It's Not Always Fun

It takes willpower, a strong mindset and focused work to run a successful business.

This is even more true for those who just get started, as many new entrepreneurs need to do all the work required to run a business until they grow their funds to hire a professional team. 

Success Doesn't Happen Overnight

Again, social media makes success look like it happens overnight.

It is much like the singer or band that is an overnight success after ten years of playing small venues, coffe shops and bars for audiences that are not raving fans.

Even those who seem to get exposure within a day don't.

Their skillset and expertise still took time to grow. It's highly uncommon to reach your business goals within a year.


To be a successful entrepreneur, be ready to do the work without any rewards to start with. 

Failure Is Part of the Entrepreneurial Journey

At some point, you are likely to fail. or example, a campaign will flop, a product release won't sell, or you don't get enough people buying your program to break even.

However, that doesn't mean you need to give up. You have gained costly knowledge on what didn't work.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs create products that fail on purpose to understand their target audience better. In addition, it is a great way to learn about your industry.

Not only that, not every idea you come up with will be a good one.

However, all it really takes is one good idea to be successful. 

Don't let a few failures get in your way.

When polled, most business owners are thankful for their mistakes because they ultimately believe they wouldn't see their success today without experiencing failures

Conclusion

As you can see, becoming an entrepreneur takes a lot of work that is uncomfortable for everyone. In addition, becoming an entrepreneur means entering into a competitive world with what seems like never-ending work, failure, and challenges that you must overcome to see success.

However, if you can handle these challenges and are ready to realize your dream, becoming an entrepreneur may be right for you. 

They are the heroes of the free market system. Unfortunately, that's not how Hollywood portrays them. Instead, they are the hero or the villain depending on the show or movie.

The government treats them like a whipping boy when discussing social inequalities but wants them to create jobs. They want them to take all the risks but complain that they don't pay their fair share of taxes.

So, who are these mysterious maligned group of people and are you one of them?

It is safe to say that entrepreneur thinks differently and has a different passion level for their idea than the average person.

Entrepreneurs look at a problem and try to find a solution that they can turn into a product that will generate profit.

The entrepreneur looks at the world differently than an employee. As a result, they ask different questions that lead to profitable, practical products.

Entrepreneurs are passionate about running their own business or making income without relying on an employer. They are independent.

Entrepreneurs take a passion and generate products based on that passion. This focus on their passion can provide a livable income or riches beyond belief.

Entrepreneurs are builders in our society.
We are going to look at five traits that most entrepreneurs have.

The question is, "How many of these traits do you have?"

This list is a shortlist of common traits but is not exhaustive.

Does this mean you can't make it as an entrepreneur if you don't have these traits?

No, it doesn't mean that, but you will have a few more obstacles to get around on your entrepreneurial journey.

Are You More Comfortable on Your Own

Most businesses, especially when you first start, can be lonely and require you to do most work.
There are reasons for this.

Chief cook and bottle washer is a term that does apply in the early days of any entrepreneur's journey because you have to do everything from sales to finances.
Working alone or in a small group makes sense as you learn how to do things and explore your ideas.

Especially at this part of the journey, the entrepreneur can be lonely because they spend much of their time working which means spending less time with friends and loved ones. They don't understand and might get upset with you because you don't spend time with them.

This can be very difficult for the entrepreneur because unless his friends and family are involved in a business as an owner, they will have difficulty understanding why you can't spend time with them.

It takes self-discipline to keep working at something for hours while your friends enjoy themselves without you.

Most people will not be as passionate as you are about your idea, which is okay.

They don't want to talk about your latest breakthrough in marketing, product enhancements or your newest customer and how your products and services are perfect for them.

If you know others that are developing their business then get together with them to talk about business things that others don't have any interest in.

You Value Freedom and Flexibility

Being an entrepreneur enables you to create your schedule. But, like many things, this is a double-edged sword.

You must discipline yourself about how you spend your time and balance your activities to get the best results. For example, too much time spent on research and not enough time on sales will reduce the amount of cash you have to finance your research.

It's not just time that you have freedom and flexibility. You also have this in what projects you pursue. You decide when you show up and have time off to refresh.

You have to keep your customers happy and hopefully convert them into raving fans of your work.

If you want to be a career coach, you will likely need to be available after regular working hours, as many of your ideal clients will typically be working nine to five business hours. However, this limitation doesn't mean you have to work five days a week. I know of one coach that works three days a week and makes a high 6 figure income.

Working hours convenient to your clients is part of the job when you start, but the idea is to get the financial freedom to choose your hours and your clients.

