What separates the successful from the unsuccessful? Is it intelligence, luck or maybe super powers?!? No, it is not necessarily that the successful are more intelligent, or have some special business super power that allows them to succeed and you to not. What sets apart those who succeed in business is that they don’t adopt certain characteristics or form bad habits that hinder their success. Here’s a list of the top habits unsuccessful people have and what you can do to avoid them.

Act Like You Know All the Answers
Business owners, CEOs and leaders make dozens of decisions a day when running their business. Commonly, this is a characteristic that is greatly admired, being able to be decisive and act fast when required. Because of this, as a business owner you can get into the habit of thinking you're always right. When all of your employees and business decisions rely on you to act sometimes this can become a bad habit when you begin to start acting and making decisions before thinking.

When you start to act before you think, you are now in the realm of a establishing a bad habit. Decision makers who do this act impulsively without first weighing the ramifications. This can be detrimental to your business! What may be even worse is, you begin to feel as though you are EXPECTED to know everything and begin closing yourself off from learning and growing both in business and as a person. Make sure you are sticking to your company's goals and mission. Are the impulse decisions you are making in tune with these things? If not, take a moment to step back and analyze the situation a bit more before you act, and don’t be afraid to ask for other’s opinions. They may have an angle you haven't covered that makes more sense. You can also use this as a way to measure which employees are more dedicated to helping the company succeed.

Fear Change
The only constant is change right? So why are so many fearful of change? One reason is that you may have gained some success in your profession thus far. Maybe you have gained a LOT of success and often find yourself reverting to ways that are “tried and true”. Business people who begin to think like this can expect a swift decline in your business if you only stick to old methods. If you continue to market the way you always have or offer products that are no longer necessary or relevant, then all the success you have earned so far will be all the success you may ever gain.

To avoid being stuck in a rut, begin to consider a wide range of options that fit the time and situation. For example, you may want to take the leap and build a website instead of just being listed in those old paper directory listings (ahem, the pages are yellow). Or, you may feel there is no need to update your website or use it as a tool to run your business instead of a static page that does nothing. Learn to step outside your comfort zone, not only will your company benefit from it, you may just enjoy yourself.

Give Up Easily
Many business minded people have visions of companies they want to start, products they want to sell and areas of growth they want to gain. What sets apart the successful from the unsuccessful is that the successful are not afraid of failure. In fact, they embrace it and you should too! A contributor to Forbes.com wrote an article with 30 Powerful Quotes on Failure, she writes that it is common to want to avoid failure, but one cannot achieve success without it.

The company that the BannerView.com executives started in the beginning is vastly different from what BannerView.com is today. They owe that in part to prior failures. If they had given up, they would have lost the important opportunity that made this company what it is currently. The key is to make sure you are learning from the inevitable mistakes, track the progress you HAVE made, even if that means crossing off another failed plan. It just means you are one failure closer to success!