Whereas my approach to building resilience on a personal level is about maintaining a positive outlook on life generally, I can’t have the same approach to being an entrepreneur. If you are in the business of business, you already know why!
Yep, that means in the morning I have two separate planning notebooks to prepare myself for the day! Here is how I build entrepreneurial resilience:
Most people are turned off by the idea of having some algorithm or ‘test’ tell them who they are, but I actually find conducting assessments such as the Kolbe A Index to have been fundamental in helping me to understand the roles I naturally play in teams.
I recommend taking multiple types of self-assessment tests and keeping a log of your results in a special place (an ‘Entrepreneur Profile’ document maybe?) so that when you come up against problems you’re quickly able to ascertain whether this is as a result of your natural traits or out of character.
So with that in mind,
Setting Direction & Reflection
I am a strong believer of the fact that we already have what we need with us through the combination of our wide-ranging life experiences. These experiences are in my opinion what we should be using to define our entrepreneurial purpose in the first place. The Ikigai Model is a great tool if you’re stuck on where to start!
In my years of working with entrepreneurs and being one myself, I have consistently found that those who do not take regular time out to honestly reflect on the reasons why they are failing or succeeding are unable to sustain long term growth and build sustainable businesses.
Planning & Learning
We have all heard the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail and this is definitely true for entrepreneurial aspirations.
There is more than enough information available in the public domain about reasons that entrepreneurs and start-ups fail. I look through these in relation to my current trajectory and keep up with contemporary issues that could present as hurdles for me in the future. This is also good to remind myself of the possibilities for failure in areas that I have not already considered. I then use these gems of knowledge as the foundation for my daily planning as Enterprise Educator, and as an Entrepreneur myself. E.g, How is Trump’s Government shutdown likely to affect my US clients over the coming months?
How does this translate on a day-to-day basis?
On a day-to-day basis, I have access to apps (like Trello, Google Calendar and Flow-e), post-it notes and corporate decision-making tools that I can use to plan for KPI’s and log failures.
Logging failures as I go is probably the most important part of the process as this is where the lessons for growth are hidden in my opinion – although it is a VERY painful process when you first get started!
Once I have this information in, I can begin to schedule and organise any tasks/solution hunting by priority, time available to complete and who is responsible. Yes, who is responsible!
Work with others
I am not one of those entrepreneurs who feels the need to do everything in my business and you probably shouldn’t be either.
In fact, for me, the less I do the better. I prefer to work on my business than work in it so that I can maintain perspective over the bigger picture – but that is a personal preference.
The other amazing thing about working with others is that the world becomes your team. This means your customers become your number one advisers, your staff become your number one implementers, and your mentors become your number one influencers!
I’d love to learn about you!
What do you do to maintain your resilience as an Entrepreneur?