One of the driving forces for most entrepreneurs is the ability to buy time freedom. The ability to do what your want, when you want, and with whom you want is a major driving force.

In his book "The Four Hour Work Week," Tim Ferris describes how he works four hours a week by creating systems and assigning tasks he doesn't like to other people. Tim only spends four hours a week doing things he doesn't like to do.

When you love what you do, it isn't work.

You Are Confident and Creative

The entrepreneur looks at things differently than the average person.

The average person sees a problem and falls back on their experience and know-how to solve it. They say things like, "This is the end of the world. How will we survive this?"

The entrepreneur looks at the same problem and finds new ways to solve the problem. Can we create something that solves this problem? Is this a common problem? Can we combine two or more ideas to make something that can solve this? Is there a root cause that if we solve it, the problem never happens? The entrepreneur says," Well, this is inconvenient. How can we make this an opportunity?"

Being an entrepreneur takes passion for your ideas, skills, and value to others.

A business's success is dependent on the client receiving value from your solution. Therefore, the entrepreneur's idea must provide value to your client.

In addition, it takes confidence to know you have the skills and knowledge to achieve your goals and provide value to your target audience.

As an entrepreneur, you are confident in your skills and are confident that you can learn new things quickly to fill the skills gap that your clients might need.

You Don't Like Following Orders

No matter your role, being an employee requires following orders.

It requires working when and where your boss tells you to. Take lunch when your boss tells you. Have breaks when your boss lets you. You take a vacation only after your boss has approved it.

For many, this can mean working during the weekend or working overtime during the week and following any demands the boss asks. All, so you are not fired from the job.

Following orders doesn't always have to be negative as this can add structure to many people's lives.

This structure can be challenging for entrepreneurs as they are more free spirits and non-conformists. As a result, it can feel like a cage.

So if you are the type to push away or come up with better ideas often, then it's probably time for you to take the entrepreneurial leap and work for yourself instead.

You Enjoy Taking Risks

Most business ideas, even the best ones, are risky. But the entrepreneur would rather fail than not try. Most business ideas change on the way to market.

The entrepreneur is willing to make the changes to make the idea better and more valuable to the client.

Becoming an entrepreneur means you are willing to step into a world that relies only on yourself and no other person. If taking risks gives you energy and makes you want to do the work, you are a natural-born business owner.

Conclusions

These are a few common signs that you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur and stop being an employee.

If you recognize these signs, you must acknowledge that you won't find the life you are looking for without finally leaping into entrepreneurship.

Indeed, you will probably not find your inner peace until you make the leap to becoming an entrepreneur, but my suggestion is to STOP.

Don't do anything rash.

Start building your idea, put your plans together, gather the resources you need, and test your idea in the marketplace. Then, seek out people that can help you move forward.

You do need to start on your journey.

I hope you have enjoyed this post about the signs you could be an entrepreneur. I hope it has encouraged you to think about moving from an employee to an entrepreneur and prove you can thrive on the independence and creativity entrepreneurship can bring. 

Explore the Possible

• How big is the market?
• Does the market have the resources to purchase your product?
• Is my product different from the other offerings?
• Can I provide a higher value than what is being offered?
• How will I sell my product or service?

Understand Your Competition

One remarkable fact about discovering your competition is that competition proves your idea is a good one.

If there are no competitors, this is not necessarily a good thing. It’s hard being the first to market with a new idea. In fact, depending on the market, it can be costly to be first.

If you study businesses, you’ll note that it’s not always the first to market that makes it.

It’s often the copycats that come later that truly make it work. They research the market, talk to clients and find a way to improve or provide a more compelling story for the product or service.

You can use your competition to avoid mistakes as well as find your audience.

Some questions that you can answer is

• How are they selling the product?
• Can you offer something different?
• What can I do to make my product stand out?
• How are the competitors marketing their products?
• Can I change the offer to make it more appealing?

Know Your Customer Better

When you develop your business plan, it forces you to find out not only who your exact ideal customer is, but where they are, what they need, and how you can best communicate with them about their problems.

When you find out the problem and issues, you can target your marketing to solve their exact problem.

You will also find out the demographics of who is buying your product or service.

This research goes into understanding who your ideal clients are.

For example, you would market differently to the urban female who is married with two children and a full-time job than the corporate male that is a couple of years from retirement and looking to develop an income to supplement his retirement.

When you know your customer, you can use targeted marketing and advertising to reach the exact audience.

You can also ensure you know who they are and how they make decisions.

