Entrepreneurs generally consider success to mean a variety of terms, and attach certain goals to it in order to attain it. What success means to you will be an individual situation and may determine how you structure your life so as to meet the expectations that you require. Because of this, success can be difficult to pinpoint and define.

Approach

How to determine what success means to you can involve developing a concept that is very different from that of someone else. Therefore, in order to determine what true success means to you, an approach might be to address the subject anecdotally, rather than scientifically.

Success Idealism

An initial response to an extensive national questionnaire as reported by CNN money included the terms independence, security, control, happiness, recognition, financial reward, pride, money, acclaim, friendship, failure and practice. From the depth of verbiage, it is apparent that various factors are included in many people's idea of success. This proposes that the concept of success is actually more of a subjective, rather than objective idealism.

Nonetheless, common theme threads seem to include the fact that successful people will work hard to balance work and family lives. Successful people often rely upon mentors in order to grow their businesses,  as well as surround themselves with similarly successful individuals who have learned to set limits on just how much time they would devote to develop their businesses.

Work-Life-Balance

Fighting workaholism is a common theme for successful people. While many professionals find themselves doing a few hours of paperwork at home in the evenings, the most balanced individuals who have realized that success also includes a balanced home life know when to quit. Putting family first on most evenings and weekends has been shown to work well to ensure a much higher level of life happiness in the long run.

Other Considerations

Other considerations to ponder when defining individual success can involve achieving lower debt, becoming an authority in a chosen field, and ensuring that other family members are on the right path. Freedom is a recurring theme when it comes to defining success, as a major component of  happiness. Making a difference, consistent profitability, lower stress and enhanced recognition and reputation have also been mentioned by business entrepreneurs.

Some professional people consider that the extent to which they are able to command more time off from work can be used as a measure of success. It would seem that by being in position to delegate work to free up more personal time could be a useful strategy to work toward.

Many have found that successful persons are happy, focused and free by prioritizing obligations. As an entrepreneur, it's very important to be able to identify what success is, so that the goal will be clear and attainable. In order to ever consider yourself a success, you have to think about what it really means to you personally. By realizing the historical perspective, posterity and most important relationships, it will be much more possible to actually achieve it.