What is an entrepreneur? For many, this is an individual who aims to start their own business or organization, planning this venture with a sense of novelty, innovation, or the means to fix a particular problem. Entrepreneurs, by definition, aim to work for themselves and to bring something new into being, subverting the usual means of working for companies and raising within those hierarchies – even if they have a past history of doing exactly that.
For this reason, then, an entrepreneur is not only someone who runs a business, but an ambassador of an idea or need for change. They’re a promoter, spokesperson, developer, someone who hopes to sell you on an idea or a structure that may or may not work out.
If you hope to become an entrepreneur, then, it’s important to look at yourself as your main asset. You’re the very definition of a growth asset, meaning that investing in yourself can pay dividends, and you will always have control over your decisions. Working on yourself in line with these goals is essential, then.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to achieve exactly that, to help you move forward with confidence:
Presenting Yourself In A Neat, Professional Manner
It’s essential to present yourself neatly. You don’t have to wear the most expensive suits, drive the flashiest car, or use the pitch-perfect handshake technique some influencer on Instagram might have told you.
However, caring for your appearance and the details of how you present yourself shows you can do the same when managing a firm. That might include caring for your dental environment, caring for your skin, getting a neat, simple haircut, wearing a clean professional wardrobe that matches where it needs to and fits on your frame.
If you can do that, then you’ve already taken care of the tough part.
Learning To Manage Your Time
It’s essential to learn good time management. You can have the coolest idea and the perfect captive market to present it to, but unless you can keep appointments, work on your priorities with helpful “time block” planning, and deal with people in a way that respect their time too, it’s hard to be productive.
Your time is one of the most valuable resources you have as an entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean you should be overly tight with it. Sometimes, you have to invest your time, in people, practices, product development, and sometimes just thinking through the characteristics of your brand. If you can achieve worthwhile time management, you learn an entrepreneurial superpower.
Developing Internal Resilience
Part of the story of any entrepreneur is that of failure. Unless you have a very strong safety net to fall back on (which isn’t always that helpful), it’s unlikely that your first effort will be smooth sailing 100% of the time. That’s okay.
This is why it’s important to be resilient. At a time when it feels like all your efforts are stuck in the mud, or when people haven’t contacted you for approval of your patent idea, or when you’re still waiting for your first client, it’s important to keep focusing on what you’re doing and move on from there.
Developing internal resilience, in this way, comes as second nature. When you’re not afraid of the perception of failure, you feel more capable of putting yourself out there, too, knowing that not every disadvantage is a stain on your reputation or your future. Instead, you regard these as lessons, and that’s a very healthy outlook.
Interpersonal Management
Ultimately, your ability to speak to people, to deliver your idea succinctly, to present to an audience, and to manage them will be tested in this role. You need people to trust you.
As such, taking public speaking classes can be a great means of skill development, helping you communicate on stage with calm, consistent sentences without awkward body language (don’t worry, most people will have this at the beginning, too).
Even being able to disagree with someone you’re potentially partnering with is key, as can negotiating rates of outsourced work, or selling your idea to an investor, or standing firm in your idea but respectfully bowing out when your compatibility with someone else isn’t quite there.
With all these efforts combined, you’re sure to put your best self forward as an entrepreneur. If you can be careful about how you present yourself, learn valid skills that help you grow, and remain adaptable with your goals, success is sure to come. At the very least, you will have conducted yourself with dignity so you can always be proud of your journey.