• Are they found on a particular social site?
• Are there groups, clubs, websites that they hang around?
• What magazines do they buy?
• What podcasts do they listen to?
• What type of media does my client consume?  Do they like video     audio or written form?

Document Your Revenue Model

You only have a business if you have something to sell and a method of taking payment.

The thing about business is that it’s supposed to earn money. If you don’t find a way to make money from your product or service, you will soon not have a business.

Therefore, part of creating your business plan is to ensure that the business idea can earn enough money to support  your intended lifestyle and dreams

Most small businesses are relatively simple to set up, but you need to understand how to keep track of money and expenses legally so that you don’t pay one more penny in taxes and fees than you need to.

You’ll need to know how to collect the money, what happens after collecting it, and follow all the rules and regulations based on the type of business entity you choose.

I suggest you do the following

1.  How do I collect payment? Cheque, Charge Card, Paypal, Stripe, EFT
2.  How do I organize the expenses?
3.  Decide what portion you will set aside a portion for taxes
4.  Decide what portion you will set aside a portion for re-investment
5. Build a cash reserve fund so if you have a few bad months, you can     survive.

Reduce Risk and Judge Potential Success

When you put everything down on paper, from how you’ll set up your bookkeeping to how you’ll process each customer’s order, it’s a lot simpler to figure out if success is possible.

It also gives you a chance to think about the things that can blindside you and how you’re going to handle them.

You’ll reduce risk by setting up everything in advance of starting.

Then, when you can see how the process works, from attracting a client to converting them to a sale and serving them, you can fix any problems before they start, ensuring your success.

You also get a chance to look at your personal goals and align them with your business goals. Hopefully they will be in harmony, but if they aren’t, it’s a lot easier to walk away from the business before you have clients and responsibilities.

Check out my FREE Business survival guide for different ideas on how to get through some tough times.

To Develop an Operation Roadmap

When you create your full business plan, you will also create a how-to-do everything you need to run your business step by step.

For example, suppose you start a reselling business on Amazon.com. You have many things that you need to figure out like:

• your process for purchasing
• a purchase price point
• a markup formula
• cleaning, packing, photographing, and posting procedures.

In other words, everything needs a step-by-step plan written out.

Crisis, What Crisis?

You might not want to think about it, but sometimes a business will go sideways.

Having a business plan can be a life saver if you spent some time doing some basic things.

If you write your business plan right, you’ll know things like your break-even point, the minimal resources you need to make it work.

This information will simplify and take the emotion out as you figure out what to do if business slows due to outside reasons like supply chain disruptions or political turmoil.

The crisis doesn’t have to be external. A family crisis or you have a health challenge can throw your business into a tail spin. If you have the basic operation numbers, you can make decisions based on facts, not gut feel.

Can you start to see that a business plan could be invaluable as you grow your business because, in a way, everything is taken into consideration while developing the business plan?

To Develop and Document Your Marketing Plan

Having the best mousetrap in the world won't matter if no one knows about it.

On the other hand, the last thing you want is to have your business be the best-kept secret ever.

You have to get out there and blow your horn.

The marketing plan is an essential part of your business plan that will help ensure your success.

To Forecast Business Needs

As you develop your business plan, you should end up with a list of resources, staff, money, equipment, software, and so forth that you need to be successful.

You’ll know exactly what you want and need and how much it’s going to cost you.

Even if you note things that you cannot afford right now, you can set up a plan to get around it until you can afford it.

The big thing is to reduce the number of surprises that you get hit with.

To Highlight New Opportunities

As you create your business plan and go through each of the steps and areas of the business plan, brainstorming gives you ideas for more products and services aligned with what you’re planning to offer.

These new opportunities can help you grow your business bigger and better than you may have thought to start with.

This is where many new entrepreneur's businesses fail because you are focused on all these opportunities without getting your original product or service up and stable.

It’s vital that you identify them for long-term growth but stick to what you can do when you start.

To Set Up Your Daily Tasks

The business plan is so robust that you can use it to set up each day full of tasks that build results.

These milestones become mini goals and targets so you can focus on the results.

You should come up with due dates, timelines, and more with your business plan so that you can insert the tasks into your calendar.

Write the next goal and the deadline on a whiteboard that you see everyday so you are reminded of the commitment you have made.

If you have a team, put it in a place where everyone can see it.

One example I saw was a whiteboard in a common area with a number and a date. When I asked about it, I was told it was the percentage of the sales target for the month and because it was in an area where clients would be the team decided not to refer to it as sales for the month.

