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How This 20-Year-Old Built His Business While Studying Dentistry When you're set to grow your business, take action and make it happen.

By Ahmed Safwan Edited by Dan Bova

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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Being an entrepreneur is hard. Not only are you taking risks to build your business, but sometimes you may also be sacrificing your social life. Deciding on what you need to do to grow your business and how to manage other things in your life, which may include another job, or your studies or your family, can be stressful.

It can be more stressful when you study dentistry and build your business on the side

So how to do it? Here is a simple three-step strategy that helped me get more done, and grow my business without sacrificing my social life.

I've create a checklist to help you apply these three steps effectively.

Planning the right way.

The first step to achieving success is to have an attack plan. Having a lot of things to do on your table means you will start to lose track of what's really important and/or focus on just one part of your life to the detriment of everything else.

Related: The Most Important Things to Know When Starting Your Business

It is best to do planning in stages:

  1. The 100,000-foot view: This is where you set you goal for the next quarter-year and how you plan to achieve it. Spend a lot of time detailing out exactly what you should do to achieve that goal. If you want to double your business, you need to double the content you produce and speed up the systems, and then lay out how you plan to do so. And do this for different goals in different aspects of your life.
  2. The 10,000-foot view: After you have a clear view of what you should do during the next quarter, lay out exactly what you should get done in the next 2 weeks. This will help you determine what you should do tomorrow without losing focus on the main goal.
  3. The 100-foot view: This is what you should do today to get closer to achieving your quarterly goal.

I call this the three-tier planning system.

Start your day right.

If you want to achieve success, the way you train your mind to achieve success at the beginning of the day is crucial. You might know that most successful people have a morning routine. This routine has helped them to achieve their success.

Related: How to Start a Business With (Almost) No Money

You don't need to wake up early, but you do need to start your day right before jumping into the busy part of the rest of your day. The best routine I've found is the S.A.V.E.R.S routine from Hal Elrod, author of "The Miracle Morning Book."

  1. Silence: Meditate for a few minutes or pray.
  2. Affirmations: Go through your list of affirmations.
  3. Visualization: Visualize your success so that you feel pumped about taking action.
  4. Exercise: Increase your blood flow for better efficiency.
  5. Reading: It only take one idea to change your life.
  6. Scribing: Write a journal or do the 100-foot-view plan.

If you don't have time, you can just spend one minute on every part of this routine. Yes, that's all you need to start your day when you're really busy.

Take action with focus.

After you know exactly what you should do to reach your goals, you need to take action. People love to do all this planning stuff, but when it comes to taking action, they don't do it and get hung up on one thing or another.

But to reach the success you want, you need to take action. My favorite technique that has helped me to take action is the Pomodoro technique.

It's nothing new; the Pomodoro technique has been around for quite a while. But if you're not familiar with it, it's a simple technique where you focus on just taking one action for a specific duration of time, take a break and then repeat.

Related: A Simple 6-Step Process to Starting a Small Business

Usually, it's 25 minutes of work and five minutes of rest repeated four times, possibly followed by a 30-minute break.

This will help you focus so you get more done while also increasing the quality of your work.

So when you wake up in the morning, see the action you need to take from the 100-foot-view plan and start a clock to tackle the first task and so on.

Now, you're set to grow your business. Take action and make it happen.

And don't forget to grab your checklist to know exactly what to do next.

Ahmed Safwan

Entrepreneur while still 20

Ahmed Safwan is building a freelancing business while studying to be a dentist but still finds time to enjoy with friends.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

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