Blog: Under promise and over deliver: How to stay on top of your game as an entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship

Under promise and over deliver: How to stay on top of your game as an entrepreneur

Stepping out of the limits of one’s comfort zone is what triggers the genesis of most startups. It is certainly not easy to push one’s limits beyond the usual, to invest time and energy into building a business out of one groundbreaking idea, assess the risk factors, and consistently work on it until it is stable enough.
Under promise and over deliver: How to stay on top of your game as an entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship is a challenge in itself. With a hundred of adversities to overcome and success unguaranteed, it is a Pandora’s Box of a kind. There are challenges at every turn—from the very building of the business to managing the employees, making contacts, expanding customer bases, developing services to be delivered, funding etc. and all of it can take a toll at the founder’s mental and emotional fortitude. But, if an entrepreneur is willing to go the distance, success eventually ensues. Resilience, willpower, and enthusiasm go a long way in ensuring that you overcome the challenges that come your way. And if you cultivate these qualities as an entrepreneur throughout the journey, you are sure to succeed in your venture.

Stepping out of the limits of one’s comfort zone is what triggers the genesis of most startups. It is certainly not easy to push one’s limits beyond the usual, to invest time and energy into building a business out of one groundbreaking idea, assess the risk factors, and consistently work on it until it is stable enough. Technicalities aside, an entrepreneur needs to dare—to dream and to keep at it even if situations are adverse. To be able to run a business on one’s own is no easy feat; it requires a huge strength of character. 

At different points in time, entrepreneurs are faced with a sea of challenges—an unstable economy, an increasingly globalized business world, constantly evolving technologies, changing skill set requirements, hordes of competition, and what not. All these challenges make for a pretty dynamic environment, where a curveball can come from anywhere. It is not possible to guesstimate every eventuality but with repeated obstacles and uncertain outcomes, the capacity to overcome and recover from difficulties comes as an important personal advantage. Resilience can be nurtured in entrepreneurs and their teams by making a shift in how they approach a challenge. Rather than dismaying over their misfortune, a resilient entrepreneur remains level-headed and develops a course of action to avert the crisis, in the shortest time possible. In the face of a problem, the trick is to fragment it and deal with it, piece-by-piece. 

Several success stories reveal how only the hungry and the ambitious see the light at the end of the tunnel. The ones who can hustle and fight and are not scared to fail would learn from their mistakes, if they do any. Adversities are an inevitable part of any entrepreneurial venture and mastering them must be learned through repeated trials and errors. Creating a positive work environment where every employee makes significant business contributions is successful only when they share the load of overcoming adversities.

Any entrepreneurial venture starts with a vision in mind—to start from somewhere and to keep on evolving, and one should never lose the knack to do the same. There will be times when with rising ambiguities, one might end up doubting their abilities and reconsidering whether embarking on this journey was a good decision or not. But then, any business marks a tumultuous journey wherein it becomes an imperative to expect the unexpected. Be it cash flow management, strapped budget, ineffective marketing strategy, or unsatisfactory business growth—adversities may emerge at any and every front and if not attended to them immediately, these could snowball into major problems. As the good old saying goes, “Precaution is better than the cure”. Therefore, in all honesty, preparedness is the key to truly overcoming adversities.  

Essentially, the path towards becoming a successful entrepreneur calls for energy, passion, adaptability, and the ability to multitask very well. Facing a shortage of workforce can be a drawback for many small-scale entrepreneurial ventures initially, which indicates how those who have a wider skill base and a greater degree of adaptability can perform better. In the nascent stages, with limited resources, an entrepreneur cannot expect any entitlement or incentives, thereby translating to little motivation for many. But by displaying passion and perseverance, an entrepreneur can certainly ensure that his journey grows to be rewarding. 

Entrepreneurship demands dedication, hard work, and consistency. While there may be a tad many challenges to cope up with, there is also an opportunity to learn and grow through all your mistakes and hardships. Having the most ground-breaking idea or being the most innovative is not the only thing, an entrepreneur needs to understand. How to actually implement on it and strive towards building resilience to overcome challenges that also come their way. As Robert H. Schuller has rightly said, “Tough times never last, but tough people do”.

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Topics: Entrepreneurship, #GuestArticle

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