Entrepreneurial Success Lessons That We Can Learn From Oprah Winfrey

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Oprah Winfrey is a self-made CEO worth about $3.57 billion. By most accounts, she’s the greatest black philanthropist in American history, a media mogul, investor, presenter, cultural icon and one of the most influential woman in the world who has carved spaces for herself as both a performer and businesswoman.

She is American talk show host, actress and producer. Best known for her award-winning talk show ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’, the highest-rated program of its kind in history. Oprah has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century. Her speech has now been watched more than 1.5 million times, but Winfrey’s power goes well beyond yesterday’s performance.

Over the years, Winfrey has spoken countless times about motivation and passion in business, as well as how she maintains motivation to make that next move. Here are four business lessons from Oprah. Advocating for the importance of diverse female representation in the media, Winfrey reflected on the range of revelations about harassment in Hollywood, telling young women watching “a new day is on the horizon”.

Here are the 10 entrepreneurial success lessons from Oprah Winfrey for entrepreneurs :

1. Go with your gut instinct

Your gut is your inner compass. Whenever you have to consult with other people for an answer, you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Oprah Winfrey has said that she always trusted her gut instinct with any of the major changes in her life, including her T.V show. It’s when you doubt your gut and being to start questioning it with others, that you often end up going against your gut and making the wrong choice.

In business it’s very important that you make the right decisions, and having a little faith in yourself and your gut might make the differences you need.

Your gut instinct isn’t perhaps always the correct one.

Sometimes after re-thinking a situation, you have more time to think and make a better choice. Although, it’s said that your gut instinct on something is normally the right one, or at least the one you won’t have any regrets about.

2. Respond to prejudice with excellence

Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.

In the early 1970’s, Oprah landed a job as the first black female news anchor at Nashville’s WLAC-TV. In 1976 Winfrey got an offer to anchor the six o’clock news in Baltimore. Ten years later, she was the host of The Oprah Winfrey Show – the number-one daytime talk show in America.

Oprah knew all along that she wasn’t what TV producers wanted in front of the camera. Knowing this, she could have given up. But Winfrey believed that she could overcome prejudice in her industry by being the best in her industry!

3. If you haven’t fallen, you haven’t walked

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better.

Oprah, like mostly insanely successful people, doesn’t believe in failure.

What most people think of as failure, Winfrey considers to be a new perspective, a new lesson, another stepping stone to her destination. This is the advice she has for those afraid to fail!

4. Learn how to turn negatives to positives

Turn your wounds into wisdom

When Winfrey was co-anchoring the evening news in Baltimore, a botched hair treatment destroyed her hair and left her totally bald. Winfrey was devastated, knowing how important a good head of hair is for a news anchor.

But she was also able to look on the bright side. Years later, Oprah told Ms. magazine, “You learn a lot about yourself when you’re bald.”

There’s no escaping negative aspects in life sometimes.

You’re likely to experience some sort of failure if you’re trying to achieve something fairly difficult. Building a business is incredibly hard work and I’d be surprised if you nailed everything perfectly first time.

You need to be able to turn these negative issues into positives. In other words you need to be able to take your failures or mistakes and learn what you can from. In order to stop them from happening again.

Failure is still experience and should be thought of as getting closer to your dreams in the long run, instead of having to start from scratch.

5. Make your own luck

Every decision I’ve ever made, I’ve come back to that space

Every entrepreneur hopes to land a huge client or get a sudden spike in traffic, but if they’ve spent all their time hoping (and not preparing) then when that huge opportunity finally does come along, their business won’t be fully equipped to make the most of it.

Instead wishing for luck, think about what opportunity you would most like to receive in your life. Are you completely prepared to make the most of it?

Speaking to a college graduating class a few years ago, Winfrey reflected that across her career, every successful move has come down to “intentional living” and betting on herself and her own capabilities, rather than listening to others.

This involves ignoring voices around her who claim things are “too big of a risk” and instead listening to her inner voice when it tells her she is able to face those risks head on.

Spending time with yourself to work out your goals and abilities is tough, but Winfrey says it’s the best way to end up in the place you want to be.

6. Do not let others judge you and Be Proud of Yourself

I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.

Self-esteem comes from being able to define the world in your own terms and refusing to abide by the judgments of others. The moment you stop paying attention to what people think of you, things start looking up. You will feel better about yourself, and you will strive to achieve more in your life without worrying about how others will judge you.

