I have received numerous questions about what things would help new, budding entrepreneurs get off to a great start. These are some tips, tricks, habits, and principles that have helped me achieve my goals. I can’t promise they will all work for you, but hopefully a few of them will. Take notes, try a few, and research more to try.

I wish I would have had a beginner’s How To Entrepreneur Handbook when I was much younger. I would likely have never chosen to work a day in my life for someone else, or in a career that sucked my soul through my teeth. I cannot blame anyone else but myself for the time I wasted doing other things I thought I was supposed to do because that’s what society always told me to do. My actions are mine alone.

Just know that if you decide to go into entrepreneurship there are only two speeds. Not at all, or all in. There is no halfway. You will have to learn that your failures are yours alone but that’s a gift because they are also your experiences to learn and grow from. That being said, don’t ever take advice from someone else about what to do with your life. They don’t have to deal with the consequences from action or inaction in your life. You do.

Most of the things I talk about are common sense things that most of us neglect to do because we are not focused on them. That’s where building habits come into play. Most of us have good and bad habits. You seem them demonstrated everywhere. Your sibling may drink a ton of water and run everyday but she smokes a pack of cigarettes a day as well. The way to eliminate bad habits or habits that aren’t giving much back to us is not to focus on them and try to stop cold turkey. By focusing on them, we are going to inevitably do that habit more because we are focusing on it. The Law of Attraction is that what you focus on, you receive more of. If you focus on shit, you receive shit. If you focus on your bad habit, you’ll succumb to it more often.

Instead, I advise clients to start SLOWLY adding one or two positive, good habits, that are going to help you. This could be sleeping the hours that your body needs to function on a daily basis, drinking enough water, eating fruits and vegetables, exercising daily, etc. It could also be reading for thirty minutes in a self-development or business book a day, listening to one podcast centered around growth a day, or going to a conference that can benefit your life quarterly. You pick your habit because at the end of the day, you have to live with the results your habits bring.

What are your current goals that you are working to achieve? Your habits should be something that help you build on accomplishing those goals. If your goal is to lose ten pounds in three months then you should start incorporating habits like logging your food into a food tracker, eating healthier, exercising regularly, seeking out a personal trainer and/or nutritionist, etc.

One way I have found that has been the easiest way to build good habits and track my dedication and consistency with those habits is a habit tracker. The only way to build an effective habit is to take an action so many times that it literally forms as a habit and you no longer have to focus or tell yourself to do it each day.

I build my own habit tracker in my moleskin journal I carry with me wherever I go. I use a graph and each habit is colored a different color. I color in a square everyday that I perform that habit. When I check the consistency of my habit over time, I can tell just by seeing long streaks of color if I am solidifying this action as a habit. If it becomes a habit (i.e. three or more months of unbroken string of color across the page) then I can remove it from the list because I no longer have to actively focus on making it a part of my day. I can add more habits I wish to develop in its place or focus harder on the ones I already have. It’s totally customizable and that’s one of my favorite things.

Now, as I suspect, many of you just shuddered at the mere thought of toting around a physical book to write stuff down in. This is the modern age isn’t it?? Why the heck would I need to carry around a freaking journal?! And to that I say, to each their own. I prefer hand-written material because it’s less likely for me to delete the reminder, hit the snooze button, or delete it completely from my life. I have to stare at that hand written reminder everyday I look at the page and if I don’t do it, it’s as if I have broken a promise to myself.

For those of you who are loving modern technology and have no interest in the old handwritten methods, I can tell you that a quick query of the keywords “habit tracker” in any app store on any phone will provide you with a whole host of apps available that can provide you with some form of habit tracker. As to the effectiveness, costs, or operation of the apps I cannot advise. I have never tried any of them myself so I cannot recommend any particular app.

If you’re looking for more information on developing daily successful habits and a growth mindset, here are a few books you may find useful:

• The Compound Effect – By Darren Hardy
• The Magic of Thinking Big – By David J. Schwartz
• The Slight Edge – By Jeff Olsen
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – By Stephen Covey
• The 8th Habit – By Stephen Covey
• High Performance Habits – By Brendon Burchard