Habits Of The Highly Effective Entrepreneur

By Rich E Shaw

I have spent countless hours in my college campus library on a daily basis and in the public library, reading about entrepreneurs and writing my notes about how they achieved their successes. Although I graduated with professional degrees and became successful in my career as an educator, speaker, inventor, and a business owner, I wanted to share some keys to success with people around all over the world through the Habits of the Highly Effective Entrepreneur. Habits possess the gateway to success in an attempt to achieve something worthwhile. This book will not only tell you what to do, but it will also illustrate how you can do it! You'll be able to understand how ideas and concepts convert into huge fortunes. I've discovered this book to be one of the most influential books of all time, pointing the way to professional achievement, financial independence, and personal fulfillment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rich E Shaw
• Release date: Oct 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781801283724

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Richard E Shaw III (as known as Rich E Shaw), is an American author, inventor, educator, business analysis and philanthropist.

Prior to becoming a professional writer, he served as a certified high school English teacher, campus administrator, Executive Director, former owner and CFO of Rich Publishing House, Commissioner, business consultant and youth pastor.

Fueled by a desire to improve quality of life for society, he developed the Credit and Debit Receiving Dispensing Device; a device that dispenses items such as snacks, beverages, alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, consumer products and even gold and gems to customers automatically, after the customer inserts credit cards into vending machines in lieu of cash.

Shaw quickly rose to prominence for this development by becoming the recipient of two prestigious Industrial Design Excellence Awards for the Credit and Debit Receiving Dispensing Device. He is also a member of the National Inventors Hall of Fame with several United States Patents; noted him among the alliances of African American Inventors in U.S. history.

For Speaking Engagements and Public Appearances

Contact: Rich Shaw International

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One of the greatest successes of entrepreneurship is to find out what is needed.

-Rich Shaw (Author, Educator, and Inventor)

To the woman that raised me, my beloved grandmother, who demonstrated the value of hard work and dreaming big! As a young lad, I saw dreaming big as part of her inner DNA. Somehow that energy was contagious. I caught it. I started dreaming big! I was handed the race baton in my hands; there I ran in the race of learning the basic fundamentals of life, love, discipline, respect and hard work.

I can still remember hearing her words, Do what you have to do today, so you can do what you want to do tomorrow. I took those words to mean that no tomorrow is greater than the way the day before was spent. Those life experiences changed my life. I must acknowledge the two most important lessons that I learned from the legendary Oprah Winfrey and the award-winning producer and actor Tyler Perry. These lessons propelled me to look inside my other self and learn two major points:

(1) Writing down my experiences can be cathartic!

(2) Not waiting for somebody to green-light my projects, creates my own intersections!

Contents

About The Author..................................i

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Habit 1

Follow Your Gut Instinct.............................

Habit 2

Focus On Service: Target Customer Satisfaction............

Habit 3

Find The Right Fit..................................

Habit 4

Do What You Love!.................................

Habit 5

Build To Last Forever!..............................

Habit 6

Climb Over Your Fears..............................

Habit 7

Be A Smart Negotiator...............................

Habit 8

Make Sound Decisions...............................

Habit 9

Create A Vision Plan................................

Habit 10

Build A Great Team.................................

Habit 11

Master Whatever You Do.............................

Habit 12

Create Your Own Opportunity.........................

Habit 13

Surround Yourself With Smart People....................

Habit 14

Prepare For The Unexpected..........................

Habit 15

Differentiate Your Product............................

Habit 16

Reach Out The Customers............................

Habit 17

Market With Values.................................

Habit 18

Don’t Be Afraid To Make The Change...................

Habit 19

Be Passionate.....................................

Habit 20

Sustain Performance................................

Habit 21

Build It And They Will Come!..........................

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Bibliography

Page Left Blank Intentionally

INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurs, who are not motivated by a desire for money, have a vision that they feel compelled to turn into a reality. They understand the desire to fulfill their life’s calling and get paid as a result of it. They understand that provision would come as the result of their vision.

