Intro to Entrepreneur @ Ready Set Work

Do you want to be your own boss? When you decide to be an entrepreneur, you need to ask yourself a number of questions to determine whether this is the right path for you.

Now let’s explore six of them.

1. Do you want to work for yourself or own your own business?

While working for yourself does mean having your own business, the distinction is that you’re relying on your skills, talents, or resources for your monetization. A great example of this is being a freelance writer. You’re writing content for money, and your income is dependent on your ability to write quality content.

By contrast, if you were to choose to try your hand at things like book publishing, you’d be developing channels to sell products. So you’re definitely still working for yourself, especially in the beginning, but the “thing” you’re selling doesn’t rely on your individual work, generally speaking.

2. What are your personal skills and talents?

Even though this alone does not guarantee success, it is a very important tool, wether you want to become an employer or you want to become an employee. Everyone has marketable skills. By creating a list of your skills and talents, as you evaluate different opportunities, you’ll more quickly be able to assess what things you’ll need to hire or acquire to be successful, and if that’s realistic for you at this time.

Being aware of the skills you bring to the table and how you feel about each of them helps you make long-term and short-term decisions and set goals. It gives you clarity about whom you might need to hire when looking at any specific business and helps you evaluate what areas you may need to finance vs. sweat equity. It also helps you make outsourcing and partnering decisions, and will greatly impact how you look at your implementation timelines and processes.

3. What are your hobbies, passions and experience?

This is when your work doesn’t feel like work. Listing your hobbies, interests, and topics makes you aware of niches and industries and if you have some advanced knowledge in what you plan to do/start, it will be very helpful to you. There’s no interest that doesn’t count.

4. What are your financial resources?

Your first step is to take inventory of what capital you could draw from should you need or choose to. Then ask yourself: Are you good at managing money? In my opinion, whether or not you’re naturally gifted at managing money isn’t as important as knowing whether you are. So whether you’re “good” or “bad” with finances is less important than whether you have a realistic understanding of your strengths or weaknesses in this area so that if, by chance, you tend to be bad with finances, you can compensate for that weakness. If your answer is yes, then great. If your answer is no, then it needs to be on your radar so you can put a financial plan in place.

5. What are your personal limitations and lifestyle?

For this question, there are three different points to be considered. The first one is TIME...

Time is by far one of the most precious, sought-after commodities you possess. You may not think of your time as a currency, but you absolutely must while working to make money. For most people, their time is more valuable than money. It must be treated as the treasure it really is.

How much time do you realistically have to spend each week creating your new profit path? Can you carve out one hour per week? Two? Five? More? If the opportunity were good enough, could you temporarily devote more time to it? Remember, “no” is an acceptable answer. The point of this process is to know what resources you have available to you and how you’d get them if you needed or chose to.

The second point for this question is PATIENCE...

Patience is another currency that’s not infinite. The more you’re balancing on your plate, the more patience will be demanded of you.

The third point to this question is POSITIVITY...

Adding to this list positivity, coping ability, and energy -- these are all critical in all areas of our life. I bring this up because burnout is a very real possibility. Wherever you’re spending your various currencies, you’re taking away from another area of your life.

6. What are your limitations?

The last thing to evaluate are your limitations. For instance, you may have a specific amount of time you’re willing to devote to your profit path, and if it consistently requires more time than that, then it’s not a good match for you.

It has now been confirmed that you possess all the skills above but guess what? They do not make a an entrepreneur either. Want to know why?

Sure I'll tell you.

This is because if you posess all the above entrepreneurship trait and you do not know the kind of person you are or you do not know the kind of leadership quality you posses, then there is need for you to do a recheck and lucky for you, there is still an opportunity to learn.

Now what are those leadership qualities that determines your entrepreneurial abilities? This is also divided into three different categories vis:

• Leadership style
• Type of entrepreneur
• Personality type

But for now, let's all take a personality test. To take your personality test, click

16personalities.com

Remember, as an entrepreneur, you have to see solutions everywhere. The picture below shows a problem to one person but shows opportunity to another person. Same picture, same time but different people with different opinion.

You have to be passionate, focused and believe in yourself. If and when everyone sees failure, you have to be able to strain so as to see success. Be passionate because being passionate keeps you focused on your dreams. 

There is no limit to what you can do.