Have you ever met a serial entrepreneur? Or, let me clarify—have you ever been jealous of an entrepreneur? It seems when I run across an entrepreneur, I'm always struck by their confidence, enthusiasm and passion, and feel a twinge of the green-eyed monster when I witness their success.

In Stewart Thornhill's article on entrepreneurial secrets to success for the Ivey Business Journal, he points out that often, these lessons for success can be found between the lines. In other words, it's not what an entrepreneur knows about that others don't, it's the choices an entrepreneur makes. Today and tomorrow, Promotional Consultant Today will share these 10 observations about successful entrepreneurs.

1. Make adoption easy. As Thornhill points out, people, for the most part, are lazy. We want to accomplish the most with the least amount of effort. Sometimes, we call this efficiency, but it's really not. If you think about it, the best inventions made our lives easier—not harder—like cars or mobile phones. Successful entrepreneurs are aware of this. They also ensure the fewest number of barriers to adoption. For example, the magic of Apple devices has long been their intuitiveness. Easy-to-use doesn't guarantee success, but hard-to-use is a recipe for disaster.

2. Make things happen faster. People are also impatient, says Thornhill, and he's right. We want things faster. Don't believe me? Just think about the speed of your data service. Many people make a choice of carrier, in part, due to speed. As entrepreneurs, we should be just as wary about launching a business that requires our customers to wait as we are about one that makes them work hard (as per No. 1 above).

3. Race against time. The process of starting and building a new business is slow and deliberate, without immediate rewards, with the exception of Facebook. As Thornhill points out, the greater the degree of novelty, the longer it will usually take to educate and persuade potential customers. That's not to mention the core activities of developing the product, building a team and raising the capital to pay for everything. Entrepreneurs are against time, all the time, which is why you see many of them working all the time. If you can't generate revenue and/or profits fast enough to keep the business afloat, you fail. Half of all startups experience this outcome within the first five years.

4. One thing leads to another. Business schools will teach you that the bones of a business begin with the business plan—and certainly a business plan is important when talking to investors. But in many cases, that plan is obsolete by the time it comes off the printer. The market changes. Customer trends change. The business environment is in a constant state of change. In this case, successful entrepreneurs know that they just have to get their product or service out there. Version one might not be perfect, so you learn, tweak, perfect as you go ... and as the market goes. Businesses can't grow if they never start in the first place.

5. Your business can't be everything to everyone. In business, choices are necessary, but they are not always easy or pleasant. There's only so much time, money and talent available. Spending an hour on one thing means that you can't spend this hour on something else. Leaders who aren't able to make tough choices doom their organizations to mediocrity when they do too many things in an adequate way and nothing with excellence as the desirable standard. The hardest thing for a new company to do is say "No" to a customer. Recognizing when trade-offs have to be made, and having the mental discipline to make hard choices often separates the winners from the losers.

Ready for more tips to entrepreneurial success? Read PCT, in your inbox again tomorrow.

Source: Stewart Thornhill is executive director for the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship in the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western University in London, Ontario.