From the course: Employee to Entrepreneur

Recognizing your readiness

From the course: Employee to Entrepreneur

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Recognizing your readiness

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So one of the first things you may be wondering is, Am I ready? Is now a good time for me to step out and start my own thing? Or maybe I should wait and do some more research. Now, obviously, there is no real way to tell if it's the right time to take a big step like this. But I will tell you a couple of clues that might help. One is to remind yourself that there's no such thing as ready. In fact, Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, once said, and I'm paraphrasing, if you feel ready, you've waited too long. You can also know that you're ready because you've been thinking about it. If it wasn't already spinning along in your mind and feeling like something you felt like you could do, you probably wouldn't even be here. Another slightly counterintuitive way to know that you're ready is that you're already noticing everybody else who is doing what you want to do. And you may even be feeling like, Oh, I shouldn't do that like everybody else is already doing that. Everybody else is already opening up a flower shop that specializes in native greens. But I'm here to tell you they're not. You're just noticing everybody who's doing it because you want to do it, too. I'll tell you some other qualities that I've noticed in successful entrepreneurs, and see how many of these you feel like you have and be very, very kind and be very honest in your self-assessment. The first one is being self-motivated. You have to be able to set your own deadlines and meet them. You have to be able to get up every single day and do things that you do not want to do. I mean, you do stuff at work because, one, they pay you, and two, other people are expecting it. When you're an entrepreneur, you don't have those external motivators, so you need to be able to get yourself up and going even when you don't feel like it. The good news is you can often do it in your pajamas. You need to have natural leadership abilities. Many entrepreneurs fail because they can't even lead themselves, much less a team or an entire company. So if you're the kind of person that always gets put in charge of the committee, in charge of the committee, that means you have natural leadership skills. Notice you do not need to be outgoing or loud or domineering to be a great leader. Great leadership has to do with careful listening, good decision-making skills, and being able to communicate a vision. You need to be pretty organized, not crazy organized, but pretty organized. You need to be able to find pieces of paper when you're looking for them. You need to have some systems in your life so that you're not constantly swamped. You may want to start by keeping better records of people that you contact. There are a lot of great online contact management systems, and you definitely want to start keeping a good calendar so that you can schedule your work time, your playtime, and your family time. You need to be resilient. The ability to bounce back, to pivot, adapt, be flexible is one of the most important skills an entrepreneur can have. Because I'm here to tell you your assistant will quit on the worst possible day. Your merchant processor will freeze your account. Your biggest client will suddenly want to refund. Everything will happen. And you need to have the emotional maturity to go ahead and yes, have your personal response first, give your ego time to be upset, to kick and scream, whine and cry. And then get a good night's sleep, and in the morning, reconnect with your vision and take your next step. You need to be a lifelong learner. If you're somebody who loves finding out new things, keeping up with the latest tech and reading all the latest new marketing strategies, then entrepreneurship might just be for you. And finally, you need to be willing to take 100% responsibility. Because when you are an entrepreneur, you are the boss, chief cook and bottle washer and everything that happens is a direct reflection of you and your actions and it is all your responsibility. Now, if that feels more exciting than terrifying, then you might be on the right track.

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