Every business owner starts a new business expecting to create a success story. Here are 5 more mistakes they frequently make that can keep it from turning out that way.

MISTAKE #1: Believing a single product, formula, or system is the direct path to million dollar results.

Distraction is the number one enemy of success! You’re bombarded daily by messages pushing this, that and the other thing as the golden ticket. Don’t be fooled. Excellence in everything you do is the direct path to million dollar results. Everything else is secondary. And excellence, like success, is something you are, not something you buy.

MISTAKE #2: Believing luck is the difference between an entrepreneur who is successful and one who isn’t.

There is no such thing as luck. There is only preparation meeting opportunity. Preparation requires discipline; opportunity requires observation and persistence. (Sometimes timing also plays a role.)

MISTAKE #3: Believing an online business requires little effort, skill, specialized knowledge, or time to achieve million dollar results.

If this were really true, there wouldn’t be a market for coaching of any kind in the online marketing world. And everyone would experience massive success instantly. That’s just not the way it works (despite what you’ve read)!

Everything you could possibly need or want to know about running a successful online business is available for free from the internet. But most people prefer (and benefit from) having someone in the know show them the way.

You can’t help but benefit from working with a mentor or business coach who tells you the truth about what it takes to build a solid business. Especially when they show you how to use proven strategies, tips and techniques to your competitive advantage.

If you are at all serious about building your successful business, be equally serious about finding a good mentor to help you create something you’ll be proud to own that serves you well over the long term.

MISTAKE #4: Believing an online business requires little more than outsourcing the work to cheap overseas labor to achieve million dollar results.

You can hire people to do the work for you and you can outsource many things; that part is true. But when you do, you must know how to properly define, set up and run projects and manage remote teams. You also need to know how to hire, evaluate and motivate team members and vendors. Time is money so efficiency and productivity are critical to making a profit.

Even if you decide to have a business where you do everything yourself, and especially if you have others working with and for you, you need to manage the work effectively and support it by developing efficient processes and reliable systems. These are learned skills, not inherited ones. And certainly, if you can’t manage your own productivity and effectiveness really well, it isn’t likely you’ll be able to manage others or serve as a role model for them.

A good mentor can help you determine the best methods, resources , management techniques, and time savers to use when it’s time to expand your team. You’ll be better able to figure out what you’ll need, when and how to get involved with others, and how to tell if you’re getting full value for your money spent with a vendor.

Nobody likes to waste money on work that has to be done over before it can be used because, if released as is, it will harm your professional and/or brand credibility and damage your reputation. And who has so much money to burn they can afford to pay for services that don’t add any value to the bottom line?

MISTAKE #5: Believing that working hard is the key to success.

Only 3% of people working hard ever experience success! And there are a lot of people working hard in that other 97% too.

More important than working hard is working productively, efficiently and effectively. Doing the right things, at the right time, in the right way. Don’t confuse being busy with being productive. Working the right way means with less effort and at less cost. You can do less and achieve more. It’s the real secret to experiencing less stress and more success.

No mentor or business coach can help you until you’ve reached the point where you know what you want and have given yourself permission to succeed. But, with the right guidance and a willingness to persist in working toward your goals, you’re virtually guaranteed to be in that 3% who experience success.