Definition of Secrecy in Business

One of the conditions of the relationshiip between a bank and its customers  is that the customers' dealings and financial affairs will be treated as confidential. This rule , however, does not apply to the customers' credit information which is shared rather freely among lending instituitions. Also, due to certain laws (such as anti-terrorist and anti-drug-trade legislation) and tax treaties between nations , banks must release specific information to help fight terrorism and ilega drugs trade, and prevent  tax evasion and money laudering.

4 Secrets of Successful Business Owners

Have you ever wondered how some entrepreneurs and business owners seem almost superhuman, that everything they touch and do practically turns to gold?

Take Richard Branson for example. He started Virgin in 1970 and has built numerous businesses across multiple industries over the last 35 years. A company that stands for excitement, uniqueness, and more recently, making the world a better place through giving back.

While you and I may not be looking to start a massive company that generates enough revenue to support a small country, there are important lessons that we can learn from the way they do business and how they operate.

Let’s dive deep and look at four incredible entrepreneurs—who have shaped the way we do business today—and what they say that makes them successful. Sit tight. Epiphanies ahead.

See Also: The Art of Leadership: 11 Quotes on Leading Well

1. “Chance favors the prepared mind. The more you practice, the luckier you become.” – Richard Branson

Don’t be fooled by Richard’s calm demeanor and laid back style. You better believe he had a plan and was prepared when he launched each of his businesses over the years. It may not have been 100 percent conventional, but he was always prepared in some form or fashion.

Be sure you take advantage of free resources to prepare your mind and lay out a strategy for your business. And if you want to take your preparation a step further, use a tool like LivePlan. Even if you’re a current business owner, take a step back and analyze your strategy.

Once you know you’re prepared and ready to tackle the task at hand, just get started. There is no better teacher than experience. Richard never went to business school to learn about building a business. He just got started and learned through the processes.

And it seemed to work out pretty well for him, didn’t it?

2. “Work like there is someone working twenty-four hours a day to take it all away from you.”- Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban

Powerful, right? Now I know I don’t have to tell you that hard work is a part of the game when you’re trying to build your future, but man, is it important. Not everyone will understand the fact that we have to keep our heads down and focus on building what we believe in, but that doesn’t really matter.

You’re building your business for a reason. To feed your kids. To secure your family’s financial future. To travel the world. Whatever your reason, hold it close and let that fuel you.

So when the time comes that your friends are pressuring you to take the weekend off and you know there are 174 things you have to do to keep your business running—keep your head down and do what you have to do. Because even though Mark’s quote is hypothetical, you better believe there is somebody else out there with twice the resources and twice the backing that you have trying to put you out of business.

If you’re going to build something worthwhile, you’ve got to work hard and stay focused. There are no shortcuts.

3. “The easier it is for someone to understand who you are and what you stand for, the easier it will be for that person to spread the word to others.” – Blake Mycoskie

Blake Mycoskie

If you aren’t aware of who Blake Mycoskie is, he’s the guy who started TOMS, the shoe company that gives a pair of shoes to a child in need for every shoe sold.

One for one. It’s as simple as that. If you were to check out the TOMS website or look through any of their social media profiles, it is very clear who they are, what they stand for, and what they do.

Has anyone ever asked you what you do or what your business does?

“Uhhhhhhh… Well, I sell…. clothes for… cold babies.”

Ouch. Let’s try this again.

If your business sells baby clothes that keep the babies three times warmer than all other baby clothing brands, be clear about it. You might say something like this:

“My company sells baby clothes that keep your child three times warmer than all other brands. This means fewer colds, better naps, and a much happier childhood!”

See how different that is? Heck, I’d buy it, and I don’t even have a baby.

Let’s look at one more example. I run an online magazine for entrepreneurs that gives back to children’s education and have had a hard time in the past explaining what I do. To keep it nice and simple, this is typically what I say:

“My company empowers the entrepreneurs who are building tomorrow’s small businesses by giving them the information and resources they need to succeed. And as part of our mission to give back and make the world a better place, we give a large portion of our revenue to support children’s education.”

Figure out early what you stand for and tell your story in a way that is easy to remember and retell. It’s ok to pivot your brand over time, but you can only do that effectively if you thoroughly understand who your customers are and what resonates with them. And that begins with a strong brand.

4. “It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates

Bill Gates

We’ve all messed up at some point in our life. I know I sure have. But before you throw in the towel and give up on your dreams altogether, look for a lesson from your moment of failure. There’s bound to be one.

For example, in a previous venture, I took on far too many responsibilities on my own and became completely overwhelmed. My health started to decline, my relationships suffered, and the company ultimately fell apart because there was too much to be done, and not enough people to do it.

The golden lesson in that situation was to swallow my pride, ask for help, and not get so overwhelmed. And to be completely honest, that lesson has saved me far too many times to count.

A failure is only a failure if you let it be. You may have made a few missteps in your past, but don’t let that define your current business. Work smart, stay humble, and learn from your mistakes. With those lessons in mind, I promise you’ll go far.

The 10 Secrets of Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur told by Naveen Jain the Founder and CEO of Inome

I've been an entrepreneur most of my adult life. Recently, on a long business flight, I began thinking about what it takes to become successful as an entrepreneur--and how I would even define the meaning of success. The two ideas became more intertwined in my thinking: success as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial success. I've given a lot of talks over the years on the subject of entrepreneurship. The first thing I find I have to do is to dispel the persistent myth that entrepreneurial success is all about innovative thinking and breakthrough ideas. I've found that entrepreneurial success usually comes through great execution, simply by doing a superior job of doing the blocking and tackling.

