What you can do to stand out amongst all the budding entrepreneurs
When you work for yourself, you can feel in over your head. Ultimately, working a freelance or self-employed life can result in a feast or famine sort of existence.
And if you decide to go to the next step and start a business in the hope that it becomes a more lucrative way of life it gives you more control over your existence, it’s definitely achievable. But you have to be aware that there’s an abundance of competition out there. With this in mind, is there anything budding entrepreneurs can do to stand out against all of those competitors?
It’s who you know
Sometimes these things could be overstated, but we all know the power of networking. Because when budding entrepreneurs find the right people to network with, this can result in leads, clients, or even approaches to working that we haven’t considered. As well as this, when you are in the wars all by yourself, struggling to keep afloat and upskilling yourself is a major challenge. But, take a leaf out of any other large business: they don’t do everything in-house.
For example, if you want to get an app developed, why should you learn computer programming in your spare time when you can get a leading custom software development agency to do it for you? Networking and improving your current professional and personal network means that you will develop your skills in a natural sense. It’s tempting to be that person that tries to know everyone, but this can appear very disingenuous, so be sure to surround yourself with people that you trust.
Learn your own resilience
It’s like a muscle and can be built over time. We can feel that temptation to give in every time we hit a wall, but it’s a very simple skill that takes years to perfect. By learning how to be resilient in situations when we encounter knockbacks, conflicts, or the need to fire someone, we can feel that it takes its toll emotionally.
Building up your resilience doesn’t mean turning into a complete stone of a person, it’s about understanding the art of doing business without it affecting you mentally. By understanding how we can improve our skills in a professional sense, we can better work on how to split ourselves between our work life and our home life.
View the bigger picture
The long game is something that many budding entrepreneurs don’t play. As tempting as it can be to give in after a year, if we stick at it, as cliched as this is, and figure out our pathway, this will serve us better in the long run.
The bigger picture is something, surprisingly, many entrepreneurs don’t look at. And, as easy as it is to focus on one task at a time, we have to remember why we’re doing this in the first place. Because there’s a vast amount of competition out there, there is that temptation to make an impact right away, and this breeds a sense of disposability about how we do business. It’s far better to pursue the long game and be in it for years, learning how to succeed and fail.
When you look at the biggest entrepreneurs and best business people, they might have been through a couple of businesses, but they’ve damn well learnt how to do something well. We can fear making mistakes, but this really is the only way to develop. And when you look at your contemporaries, where they are afraid to make mistakes, don’t take a leaf out of their book!