My Motivation for Writing This Book

The legendary Henry Ford envisioned an automobile in every driveway at a time when cars were considered luxury trifles for the idle rich. Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak imagined user-friendly little computers sitting on desks in offices and homes at a time when computers were huge, cumbersome machines which were considered a costly resource available only to research scientists, the military, and the academia.

In this book, I have collected success stories of entrepreneurs from all walks of life that became very rich by following their vision instead of the desire for money. They knew that as a motivating factor, money alone wasn’t sufficient enough to overcome the obstacles they stood facing. Some of the highly motivated and successful entrepreneurs believe that their business will improve the lives of people. Perhaps, that’s why entrepreneurs are some of the greatest philanthropists this country has ever known! As a young college student, I felt fascinated by America’s greatest entrepreneurs when I read the biographies of Benjamin Franklin, developer of his own printing and publishing company, and King C. Gillette, founder and inventor of the Gillette disposable razor.

I was first impressed with Ben Franklin because he had overcome his lack of formal education to become a prominent businessman, community leader, inventor, scientist, and statesman. His study of electric fire changed our basic understanding of how electricity works. With only one year of schooling, he became an avid reader and writer. At age twelve, he apprenticed for his brother James, a printer. The siblings did not always see eye to eye, and at seventeen, Benjamin ran away to Philadelphia. Over the years, he became a community leader and started his first library, fire department, hospital, and fire insurance company. He loved gadgets and invented some of his own: the Franklin stove, the glass harmonica (a musical instrument), bifocal eyeglasses, and swim fins. Prior to becoming an inventor myself, I had researched other successful inventors who had dared to give physical shape to their innovative ideas. I’ve always had an intuitive imagination. The what-if syndrome was always on my mind that I could do something that had never happened before.

What I didn't know until I had read King C. Gillette’s biography was that he had died on July 9, 1932, at the age of seventy-seven. And yet, his disposable razor is taken for granted even today. But for men at the turn of the century, it was a long-awaited and welcomed innovation. Today, the Gillette Company employs over forty thousand people worldwide. Its total sales for the year 1998 reached $10.1 billion.

I was so very amazed by the drama of Gillette’s life that I began to read every biography and autobiography of an entrepreneur that I could find— from Bill Gates, who began his career in entrepreneurship as a nineteen-year-old Harvard student; to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who were overnight successes in their early twenties; from Roy Kroc, who was economic failure until the age of fifty-seven years; to Madame C. J. Walker, who was a cleaning lady until the age of forty-three years and became the first self-made millionaire woman in America.

What Does This Book Have to Offer?

I have spent countless hours in my college campus library on a daily basis and in the public library, reading about entrepreneurs and writing my notes about how they achieved their successes. Although I graduated with professional degrees and became successful in my career as an educator, speaker, inventor, and a business owner, I wanted to share some keys to success with people around all over the world through the Habits of the Highly Effective Entrepreneur.

Habits possess the gateway to success in an attempt to achieve something worthwhile. This book will not only tell you what to do, but it will also illustrate how you can do it! You'll be able to understand how ideas and concepts convert into huge fortunes. I've discovered this book to be one of the most influential books of all time, pointing the way to professional achievement, financial independence, and personal fulfillment.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is quite literally for everyone! It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out in your business or you have been in it for a long while.

If you want real, practical and applicable tips to develop habits that will make you an effective entrepreneur than this book is for you!

Enjoy the read!

HABIT 1

Follow Your Gut Instinct

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don’t know how or why.

-Albert Einstein Physicist and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient

Effective entrepreneurs have an instinct for getting things done by tapping into the inner invoice of consciousness. The gut instinct helps them in making sound decisions or performing needful actions for achieving their life's greatest purposes, whether short or long-term. All great individuals from presidents to business moguls to everyday people tap into their intuitive nature for answers.

What Does Intuition Do?

This intuitive nature seeks to guide you daily. At times, it’s the voice that you don’t always want to hear because it never turns itself off. Some may refer to it as intuition or conscious. Others may refer to it as self-consciousness. I’m sure your inner voice has said things like, I should be doing this or I shouldn’t do that, I should be doing more, It’s not quite over yet, or, There are steps I must take to get things done.