But what else does it take to succeed as an entrepreneur, and how should an entrepreneur define success?

Here's what I came up with, a Top 10 List:

10. You must be passionate about what you are trying to achieve.

That means you’re willing to sacrifice a large part of your waking hours to the idea you’ve come up with. Passion will ignite the same intensity in others who join you as you build a team to succeed in this endeavor. And with passion, both your team and your customers are more likely to truly believe in what you are trying to do.

9. Great entrepreneurs focus intensely on an opportunity where others see nothing.

This focus and intensity help eliminate wasted effort and distractions. Most companies die from indigestion rather than starvation, i.e., companies suffer from doing too many things at the same time rather than doing too few things very well. Stay focused on the mission.

8. Success comes only from hard work.

We all know that there is no such thing as overnight success. Behind every overnight success lie years of hard work and sweat. People with luck will tell you there’s no easy way to achieve success--and that luck comes to those who work hard. Successful entrepreneurs always give 100% of their efforts to everything they do. If you know you are giving your best effort, you’ll never have any reason for regrets. Focus on things you can control; stay focused on your efforts, and let the results be what they will be.

7. The road to success is going to be long, so remember to enjoy the journey.

Everyone will teach you to focus on goals, but successful people focus on the journey and celebrate the milestones along the way. Is it worth spending a large part of your life trying to reach the destination if you didn’t enjoy the journey? Won’t the team you attract to join you on your mission also enjoy the journey more? Wouldn’t it be better for all of you to have the time of your life during the journey, even if the destination is never reached?

6. Trust your gut instinct more than any spreadsheet.

There are too many variables in the real world that you simply can’t put into a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets spit out results from your inexact assumptions and give you a false sense of security. In most cases, your heart and gut are still your best guide. The human brain works as a binary computer and can analyze only the exact information-based zeros and ones (or black and white). Our heart is more like a chemical computer that uses fuzzy logic to analyze information that can’t be easily defined in zeros and ones. We’ve all had experiences in business where our heart told us something was wrong while our brain was still trying to use logic to figure it all out. Sometimes a faint voice based on instinct resonates far more strongly than overpowering logic.

5. Be flexible but persistent--every entrepreneur has to be agile to perform.

You have to continuously learn and adapt as new information becomes available. At the same time, you have to remain persistent to the cause and mission of your enterprise. That’s where that faint voice becomes so important, especially when it is giving you early warning signals that things are going off track. Successful entrepreneurs find the balance between listening to that voice and staying persistent in driving for success--because sometimes success is waiting right across from the transitional bump that’s disguised as failure.

4. Rely on your team. It’s a simple fact: No individual can be good at everything.

Everyone needs people who have complementary sets of skills. Entrepreneurs are an optimistic bunch, and it’s very hard for them to believe that they are not good at certain things. It takes a lot of soul searching to find your own core skills and strengths. After that, find the smartest people you can who complement your strengths. It’s easy to get attracted to people who are like you; the trick is to find people who are not like you but who are good at what they do--and what you can’t do.

3. Execution, execution, execution.

Unless you are the smartest person on earth (and who is), it’s likely that many others have thought about doing the same thing you’re trying to do. Success doesn’t necessarily come from breakthrough innovation but from flawless execution. A great strategy alone won’t win a game or a battle; the win comes from basic blocking and tackling. All of us have seen entrepreneurs who waste too much time writing business plans and preparing PowerPoints. I believe that a business plan is too long if it’s more than one page. Besides, things never turn out exactly the way you envisioned them. No matter how much time you spend perfecting the plan, you still have to adapt according to the ground realities. You’re going to learn a lot more useful information from taking action rather than hypothesizing. Remember: Stay flexible, and adapt as new information becomes available.

2. I can’t imagine anyone ever achieving long-term success without having honesty and integrity.

These two qualities need to be at the core of everything we do. Everybody has a conscience, but too many people stop listening to it. There is always that faint voice that warns you when you are not being completely honest or even slightly off track from the path of integrity. Be sure to listen to that voice.

1. Success is a long journey and much more rewarding if you give back.

By the time you get to success, lots of people will have helped you along the way. You’ll learn, as I have, that you rarely get a chance to help the people who helped you, because in most cases, you don’t even know who they were. The only way to pay back the debts we owe is to help people we can help--and hope they will go on to help more people. When we are successful, we draw so much from the community and society that we live in that we should think in terms of how we can help others in return. Sometimes it’s just a matter of being kind to people. Other times, offering a sympathetic ear or a kind word is all that’s needed. It’s our responsibility to do “good” with the resources we have available. 

Measuring Success

I hope you have internalized the secrets of becoming a successful entrepreneur. The next question you are likely to ask yourself is: How do we measure success? Success, of course, is very personal; there is no universal way of measuring success. What do successful people like Bill Gates and Mother Teresa have in common? On the surface, it’s hard to find anything they share-;and yet both are successful. I personally believe the real metric of success isn’t the size of your bank account. It’s the number of lives in which you might be able to make a positive difference. This is the measure of success we need to apply while we are on our journey to success.