Being a successful business owner is about more than just making money. You must be able to effectively deal with the ups and downs to lead your business to longevity. After years in the consulting industry, we’ve come up with a list of the top 10 habits of successful business owners:

1. Focus on Strong Team-Building

As a business grows and you hire more employees, you must take the time to figure out what traits and skills you want in employees. Finding skilled talent may be difficult, but the impact to your business is worth the time and effort you’ll put into it. Once you’ve built a rock star team, you need to facilitate team building.

According to the Harvard Business Review, there are three key aspects of communication that affect your team’s performance:

• Energy
• Engagement
• Exploration

As a business owner, you have to facilitate effective communication with these elements in mind. This helps build strong teams and company culture. The ability to hire well and build a strong team is crucial. It’s also just as important to know when and how to fire people when they aren’t performing or they’re hurting the team.

It’s important to hire talent that can work together as a team to get the job done.

2. Knowing How to Execute

Everyone has ideas. What matters is figuring out how to make the idea a reality, or in the business world, bringing it to market. Figure out how to execute and you’ll stand out as a business owner/entrepreneur rather than a mere dreamer.

3. Forward Thinking

Being a business owner often requires leadership. Part of being an effective leader is being bold and forward thinking enough to go beyond the proven paths and trends. To be the best, you must be a pioneer of some sort, even in small ways.

4. Staying Organized

Sometimes entrepreneurship stirs many ideas, which can cause you to be scatterbrained. Don’t just have great ideas, stay organized so you can follow through on them. Keep your business plan, meetings, and deadlines on a highly-organized schedule. If you’re not the Type A type, consider hiring an executive assistant or secretary that can keep things organized for you.

5. Having Confidence

A successful business owner does not let doubt get in their way. You must have a persistence to keep pushing forward and effectively operate your business, even when things don’t go as originally planned.

6. Effective Delegation

Sometimes it’s hard for you to let go and give someone else responsibility, but, if you want to grow a business, you simply can’t do everything by yourself. This is why hiring the right people is critical. With a great team, you can effectively delegate tasks based on each person’s skillset. As stated in one Forbes article, the key is to delegate the right things so you don’t waste time working on the wrong things.

7. Going the Extra Mile

Well-known entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban were willing to take an extra step farther than everyone else. Having tenacity and dedication to carry out your commitment will help you in the long run, especially through challenging times.

8. Putting Customers First

Making your customers your top priority will create a better experience for them, allowing your business to grow a great reputation for service!

Create a company culture that’s true to your values and that attracts the right kind of employees.

9. Stay True to Their Company Culture

Part of the excitement of business ownership is instilling your company with its own culture. When you stick to this culture it drives creativity and the business takes on a life of its own.

10. Not Afraid to Take Small Steps

Even with big ideas at hand, successful business owners know that everything can’t be done at once. Sometimes it’s best to engage in incremental progress, seeing the whole process through.