Conclusion

Many small business owners think they don’t need a business plan because they will not be borrowing money from a bank.

But I hope you can see that it’s more than the ability to get a loan.

The business plan helps you set up your business in an organized way to work step by step on building your business, giving you the best possible chance of success.

It's the align with your core beliefs and goals that I would like to talk about because it happens more than we would like to admit.

Not every business is a good business for you. It has to align with your personal values, goals and skill sets.

So before you start working on your business plan, you need to sort out your personal goals. They need to be in sync. You don't want to be a different person when working in your business and around your family and friends.

When setting goals, it is essential to remember that there needs to be some balance in the major areas of your life. Without this balance, you will spend all your time and energy focusing on work and not spend any time on family or your health, as an example.

People never think about how each decision affects how their lives will look and be in practice when designing their lives.

When you talk about goals with friends and family, are most of the conversations about work and financials? Why is that?

Why are you limiting your goals to work? Is focusing on your career and business goals the only thing that matters? NO, but like us all, you get sucked in by the commercials on TV and magazine advertisements for insurance brokers and banks to focus on making money and managing money to have all you want in the future. What about now? You need some balance.

So let's break a long-held myth in the self-improvement industry. Goals are not just about work.

Let’s start strong and talk about the areas of life you need to design to ensure your success.

If you want a particular lifestyle, you must think about how each choice impacts your desires.

There are eight areas of life that you need to design purposefully for success:

Career Goals

Education- Life Long Learning

Don’t forget your local library. They have access to a wide variety of materials, and depending on their services, online learning could be available.

Finally, check out your local college or university to see if individual courses will help you become an expert in your field.

Family Goals

Community Goals

Do you want to be involved in your church, or do you want to feed the poor or take care of stray animals in your area?

What do you want to have the time and funds to do in your community?
It might be as simple as helping the elderly couple down the street with the groceries.

Spiritual Goals

Spiritual goals sometimes focus on changing you into a newer, better person.

Maybe control your temper or give a certain amount to a charity you care about and want to support.

Health and Fitness Goals

Your health and fitness level are essential because it doesn’t matter what level of success you achieve if you're unhealthy.
Being ill or not working at peak performance physically, it’ll be hard to keep up the momentum to achieve your plans.

Finances Goals

Hobbies 

More Goal Lessons

Your goals should be yours, not your spouse’s, your companies, parents or close friends. Take control of your future by making your goals for yourself. If you’re chasing someone else's goals, your life will not be balanced, and you will feel artificial.

As you look to creating your own business you can now put some boundaries around what you will do and what you won't do.

It would be best if you had goals in all the areas and did not limit your goals to work. Don't think you can separate your business life from your personal life. It wont work.

Go through each area and write a summary about how you envision your life in each of these areas.

Then be very specific about what it will cost you in terms of time and resources to achieve the ideal life you’re designing for yourself. Do not make assumptions.

Look up how much something costs, ask people who have done it how long it takes, and get real information so that you’re not just guessing.

The idea is to design a life that you really want to live, but that is realistic for you to achieve.

If you found this helpful, you might want to check out these articles

Why Is It Important To Have a Goal In Life?

Why It's Never Too Late to Go After Your Dreams

Encourage others to do their best work or to follow their dreams. Motivating others is a skill that anyone can develop. You can only be as successful as your team. Avoid the belief that you can do it all alone. You can't.

The task of a great leader is to inspire others to be overachievers. It's a challenging task, but if you're good at motivating others, you'll always be one of the most influential people around.

Great leaders share these qualities:

How many of these ten characteristics do you possess? Are you willing to develop those qualities that you lack? Great leaders have several qualities in common that you can learn and apply to enhance your leadership skills. Review these qualities and look for ways to develop your leadership abilities further.

Part of being a successful leader is your ability to set the bar for others. You can be a good role model by continually seeking ways to improve yourself and aspire to excellence. The hallmark of leadership is excellence. Work on honing your existing skills and developing new ones.

Consider what you want to accomplish in different areas of your life. Set goals that will help you to achieve your vision. 

Leaders are known for their ability to inspire others to work towards a common goal. To be successful at inspiring others to work with you, it's essential to develop your people skills and emotional intelligence.

Most of us take cues from others in social situations, so you can teach others to have a positive attitude and to be passionate in their efforts by doing so yourself.

Taking the time to develop your leadership skills can radically increase the amount of success that you experience in all areas of your life. These tips can help you to hone your leadership skills so that you can achieve your goals and enjoy a more satisfying life.