Before you set out on your exciting journey to be an entrepreneur, here are some questions you should ask yourself. They are not meant to rain on your parade but rather a more realistic look into your mind to make sure your heading in the right direction and are doing what you should be doing.
Are you passionate about what your doing?
There are a million people out there with a million great ideas, and their all trying to be entrepreneurs. They all want a piece of that yummy pie as they try to build a makeshift company. With so much competition and the hardships of the economy, most of them are going to fail. So what sets the winners apart? Passion. That word gets thrown around so much and lately I have been hearing people such as Gary Vaynerchuk talk greatly about the importance of passion and doing what you love. So I’ll ask you again, are you passionate about what your doing?
You have to be passionate about what your doing to be successful in this world, it’s a must. You cant just like it, you gotta love it! Because if you dont, someone who does love it will come along and do the same thing your doing. And they will do it better. So seriously reflect and think about: What am I truly passionate about? And if what your doing comes to mind, then proceed to the next question.
Do you see an entrepreneur in yourself?
It may seem like a dumb question to ask yourself because if your pursuing entrepreneurship you must see yourself as one. Right? Wrong.
Many people believe it or not will go along with something in their lives just because they think it’s a good idea, or they dont really know what else they should be doing. Does this sound like you? If your unsure about what you should be doing then maybe you should re-evaluate your priorities. Go look in the mirror, do you see an entrepreneur staring back at you? Or are you sure its not just an idea man? Some people are very good at coming up with ideas, but not very good at carrying them through to fruition. Just being an idea man does not make you an entrepreneur, instead you have to have the ability to take that idea to reality.
So if its an entrepreneur im talking to, then go ahead and ask yourself this:
Are you ready for setbacks?
Part of being an entrepreneur is not so much asking will there be setbacks, because OH there will be setbacks, but more so asking yourself do I have the determination and drive to get through those setbacks. So many times I’ve heard about entrepreneurs who did all this work to start their company and after a few setbacks, gave up. When if they had just pushed forward another time they might have found themselves a success. You never know if the next time you try something that will be the time you succeed so you should never stop until you are a success. If you fail along the way then you learn from your mistakes and try again at something else.
Our president Barack Obama made this comment on failures “Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” Even people as great as the president of the United States realize how important this is. As you start your journey as an entrepreneur just make sure your prepared to face some of these hardships, and to remind yourself that its your duty to keep pressing on.
If you have made it this far then proceed to the final question:
Do you realize you can’t make everyone happy?
If you think that your going to be able to make everyone happy, your wrong. You are not going to make everyone happy, nor can you. There will always be critics, there will always be SOMEONE who is upset with what your doing or what you believe in. The sooner you realize this the better because it can in fact lead to your failure if you do not. Take this quote by Herbert Swope “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody.” If you try to please everybody you will run yourself down as well as waste time, instead of using it to grow your business bigger.
Instead you should focus on making yourself happy, by doing what you love and making the critical people in your life and business happy like your employees and customers. If you do that and people see you are happy then you will make them happy and eventually you will succeed.
If some of these questions made you rethink whether or not your on the right path, I wish you luck in finding your true calling. If you looked at these questions and have no doubt in your mind about entrepreneurship, I personally welcome you to our world. Good Luck.
Article written by Richie Frost “The World Class Executive”.
