Beyond Motivation

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.

Starting up? Do you really have it in you? Let’s discuss what I takes beyond motivation to be an entrepreneur.
Anyone with a strong desire, commitment and belief can be an entrepreneur. The key to becoming one is the strong desire to control your own destiny. This desire need to be so strong that you are ready to RISK your family, future and career. A belief that you have a better way, a better idea that will do wonders to the industry you choose.
Almost all successful entrepreneurs share some common personality traits, confidence, and ability to sell, setup a business and trust their intuition. Confidence not only help, it has to be backed up by the ability to sell their ideas, setup a business and trust their intuition in the long run.
Remember small business is fiercely competitive, and it’s you the entrepreneur with confidence who survive.
Measuring your strengths and weaknesses is a major attribute you must look at. No one has all the qualities needed to be a successful entrepreneur. The important thing is to access your strengths and weaknesses in your Personal and Professional life.

1. Analyze your Personal attributes.
   Ask these questions to yourself, am I self-motivated, am I a hard worker, am I focused, do I have common sense, am I well-organized, can I take time out for doing business and am I ready to compromise my family to achieve success in business? If the answer to all the questions is yes, you are the entrepreneur material.
   Amongst all attributes mentioned above, compromising family is a major task to achieve, it’s not that you don’t give time to family, only the time is less. An emotional trait breaks down the motivation, focus and discipline which are the key attributes to a successful entrepreneurship. A balancing of personal and professional life is required at this time.

2. Analyze your Professional attributes.
   Being an entrepreneur needs you to take many roles within your organization, but this doesn’t mean that you should be professionally competent in all aspects and roles. Evaluate your skill sets and find out your strengths and weaknesses, put down the attributes and rate yourself. Ex. If the attributes required for your business are technology, sales, marketing and administration. Put down your self-analysis on each of the attributes on a scale of 10. This will help you define where you are good at and where you will require help.

Additionally goal setting is a key to success of any business. Setting goals for the business will keep you on track and focused all the time to achieve them. The qualities one should aim at while setting goals are:

1. Be specific: Set a specific goal and not assumptions. Raising funds for the business is not a specific goal, but raising $50000 by September 30 is. So be specific while setting goals.
2. Be Positive: Being optimistic and positive is an important quality. To be able to pay office rent is not an inspirational goal, but achieving financial security is. It depends on how you phrase it. Rephrase your goal to a broader vision to attain it with more focus and enthusiasm.
3. Be Realistic: Set realistic goals, aiming to earn $1000000 every month when you have never reached that amount even in a single year of business, it’s an unrealistic goal. Instead set goals to achieve a 20% increase in the revenue every quarter, this is real.
4. Set short and long term goals: Short term goals can be set for weeks then months and then a year, this helps achieve the goals in progression. Long term goals can be set for 5, 10 or 20 years. Setting more long term goals helps keep a track on progress in the long run. Just be sure you are setting realistic goals may it be short or long term.