Kelsey Ramdsen, Canada’s Top Entrepreneur, is the founder of four companies. She is a member of the Ernst & Young’s Winning Women Entrepreneurs for 2013 as well as a mentor for the Richard Branson Centre for Entrepreneurship. How did she achieve such success? She’s sharing 8 tips with us :

1.  Start Your Business for the Right Reasons

Most people start their business for one reason: money. But Kelsey believes that such notion is classified as a misguided and a dangerous principle. Seasoned entrepreneurs will tell you that money is the last thing to come when you start a business.

2. Use Your Time and Energy Wisely

You should know that one thing that you need to spend time and energy on. Chasing multiple goals breeds dysfunction. If you’re not clear as to what you should be focusing on, you’ll be distracted. Choose the goals you want to pursue well.

3. Strengthen Your Weakest Link

Kelsey offers three of the common weakers links: not addressing a monetizable pain in the market, lack of a strong value proposition, and poor messaging. So identify your weakest link and work to turn it around.

4. Be Accountable

We all face challenges, and at times when we feel alone and lonely, accountability should be at its prime importance. Kelsey advices that you have mentors, peer entrepreneurs, and advisers that you are accountable to, because in her own words, accountabilty works.

5. Establish Systems to Aid You in Your Goals

Kelsey says that smart entrepreneurs are not only good goal-setters; they are good system creators. What she means is that once you’ve identified a goal you want to work on, you should create a system (if not already present) that can aid you in fulfilling that goal.

6. Hire Smart and Set Expectations

You can avoid people and management problems if you form the right team with the right people, and if you set the foundations for success. The key? Kelsey says that you should look at your comany culture and core values. Use both to find the right people and to set expectations right at the onset.

7. Be Honest with Yourself

You are the number one factor to your success or failure. Be honestly critical about yourself. Be unbiased when you judge yourself because when you do, you’ll recognise your shortcomings and you’ll work to improve them.

8.Ask for Help

You won’t always be eating on a silve platter. You won’t always have the right answers. The key towards continuous self-improvement is surrounding yourself with people who are smarter and who are better than you. But most of all, when you need help, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask.