no point being there in the first place. It’s easier to ride a horse in the direction that it’s going.

So those are my 3 all important ingredients that determine one’s success or failure at anything in life.