Rob Bellenfant is the Chief Strategy Officer of TechnologyAdvice, an internet marketing business whose services include simplified lead generation programs for B2B tech vendors, as well as resources to aid technology buyers in their purchase decisions. Follow him @robbellenfant.

Who is your hero? (In business, life, or both.)

My dad is my hero. He is driven, detailed, disciplined and demanding. These characteristics that molded me into the motivated professional and successful entrepreneur I am today. My dad also taught me how to run a business, starting with door-to-door craft selling, then lemonade stands, weed pulling, landscaping, and more serious endeavors as I got older.

He also taught me the importance of sacrifice: it’s hard not to sacrifice when you run your own business. He’d leave for work early and stay until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m., long after other dads in the neighborhood had returned home. If he came home earlier, it was usually with a truckload of mulch or a gallon of paint for a home improvement project. He not only put in the hours necessary to take care of his business, but also the effort necessary to take care of our family.

What’s the single best piece of business advice that helped shape who you are as an entrepreneur today, and why?

“An ounce of action is worth more than a ton in theory.” It’s a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great transcendentalist, but it applies perfectly to the business world. You can read all the books in the business section, and you can overanalyze and speculate and justify every decision you make, but in the end, your business is never going to move forward unless you act.

As an entrepreneur, even from a young age, I’ve always learned the most by trying things and taking action. Sure, I’ve made some mistakes along the way, but I’ve learned from those mistakes how to be a better leader and how to run a company. That’s what we refer to in the startup world as “failing forward.” TechnologyAdvice would not be the company it is today unless we’d taken some risks and taken action in moments where we didn’t have all the information.

What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your business, and what did you learn from it that others can learn from too?

My biggest mistakes were thinking too small and not seeing the big picture early enough in my career. When I first developed the idea for TechnologyAdvice (which was originally called Thrive Marketing), I wasn’t planning for the business to be very large. I thought it would be 10 team members, maybe twenty. Now I realize that the sky’s the limit, not just in terms of team size, but also in terms of the impact we can have on our market. We can transform the way companies research and buy technology, and the way vendors connect with their customers. That’s an awesome privilege, but it’s also a huge responsibility, and there are a ton of moving pieces required to make it work. I wish I’d had a bigger vision for the company in its early days and planned for faster growth. You really never know how a business concept is going to take off, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs underestimate themselves.

What do you do during the first hour of your business day and why?

The first hour of my business day, I check email and check in with key members of my team to see how they are doing. I think it’s important to have a constant read on the pulse of your team. What are they struggling with? What challenges have they encountered? If someone who works for me has a need, I want to know about it as soon as possible. As a founder and executive, it can be easy to insulate yourself from the day-to-day struggles of your team, but that’s how small problems become big problems. I like to stay connected and informed.

What’s your best financial/cash-flow related tip for entrepreneurs just getting started?

It’s easiest to get started when you have fewer responsibilities outside your business. The more responsibilities you have when starting a business, the more sacrifices you have to be prepared to make to become successful. That’s especially true if you’re sinking money into a dozen different projects and half of them fail. Decide early what you want to focus on, and set your life and financial priorities accordingly.

Quick: What’s ONE thing you recommend ALL aspiring or current entrepreneurs do right now to take their biz to the next level?

Stop planning/thinking/strategizing/considering, and just get started. Put one foot in front of the other, and walk, then jog, then run, and then run marathons (every day).

What’s your definition of success? How will you know when you’ve finally “succeeded” in your business?

I don’t have a single definition of success, but I’m very aware of the factors that indicate success. For me, there are five:

• When you have created something your customers cannot live without. It could be a simple consumer widget, or a complex enterprise platform. Whatever the case, your product needs to offer so much value that customers have trouble imagining their life (or work) without it.
• When you can do business on your own terms. This happens when you’ve built a strong enough reputation in the market that you can leverage your authority to dictate the terms of new relationships. Companies come to you for help — not the other way around.
• When you stop trying to be everything to everyone. Early on, a lot of entrepreneurs try to diversify their talent and their investments. That’s safe, but it doesn’t give you the bandwidth to excel at any one thing.
• When you can attract top talent. I always think of the quote from Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come.” If you build a successful company that’s doing something meaningful in the world, talented people will want to work for you.
• When you gain the perspective of hindsight — when you can look at your past and recognize all of your mistakes and failures and take them into your next project or next career.