Starting a business is not easy and probably never has been.
After all, it usually comes with a lot of risk for the entrepreneur financially as well as personally. And besides it will absorb massive amounts of your time for years to come, with an unsure outcome at the end.
But still, many people all over the world take the admirable step and start on their way to realize their dreams by becoming an entrepreneur.
In this journey many look and plan at the products they want to provide, how to manufacture and ship the products, taxes, legal issues, contracts, potential clients, how to find customers, marketing and many other common stuff is you simply want to launch your own business.
The sheer amount of many things to keep an eye on, the huge burden to make sure everything will fit perfectly and the focus on customers and legal frameworks alone is already a pretty tough load to swallow.
Understandably, many entrepreneurs already get so drawn into this entire concept that they often forget a very important details when running the business in the daily operations:
themselves.
Even with the greatest product, brilliant executions, great advertising and value provided and all other things being done perfectly there is still room for failure that gets easily overlooked. And this potential for failure can actually reap more havoc than any other aspect of the business.
After all, it is the entrepreneur himself or herself who will run or govern the daily operations.
He or she will be making the daily decisions, calling the shots or deciding where to move next.
While this at first may look like an operating task, your own personal development will actually have a massive influence on it. What you can do to make your personality an asset for your business instead of a liability is what we will show you in this article.
The reason for personal development in business
I think the best way to describe the importance of your personal development comes from Michael E. Gerber´s famous book The E-Myth.
In it he states, that your company is a direct reflection of your personal abilities but also weaknesses. It often even enhances what is already there because personal lacks that you are able to hide in public or private conversations, might not be hideable anymore once you run your own company.
If you start a business and you are a sloppy person, it will become visible very fast as you are now the one in charge for how your business is directed and the outcome will be visible.
Or to put it in clearer terms: if you are pushy and aggressive, your business will probably reflect these same traits to ist customers.
Having a mess at home makes it very probable to also have it in your business.
The difference between the 2 situations now is that in your home nobody will really care (except your wife maybe), while in your business it will be exposed to your customers, employees or stakeholders.
Or if you can't really handle numbers and have no idea how to keep your books, the bookkeeping in your business will be a complete mess too.
But you think that's okay since you can always hire someone to do that, right?
The big downside is that you have to fully trust that person who will especially in the beginning of a venture be a stranger to you.
And if that person makes many mistakes you first of all will not even be able to know it - since you yourself don't know any better and won’t understand what's going on.
Second of all, you are the one responsible for the entire business and it’s operations - not your accountant!
The tax departments all over the world make the business owner who is in charge fully responsible for inaccurate books, not the accountant!
That means in essence even if you hardly do anything in this area of the company or don’T even understand what that person might be doing you will be fully accountable for their mistakes.
That means your success will depend on that person doing your books or running other parts of the business you don’t want to bother yourself with. Not a very good strategy.
As another example, Greed is really a personal character trait that has nothing to do with business at first sight.
But think how it might affect your business since you are in charge. If you are greedy to your employees and don´t want to pay them fair wages, very soon they will also become greedy and only do the minimum amount of what's necessary or even less.
It gets even worse if customers notice your greed, very soon they will be spending with you only the minimum amount of what they have to - which is 0 in most cases.
People just naturally like to mirror what they see, be it employees or customers.
Essentially your own greed in such an environment can trigger a chain reaction of further greed. And what starts maybe even with the good intention of saving a few bucks very soon can grow into a vicious circle powerful enough to take you out of business.
Trying to save a few bucks ended up bankrupting your new business.
Yikes.
Once you are in this position of running your own company, there will be no one anymore to tell you how to handle things or how it should be done.
While this sounds great as long as you have an employee background where you basically get told what to do all the time, you also have to be aware of the responsibility that comes with this new freedom and of the consequences if something goes wrong.
Your personal development and your personal character will become the benchmark for how things will be done.
It is a different game than your private life where most of these small negative nuisances don't even get noticed or are tolerated because hey - nobody's perfect. And in private life nobody can tell you to change your personality if you don't want to.
The new business however will now put you as a person in front or at the center of many operations, at least as long as the business itself is small.
Keep in mind that while you do not work for a direct boss any longer, you will be working for your customers.
And they can be even more demanding sometimes.
I know many of these examples may sound obvious and too simplistic for some, but in fact they happen everyday in countless small businesses all over the world.
And more than one great idea or fabulous startup has failed because these small and seemingly minor details got overlooked and sabotaged the whole venture.
To prevent your personal lack from damaging your business, personal development is essential for any business owners or anyone who plans to start a business in the near future.
You should be able to wear all the hats in your company at first, or at least know enough to have an idea of outside help does work properly or not.
Very often however, this step also requires a lot of self-reflection and it can take years to grow as a person. Personal habits and character traits are often deeply rooted in ourselves. Very often they also present paradigms, meaning we are so certain that we act correct we don’t even question our actions.
Paradigms should become visible if enough other people tell you that something is wrong, even if from your perspective you do everything just fine.
Don´t let that discourage you as this is not just about doing business and building a company - it is about yourself. Your own character should and will probably be a lifelong development.
We all make mistakes.
We all have our flaws.
Just make sure that your flaws will not be disadvantageous to your business.