This built-in human conscious is the liable and duteous voice that reminds us of who we are and what task we are commissioned to perform. This voice expects us to live up to a higher standard, but at the same time, it knows that we are human and it tries to be patient and courteous with us when we fail or forget to do something. It’s comparable to your personality.

We should try to cultivate a healthy harmony within this voice and listen to its consistent, rhythmic beat daily. Most people hear this voice when they meet us, and we interact with them. Listening to your internal voice allows several positive factors to take place in your life on a regular basis. It tries to make things happen, keeping you on time and on schedule, and says hurry up when you need to hurry. Your internal gut keeps the traffic clear and the clutter out of your mind.

What Happens When You Tap into Your Intuition?

When you tap into this psychological personhood, you’ll discover yourself opening up to a new adventure and a new opportunity to achieving that next step. During this time, you’ll discover your other self, who’s sitting there, waiting to open the door to your passion. It's your passion that transports the drive to fulfill your goals.

Through passion, you are motivated to achieve the ultimate vision of your business rather than focusing on small goals that will only benefit you in the near future. When you focus on what you enjoy the most and what you are working for, you will be inclined only to deliver your best and nothing short of it. In this attempt, you will be able to achieve results that seemed unachievable with only the objective of making money in mind.

Making money is just a provision. The vision of the business is to make it something that you have dreamt of, for a long period of time. When aiming for a provision, your efforts are bound to be limited and feeble. However, when striving to achieve your vision, you will be inclined to go an extra mile with your efforts only because you have waited for it to come true for a long period of time. One of the biggest mistakes that some entrepreneurs make is that they chase the provision before they experience and understand the vision. The provision happens as a result of the vision, not the other way around. One way to experience and understand a vision is by connecting with your inner voice. No one has ever done anything impactful without tapping into the methodology of living from the inside out.

It’s the birthplace where dreams are born, and legends are made! Due to an ancient Egyptian deity’s legend, it is believed that there was a time when ordinary people had access to all the knowledge of the gods. Yet, time and again, they ignored this wisdom. One day, the gods grew tired of so freely giving a gift the people didn’t use, so they hid this precious wisdom where only the most committed seekers would discover it.

They believed that if people had to work to find this wisdom, they would use it more carefully. One day, the gods suggested that they bury it deep in the earth. Let’s put it in the deepest ocean, suggested one of the gods, but that idea was also rejected. They knew people would one day learn to dive and would find it too easily.

One of the gods suggested hiding it on the highest mountaintop, but it was quickly agreed that people could climb mountains. Finally, one of the wisest gods suggested, Let’s hide it deep inside the people themselves. They’ll never think to look in there. And so it came to be—and so it continues today.

For most of us, our early education and training focus on looking outside of ourselves for answers to our questions. Few people may have had training on how to look inside of ourselves. Yet, the most successful people I have met over the years are those who have developed their intuition and learned to trust their gut feelings and follow their inner guidance. Many people practice some form of daily meditation to access the voice within them.

When business magnate Conrad Hilton, the founder of the Hilton Hotel Corporation, wanted to buy the Stevens Corporation at auction, he submitted a sealed bid for $165,000. When he awoke the next morning with the number 180,000 in his head, he swiftly changed his bid to $180,000, successfully securing the company and earning a $2 million profit. Whether they are a real estate investor who hears a voice in the middle of the night, a detective who solves a dead-end case by following a hunch, an investor who just knows when to get out of the market, or a football linebacker who can sense the quarterback’s next play, successful people trust their intuition. You, too, can use your intuition to make more money, make better decisions, solve problems more quickly, unleash your creative genius, discern people’s hidden motives, envision a new business, and create winning business plans and strategies.

Intuition is not something relegated to certain people or to psychics. Everyone has it, and everyone has experienced it. Have you ever been thinking about a friend, and then the phone rings and it’s that friend who was just thinking about you too? Have you ever felt a burning sensation on the back of your neck and then turned to see someone staring at you from across the room? We’ve all experienced this kind of intuition. The trick is to learn how to tap into it at will to achieve greater levels of success.

How Intuition Communicates with You?

