Howdy!
I wrote about some soft skills last month, and I’m continuing on that theme for this month as well. If you like the how-to’s though, there’s some stuff here.
As many of you know, I instruct marketing sessions for Women Venture. These sessions are focused on helping underserved women start their own businesses. And it occurred to me that there was a big piece missing for them, which was to check in on how prepared they are emotionally.
Generally speaking, being an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, or a small business person is going to require qualities like…
- Determination
- Being able to take risks
- Being able to wear many hats
- Having the resolve to get through insecurities, self-doubt, etc.
What else? Less sleep and more stress since much of small business development means building the bicycle while riding it. And they likely won’t be able to spend as much time as they like doing the parts of the business they enjoy. Plus the life lessons one can learn like why you shouldn’t burn bridges, or to not get too attached to doing things a certain way.
Am I being a Debbie Downer about this? I don’t think so, I suspect there are some who were driven to this because they enjoy the risks, etc.
What qualities would you add to the list? And what were you unprepared for? Seriously, PLMK so I can share it with others who are considering starting a business.