I’ve been thinking lately about why it is that some business owners only seem to struggle with their businesses and others just seem to soar.
So I took a closer look at the individuals who seem to fly with their businesses to discover if there were any common characteristics. What I found is that there are indeed common characteristics, and qualities that these individuals share.
I was able to narrow down these qualities to just five, that together, hold significant importance: Passion, Motivation, Self Belief, Resilience and Creativity.
Should any one of these qualities not be present then it can result in the individual struggling rather than soaring!
The good news is that it is possible to cultivate these qualities. Many business owners come to me when they are struggling with achieving their goals for their businesses.
Reflecting on those clients who start to soar through our work together helped me to realise that they had started to cultivated one or more of the five qualities during our coaching together.
Lets take a deeper look at each quality right now..
Passion: having passion for your business and how it serves people drives business owners to provide the best solutions to their clients’ problems. It is infectious too, staff and customers feel the entrepreneur’s love for what they do and they respond to it.
Motivation: being self-employed is not easy, it is no surprise that many businesses close in their first year. It takes a highly motivated person to be willing to put in the hours required to get their business off the ground and then continue to put in the hours to achieve their goals.
You need to love being your own boss, which can be lonely, especially when the results do not come as quickly as you would like, but your motivation can carry you through the challenges.
Becoming de-motivated (or losing your love for what you do) is the quickest way for your business to collapse, so if you notice your motivation waning it is essential to take time out to re-discover it.
Self-belief: is central to an individual being able to make their business soar. But many female entrepreneurs, in particular, really struggle with their self-belief. Sadly, their lack of self-belief, and fear of putting themselves out there, inhibits them from marketing their business and gaining new clients.
By being encouraged to step out of their comfort zone, female entrepreneurs, can start to overcome their fears and develop the self-belief they need to take the risks that will help their business to expand and grow.
It is important to mention that self-belief is not something you develop and then stop working on – growing a business means there are always fresh challenges that can make us doubt our abilities. It is through the process of moving towards these challenges anyway (even if our legs are shaking!) that we keep strengthening our self-belief.
Resilience: is being able to handle the stress involved in being an entrepreneur. Be under no illusion here, running your own business is stressful. There are no guarantees, one day everything is looking rosie with lots of happy clients, the next you can be haemorrhaging money and wondering how you will cover your bills.
You need to have a mind-set that is able to handle the ups and the downs. And clarity of mind to recognise the course correction and actions you need to take to keep your business afloat and sailing smoothly towards your goals.
Creativity: is the capacity to think outside the box. To spot opportunities before anyone else in your market. The best way to describe this is to say, “Think like Steve Jobs!”.
By understanding the nature of these five qualities, and spotting which ones need attention in you, you can cultivate them, so you can shift your business from struggling to soaring.