Your intuition communicates with you in many ways. You may get a message from within, as a vision or a visual image, while you are meditating or dreaming. I often get images while I am lying in bed after I first wake up or in the middle of the night, while I’m meditating, while I’m sitting for long periods of time, or while I’m jogging through the neighborhood. It can come in a flash out of the blue, or it can be a long, unfolding image like a movie. Your intuition may speak to you as a hunch, a thought, or a voice that actually tells you, yes, no, go for it, or, not yet. It might come as one resounding word, a short sentence, or a complete lecture. You may find you can dialogue with the voice for clarification or more information.

You may also receive a message from your intuition through your physical senses. If the message is one of watch out or be careful, you may experience it as a chill, the creeps, a sense of restlessness, discomfort in your gut, constriction in your chest, tightness or pain in your head, or even a sour taste in your mouth.

A positive or yes message might come in the form of goosebumps, a dizzy feeling, warmth, a sense of opening or expansiveness in the chest, a sense of relaxation, a feeling of relief, or a letting go of tension. You may also experience intuitive messages through your emotions, such as a feeling of uneasiness, concern, or confusion. When information is of a positive nature, you may experience a feeling of joy, euphoria, or profound inner peace. Sometimes, it is just a sense of knowing. How many times have you heard someone say, I don’t know how I knew; I just knew, or, I knew it in my heart or, I knew it in the depth of my soul? An indicator that the message is truly from your intuition is that it has a sense of greater clarity, a feeling of rightness about the answer, or the impulse.

Another indicator that the message you are receiving is a correct one is an accompanying feeling of passion and excitement. If you are considering a plan of action or a decision and it leaves you feeling drained, bored, or enervated, that’s a clear message saying, Don’t go there. On another hand, if you feel energized and enthusiastic, your intuition is telling you to go ahead.

How Do You Receive Intuition?

It is important to make time to listen to your intuition. The most valuable intuitive wisdom often comes when you are relaxed and open to receiving it. It may come through formal meditation, or through the many forms of informal meditation we engage in every day, such as sitting by a waterfall or stream, watching the ocean, watching the clouds float by, staring at the stars, sitting under a tree, feeling a soft breeze, staring into a fire, listening to inspiring music, jogging, yoga, prayer, listening to birds sing, taking a shower, driving on the freeway, watching a play, or writing in a personal journal. Pay attention to the answers you receive and act on the information as quickly as possible. When you act on the information you receive, you’ll find that you get even more intuitive impulses. After a while, you will be living in the flow. It will all seem easy and effortless as the wisdom will come to you and you will simply act on it. As you learn to trust yourself and your intuition more, it will become an automatic process.

Experts agree that your intuition works better when you trust it. The more you demonstrate faith in your intuition, the more you will see the results of it in your life. I strongly encourage you to listen to your intuition, trust it, and follow it. Trusting your intuition is simply another form of trusting yourself, and the more you trust yourself, the more success you will have. Remember, it’s not what you think about; it’s what you write down and take action on that counts. Meanwhile, some people look to others to direct and guide them, waiting carefully for others to tell them who they are going to be. They yearn for their true identities to be recognized and affirmed by those around them. Their thirst for validation from other people proves that we are always looking for authentication. However, we fail to see that we can only get such validation from within ourselves instead of seeking it from the outside. It is needless to say, our sense of self and our true value must start from the inside out.

Tapping Into Your Intuition

Intuition works the same way in both business and personal circumstances. It’s the part of your personhood that gives you hope. It works hand in hand with your senses. It tells you the truth about things that you’ve done, you’re doing right now and at times, things that you plan on doing in the future. In business, your intuition helps in keeping your careers solidified, which allows you to make better decisions while at work, and gets you to the place where you need to be. It is not about you being naturally suspicious of everything and everyone. The following are a few tips that can assist you in knowing when your intuition is speaking to you.

Make certain that you’re not over-panicking, overwhelmed with terror, or basing fear on unfounded opinions that can heighten your emotional state. At times, you find yourselves in stressful and uncomfortable situations. If you are not careful, fear will make you believe that your intuition is telling you to