What do you need to have for a successful business? Many people focus too much on the money part and neglect other important ingredients of a successful business. Here's the list of key ingredients for business success:

1) Time: You must understand that time is money. In business, our objective is to make money. Period. But the question is how productively you convert your time into money. Are you making full use of your time or you just let the time pass by you?

How much you make depends on how good you are at converting time to money. If you are already productive, then you may want to ask what are the things you can do to improve further the ratio of dollar/second? If you are making $0.01/second, what you can do to make it $0.02/second? Or even more. Remember time is the most valuable asset and once it's gone, it's gone. Also time is also the fairest distribution of resources every human being receives.

2) People: To be successful in business, you must have people connections. I mean the right people. People consist of customers, suppliers, partners, staff, and associates.

One thing that you must not leave out is your mentor or coach. Having genuine mentors or coaches is very important and it can make a very big difference in your business.

If you are serious about improving your life or business, and you are looking for a coach, I might be able to help. Drop me an email at http://www.abelcheng.com/contact

To make sure that you have more profits, you must serve people well. Organize your database of people connections. By simply knowing who does what, who supplies what, who needs what, where to get what make you miles ahead of other people. To organize your connections, you can either use a paper folder or computer spreadsheet.

3) Knowledge and Skills: When I talk about knowledge and skills, I am not referring to academic knowledge that you find in schools or colleges. What's more important to you is knowledge and skills that can bring you results you want.

How many MBA holders that you know of have become business owners and have made tones of money? That shows getting the right knowledge and skills is important. Don't blindly go after knowledge that could drown you. Go for knowledge and skills that are universally tested and proven.

Examples of right knowledge and skills are where to get what from who, money making trends, marketing strategies, art of dealing with people, negotiation skills, selling skills, skills of managing and growing money, investment skills, universal laws of success, and more. Don't waste time on unnecessary knowledge as I went through that before. There's only so much that you need to know and learn. Be sharp and focus when you acquire knowledge and skills. Don't follow what normal people do.

4) Personal Health: In fact, this is the most important ingredient of all. How can you run a business without a healthy body? In order to maintain an optimum health, you have to provide your body with proper nutrients and sufficient exercise. And also don't forget about emotional well being. Don't let anger and other negative emotions control you.

This is where positive and empowering attitudes come into play. Maintaining your body is just like maintaining your car. If you send your car to workshop for regular service and pump petrol regularly, why don't you do the same for your body? It's something for you to think about. Don't be stingy over spending money for your own health because physical and mental health can cause you a lot of money in the long run if your body is not taken care of properly.

5) Money: Let's face it. It does take money to make money even you need a little. But you might not need a lot of money to start a business because there are many ways to start one with low capital.

I meet a lot of people who want to be rich but are not willing to invest the money. You must invest in something in order to for you to get something. The law of sowing and reaping is at work. Don't expect something without investing anything. Money is one of the investments you need to make.

Even though you don't need to have a capital for your business, but at least you must be able to cover your expenses while building your business. You also need money to buy products to stock up and other stuff. So, you must at least come up with whatever amount that you have to start a business.

These are the five basic ingredients of business success. Do your best to acquire or grow or invest in these ingredients. But the good thing is you don't need to have a perfect combination of ingredients to get started. You can still perfect the ingredients along the way. Somehow, get it started with what you've got.

Abel Cheng offers small and medium enterprises exclusive global profits insider tips in his free publication, Abel Cheng's Business Diary. To officiate a bi-weekly subscription, please go to http://www.abelcheng.com/diary.html And get personal email coaching.