Many people adopt these thoughts that they can’t do something because of how they look, their personality or their voice, so they try to be something they’re not. Which is where things start to go wrong.

There is nothing wrong with who you are. The idea that you look like or come across in a certain negative way to people isn’t true.

Be proud to be yourself and people will begin to recognize you for who you actually are, and that’s how you start to make a proper name for yourself and who you are. It’s very easy to see through all the fakes, and it lowers everyone’s trust in them. Just be yourself!

7. Say “Thank You” more

To celebrate two decades on national television, Winfrey thanked her hard-working staff by taking them and their families on vacation to Hawaii (1065 people in total). That’s a pretty big thank you.

Oprah’s such a fan of saying thanks, that she’s created an app called the “Thank You Game” which aspires to thank a half a billion people.

8. Choose your friends wisely

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher

Peer pressure is a powerful thing. We take on the habits, attitudes, and tastes of the people we spend our time with. I’ve read several places that your income will be the average of your five closest friends.

But the more rich and successful you are, the more important it is for you to have true friends. Oprah knows this well: “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.”

It’s a true fact that the individuals you spend the most amount of time with, you become like. You start to think like them and do the same things as them, since you’re hanging out with them.

So if their habits, thoughts and weekly activities are destructive to what you’re trying to achieve you will struggle.

Go out and meet new people who have the same goals as you. They’re the ones working hard and trying to adopt the same productive habits you have. So you will benefit greatly from spending your time with them.

9. Own everything you do

I always knew I was destined for greatness

Winfrey chose to take ownership of her show when she founded Harpo Productions. Being CEO of Harpo empowered her to have control over every aspect of her show. It also opened the door for Winfrey to produce films, broadcast radio programs, and publish a magazine.

Oprah’s refused countless offers to endorse other company’s products. Everything that Oprah says, creates, or lends her name to, she owns. And she’s done it with virtually no outside investment: Winfrey owns 90% of stock in Harpo. Not satisfied with just her own show, as of 2011 Winfrey has her own network. Naturally, its name is ‘OWN’ (Oprah Winfrey Network).

Almost everyone who’s ever been successful decided at some point that they were just not destined for the average life. They had the belief that the world had something of a much higher power planned for them.

You have to belief that you too can achieve greatness and that you will be able to live your dreams out one day. The belief in something goes a long way when you’re putting all your effort into something. It definitely makes the difference between whether you’re a success or a failure.

10. Help yourself by helping others

The surest way to bring goodness to yourself is to make it your intention to do good for somebody else.

Not only has Winfrey started her own charity (Oprah’s Angel Network), she’s also given more of her own money to philanthropic causes than any other performer in America (estimated at $303 million in 2007).

Far too many businesses are only in it for themselves and are not really interested in helping others or satisfying any of their needs. Oprah set out to help others as well as build a profitable business for herself, and by setting out to help others, she benefited herself.

It’s important to focus on the needs of others, and in particular in business, your potential customers. Products that solve a problem or need that others have are far more popular for obvious reasons, in comparison to those that they may just want.

11. Money Should Not Be Your Priority

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.

Success is much more likely to come your way if you’re in it for the right reasons, and money is not one of them.

The right reason should be because you love what you are doing, because in the end your ultimately happy with how your spending the time you have. Any money that comes from it is just a huge bonus.

To become wealthy is one of the reasons why most people start a business, and that’s still a valid reason to start one, but it shouldn’t be the only reason why you’re doing it.

The love and passion for something motivates people a lot more than money could. And so it’s easier to stick with something you love for long periods, than something you hate but that pays a lot.

12. Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.

If you’re expecting it to be easy, it won’t be. Your dreams are dreams for a reason.

It’s the ultimate peak you want to climb to in your lifetime; and it’s likely that at the moment of deciding exactly what you want in life, you were fairly far away from achieving that vision.

The point is that if you expect to become successful in your chosen area, you can’t give up just because you don’t get anywhere within a few months. And you can’t skate by doing the bare minimum. WORK YOUR ASS OFF!

13. Make sure your success has meaning

“Let me tell you, money’s pretty nice,” Winfrey told an audience at Stanford University in 2008.

“But having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person. What you want is money and meaning.”

If you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you’ll get a scream

Winfrey has spoken a number of times about making business and life decisions in line with your personal values rather than the profits, suggesting that ignoring your true values and feelings in business will only come back to bite you later.

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