Up and Running Blog

What does Success Mean?

by Sabrina Parsons on September 24, 2007

This morning I read two different blog posts about defining success. One was on Inc.com’s Great Entrepreneurial Minds written by a woman who had just attended the Inc 500 conference in Chicago. She was surprised to find out that in a group of fellow successful entrepreneurs, none of them thought they had "made it" yet. Now this may be part of what makes an entrepreneur successful — never being satisfied with the status quo, but at the same time, having an idea of what success means to you will help you manage better and grow your business in accordance to your dreams.

The other post was by Elizabeth, who runs "A Girl’s Guide to Managing Projects". Elizabeth blogs about how to recognize a successful project. She rightly points out that it all depends on what success is defined to be at the start of a project. If a project is started and there is no clear measurement of what success is — at the end of the project it will be hard to determine whether it was successful or not.

To someone who has never run a marathon before the definition of success may be to get across the finish line. To a seasoned competitive marathoner the definition may be to finish in under 2 hours, before any other competitor in the same age/gender bracket. Two VERY different measurements of success!

So plan for success — and know when you reach it!

Sabrina
Mommy CEO

About the author: Sabrina has served as CEO of Palo Alto Software since 2007. She and her husband, Noah, founded a UK software distribution company in 2001 that later was purchased by and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Palo Alto Software. Sabrina is a successful Internet expert, having served as Director of Online Marketing at Commtouch, Senior Producer at Epinions.com, and founder of her own Web consulting company, Lighting Out. She is a graduate of Princeton University. Sabrina masquerades as MommyCEO (www.mommyceo.org), where she writes a blog about running a business and balancing that with life with her husband and three young sons. When Sabrina is not at work she can be found chasing her kids all over Oregon: biking, hiking, swimming, skiing, and anything outdoors that uses up a lot of little boys' energy. More »

How LivePlan makes your business more successful

LivePlan: Online Business Planning Software

If you're writing a business plan, you're in luck. Online business planning software makes it easier than ever before to put together a business plan for your business.

As you'll see in a moment, LivePlan is more than just business plan software, though. It's a knowledgable guide combined with a professional designer coupled with a financial wizard. It'll help you get over the three most common business hurdles with ease.

Let's take a look at those common hurdles, and see how producing a top-notch business plan sets your business up for success.

Click to continue

Tags:


  • http://upandrunning.entrepreneur.com/2007/10/01/have-you-defined-success/ Up and Running

    Have You Defined Success?

    A good reminder on the bplans blog: as you get going in your startup, doing the thinking, and doing the planning, take a time out to establish your definition of success. Massive unmitigated wealth? An independent life style? Doing what you love and ge…

Previous post:

Next post: