This article is a continuation of The lonely life of an Entrepreneur: Part One | The Calling
Your risk appetite must be healthy, for you are about to leave a guaranteed paycheque every month to pay yourself much less, because you need to sustain your business until it becomes financially stable. Assessing your every move and every hire is crucial to your success, and sometimes you will have to take some big risks because you might be doing something disruptive that people might need to see to believe, so you would invest in making a prototype or an MVP.
Confidence has a lot to do with entrepreneurship. The fact that you are telling an industry, any industry your startup will target, that you have a better way to do what they thought they’ve mastered says a lot about you. However, there is a slippery slope between confidence and arrogance, and it’s one of the major pitfalls of many entrepreneurs. Many think that because they came up with an idea, they will be able to implement it correctly without help and then tend not to listen to people with years of experience. That’s why it’s always preferable to have a mentor from your industry that advises, guides, and tells you what others won’t by acting as a devil’s advocate. Whether you are an entrepreneur or not, you need a mentor.
When you become in charge of your own fate, career-wise, and decide to do become the CEO of your own company, everything that happens in your day-to-day life is a big deal. Every little hiccup feels like a colossal mess. You will fight with your partner(s) at times, lose employees, friends, and business — that’s inevitable. Stress is something that you must learn how to cope with and control. You have to adapt to the circumstances of your environment or your industry, and never let anything deviate you from the vision you set forth. In many cases, entrepreneurs find themselves cornered because of these changes that are out of their control. This is where every entrepreneur is tested. To pivot or not to pivot? That’s the question you might find yourself asking. In most cases, you’re the only person who can answer it. Here is when every entrepreneur is tested. The decision you make doesn’t only reflect on you, it’s on your employees, and in some cases your values.
STRESS IS SOMETHING THAT YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO COPE WITH AND CONTROL. YOU HAVE TO ADAPT TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT OR YOUR INDUSTRY, AND NEVER LET ANYTHING DEVIATE YOU FROM THE VISION YOU SET FORTH.
Clearing your mind and having your thoughts lined up is hard, but not impossible. Staying positive is key for you to keep morale up in your company because, like it or not, your employees can see through you and sense if there is something. You must handle challenges calmly, with a positive mind state. Think of yourself as a captain of an airplane full of passengers. If you heard or saw the captain panicking, you would find yourself panicking more than the captain. Thus, the most crucial part of managing your business is to stay strong and composed for the sake of your company and your team. Always try to remind yourself that every problem has a solution and that good teams are judged by their ability to solve problems.
The worst and hardest part of playing the game of entrepreneurship and business is time management. At the initial phase of you starting your business (and especially if you are a first time entrepreneur), you will find yourself fighting to balance your social life and your work life. The truth is, nobody masters this for the first few years; so don’t be hard on yourself if you are going through this now. Your business becomes your life until it becomes a well-oiled machine that generates income without you needing to continually be pushing it or interfering in every single aspect of it. You will find yourself in a lot of useless meetings that you will not gain anything from. It’s a steep learning curve, you will sit with a lot of time-wasters that will promise you the world or ask you a lot of useless questions and challenge you with absurd arguments. Many people act like or pose like investors, clients or even partners. You will learn how to identify those type of people with time, but you will learn how to avoid them in the future.
To be continued…
