[dropcap custom_class=”normal”] Are you restless at work? Do you sometimes envision those spontaneous vacations you can go on without having to write leave requests or asking for a raise?[/dropcap]
Being an entrepreneur seems easy enough especially when it gives you certain advantages and leverages.
It smells like a bakery, vanilla and Billionaire when you think about quitting that stressful job to run your own thing, at your own time, and most often than not from the comfort of your home.
As with every good thing in life, you have to put in the work, and to become an entrepreneur that work is multiplied by 10… or 100.
Not many people can handle the pressure that come with entrepreneurship. I definitely know a number of people that quit their day jobs to start up companies and ended up dusting off their CVs and going back to work for another.
Why? Because the sad truth is, being an entrepreneur is NOT easy and certainly not everyone has what it takes to be one.
According to the Business dictionary, An entrepreneur supplies risk capital as a risk taker, and monitors and controls the business activities. The entrepreneur is usually a sole proprietor, a partner, or the one who owns the majority of shares in an incorporated venture.
Being a risk taker is something every entrepreneur should be, it is major key. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle and skill that not everyone can acquire. But how do you know that the sorting hat of entrepreneurship landed on you? How do you know you are supposed to be an entrepreneur? Below are 13 ways to tell
1) You Think Outside the Box
As an Entrepreneur, your thinking cannot afford to be rigid. You have to be malleable and be able to be unconventional in your thought process otherwise you will find yourself stuck in hot water with no way out more often than not. If there are 20 given ways to kill a cat, a smart entrepreneur will find 21 because they find creative ways to tackle ordinary problems.
2) You Are Creative
In business, having resources is not as important as being resourceful. Putting what you have to good use. Most creative thinkers seamlessly move from one project to the other not because they are fickle, but because their minds are constantly working, generating new ideas. This is why most successful entrepreneurs have more than one business venture. They think differently.
3) You Enjoy Being Alone
Bathroom breaks are prevalent with entrepreneurs; they need to take some time off alone to recharge, think up new ideas, new strategies and new solutions. If they are constantly surrounded by people, they become voices in their heads distracting them when they need quiet time.
4) You Have To Be A People Person
This seems like a little bit of a contradiction with what was said in number 3, I know. You don’t have to be a social butterfly, but most successful entrepreneurs know how to work a crowd. Entrepreneurs are good marketers – when they need to be and network effortlessly because communication is a necessity to forge partnerships and to attract and retain customers.
5) No? What’s No?
If you are quick to put your tail between your legs and slink off, then you shouldn’t consider being an entrepreneur. In business, constantly, there would be road blocks and challenges that would make you stumble and sometimes give you a feeling of “it’s not worth it” but you have to be tenacious and keep pushing through.
The ability to give up easily is not a common trait among entrepreneurs. You must be persuasive, persistent and patient.
6) You Must Be Proactive
To be an entrepreneur, you must be willing to take the initiative by acting instead of reacting to situations. Ideas fly around all the time, amazing ideas. But what sets a successful entrepreneur apart, is the ability to effectively implement and execute ideas or partner with someone who can
7) You read A lot
I don’t mean mills and boons, Danielle Steele, gossip blogs and the likes. An entrepreneur should constantly evolve, stay informed and research for fun. It’s a rat race out there and you don’t want to get caught up in the dust of others so if you don’t fancy yourself a reader, then entrepreneurship may not be for you.
8) Mentors are Your Secret Weapon
A smart entrepreneur takes advice from a more experienced and successful business man or woman they look up to. These mentors may or may not know that they are in that position but garnering insight on how to tackle challenges and such from such a person with more experience is a life hack, because to be an entrepreneur means you will require some unorthodox help and advice every once in a while.
9) You Are Weird and You’re Not Sorry
This might sound a little strange but it’s true. Think about Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gate, and Richard Branson with their little quirks and unconventional perspectives. Entrepreneurs are rarely like anyone else, they aren’t the average Joes and they don’t apologize for it.
If people have called you weird, it may not be such a bad thing after all.
10) You Have Something To Prove
This is not a joke or an overstatement, research has shown that most successful entrepreneurs scaled through because they had something to prove to a parent, teacher, friends or even a lover who at some point and told them they couldn’t do it, told them they would fail. This becomes the driving force that fuels their passion to succeed. Call it immature but it’s been known to work wonders.
So instead of taking your phone and exchanging words with someone that put you down, transfer that aggression to work and succeed.
11) You Work Hard … And Play Hard
Entrepreneurs are hard workers. This is why passion is very important with them because they NEED to enjoy what they are doing. An entrepreneur can stay locked up for days working with their phones on silent, mentally shutting off the outside world and other forms of distraction. But when they eventually come out, it’s to do whatever makes them cool off… to the max.
As an entrepreneur, people actually see the effort you put into work because your output is directly impacted by your input.
12) You Are Prudent
Every good entrepreneur knows not to play with their budget. Money has been known to crumble many start-ups because someone was spending the little inflow of cash on flamboyant marketing and unnecessary things that didn’t translate to cash for the company.
Before you can be an entrepreneur, you should know how to manage your funds, be prudent with your spending, save wisely and put money back where it should go not where you want it to go. Or hire someone to do it for you otherwise every inflow of funds that come in would go out and you wouldn’t even know how or when
13) You Aren’t the Employee of the Year
Most Entrepreneurs don’t work well with authority. They will come late to work because they were up all night surfing the net. They would take more breaks than anybody else because they just “quickly need to step out” to mentally recharge and catch their breath. Work would get done but they need to do it in their own time.
They don’t need a boss to tell them what to do and when to do it because they have direction and discipline. If you are the type of person that needs guidance and monitoring otherwise work would stall and gather dust, maybe you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.
Their hours belong to them so they can be asleep all day when most people are at work and be awake all night when most people are asleep without having to answer to anyone… Except clients and deliverables of course.
Some people are better employees, I have spoken with a lady once who blatantly told me, “I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, I like taking orders” of course I was shocked but in hindsight I figured, if everyone was an entrepreneur, who would the entrepreneurs hire?
Not everyone possesses what it takes to be responsible for their successes and failures. But if with the above listed, you are also tenacious, passionate, have a flair for business, are confident and follow more inspirational pages than people on instagram then you just may be on your way to becoming an entrepreneur.
Good luck
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