28 Feb The 9 Habits of Highly Effective Business Owners

If you want to be successful and effective in your business and life in general, learn what others do to achieve this perfect balance.  Follow successful people actions and see what they do.  There’s a good chance that if you follow these ‘successful’ habits, you will have the life that you want in years to come.

1) Wake up early every day.

95% of successful CEO’s or business owners wake up early every day.  Some examples include: Jack Dorsey (Twitter) who is up from 5am, Tim Cook (Apple) is up at the gym at 4.30am and Richard Branson who is up at 5.45am every day.  Even if you don’t consider yourself a morning person, making the effort to start the day early, really puts you in the best position to conquer the day ahead.

2) Write down your goals.

Whether you write down your daily, monthly or even yearly goals, this habit still applies.  Why?  Because it’s the physical action of actually writing down your goals that makes them effective.  To just ‘think’ about your goals does not give you the strength and motivation to achieve your goals, whereas bringing something physical into the world does.

3) Practise a good work ethic.

You’re not born with a good work ethic, instead its actually learnt by developing and achieving, one small step at a time.  When you make a small effort, results breed success.  Over time, each step that you take to achieve a good work ethic, become habits over time.  Keep practising.

4) Exercise every day.

The human body is an amazing machine, if it notices that you are exercising, it will automatically create more energy to compensate for the needs required.  After all, our bodies are built to move, so treat yours well and you will be rewarded by the extra energy that your body will provide you to get you thru the day.

5) Read books often.

Most of us average 1-2 books a year if we’re lucky, and we usually blame the lack of time to being the reason for not reading more.  In contrast, the average effective (and busy) CEO or business owner reads at least one self-improvement book a month. They acknowledge that they do not know everything, so reading to them is a great source of learning so that they can be more effective in both their work and personal lives.  They find the time!

6) Plan every week on Sunday.

Highly effective people plan their week ahead to ensure that their valuable time is not robbed by other outside influences each week.  They instead, plan to execute their plans and move forward with their businesses every week. Each week, they look back upon the week that was and look for things that they should stop, things that they need to start and things that they need to continue with.  Without planning the week ahead, we all too often get to the end of the week, feeling as though we achieved nothing thru the week, except to put out fires.

7) Remain positive and practise gratitude.

Practise your positive self-talk every day, appreciating what you have and what you are trying to achieve.  By focusing on something regularly only amplifies it, so focus on gratitude and appreciation of what you have around you every day.

8) Surround yourself with mentors.

Mentors can simply be people who you respect for their opinions and their own position in life.  For example, you might have a good friend who is excellent with money management, if so, seek their advice around money management issues.  Being surrounded by likeminded people who you consider mentors to you, helps you achieve the life that you want.  So basically, surround yourself with people who you consider hold similar thoughts and values to yourself and learn from them every day.  They are your mentors.

9) Great nutrition and sleep

Eating well, gives you energy.  Eating poor highly processed food steels energy from your body every time that you eat it, which in turn leaves you lacking energy just to get you thru the day and it’s the same with sleep.  Most highly successful people appreciate good sleep, often 8 hours or more.  Depriving yourself of sleep does not give your body enough time to regenerate and restock its energy systems.

This article was inspired by Rob Dial, the Mindset Mentor.