Don't Let Yourself Get in the Way of Your Success
When you start your own business, you may get the feeling that it's all about you. At the end of the day, it's your business, you're running it, you started it and therefore you know best.
This feeling can lead to a slightly inflated ego, and while this can be good in order to get your vision across, it can get in the way. So what can you do in order to stop yourself from holding your business back?
Commit yourself to your vision
One way to ensure you're focused on your business is to not give yourself a Plan B, it's your business or nothing. This may not sound as though it would help much, however, when you know you have a Get out of Jail free card, you know that you don't need to make the business work in order to have money coming in. If you make it that there is no Plan B, you have no option but to make Plan A work.
As part of your commitment to your business, you should make sure you have a strong foundation from which to move forward from. Don't forget that you should complete you business plan as well as having everything else in place that you need to have.
Don't define you self-worth by your work
Investing your time and money into your idea are the key to success, but what if your idea doesn't work out? You may feel as though you're a failure and that it's your fault and you let that define you.
You have to make peace with the fact that not all of your ideas will work out, and that it's OK to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with the next idea. All businesses have some form of failure during their running. It may be a big client that turned out to be a red herring, not being able to deliver a big project to the time scale projected or having a company vehicle breakdown. These are all minor hurdles which can be overcome with time and patience, there's no need to think you're a complete failure because of these minor setbacks.
Share the stage
Many sources will tell you that in order to be successful you'll have to have advice and guidance from trusted professionals. But this can be a downfall if they're not utilised to the full of their potential. One of the reasons for this can be that you want the limelight on you, after all you're the business owner. But being the centre of attention and not listening to the advice you're being given can be counter productive.
If you have advice from experts, you need to trust that they know what they're talking about. You need to remember that your goal is to create upward mobilisation of the business so that everyone can keep carrying out their roles even when you're not there. If you're not willing to stand back and want to be the centre of attention all the time, the business will fall apart when you're not there.
Know when to call it quits
This may seem to be contradictory to the first point, but there may come a point when you have to walk away. This is different from having a Plan B, this is just knowing when the time has come to move on from a failing business. It's usually best to get out of the business before it completely fails. That way you can sell it on and try to make some money from it. If you leave it too late because your ego has gotten in the way, you may not be able to sell the business.
Also, don't forget to learn from your mistakes and make yourself a better person for the experience. This can be difficult to do, but if you want to try your hand at another business in the future, your experience will be invaluable.
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