The Best Advice For Young Entrepreneurs

The Best Advice For Young Entrepreneurs

The Best Advice For Young Entrepreneurs 

By Mark Wager

I was contacted this week by a young entrepreneur, Markos from South Africa who is currently writing a book to help fellow young entrepreneurs and he asked me “What’s the single greatest mental strength you believe young people need to possess? (Eg Confidence, Discipline, Self-Awareness etc)”. In this week’s article I want to share with you the answer I gave Markos.

The best piece of advice I would give young entrepreneurs is an easy answer because I see so many young people make the same mistake. If you want to become a young entrepreneur then the single greatest mental strength you need is to discover your reality. Let me explain what I mean by that.

There are mountains of videos on YouTube and seas of self-help books that preach that all you need to succeed is to believe in yourself and never quit no matter what happens and while this is commendable it is also terrible advice because it doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s misguided, uninformed advice disguised as positivity yet every mindset expert will tell you that believing in yourself is not positivity, it’s delusional. Being truly successful is knowing precisely what you need to do in order to reach the level of performance you want - this is where discovering your reality comes in.

Discovering reality comes in three sections. Firstly, you need to know just how good you are. Secondly, the challenges standing between you and your goals and lastly what you need to do in order to bridge the gap between where you are today and where you want to be. When this doesn’t happen you see people fail often miserably. When  they do they are lost because they failed not because they don’t understand the reasons behind their failure. It was because they didn’t discover their reality.

How good are you?

So just how good are you? This question may seem an easy thing to answer but trust me it’s a question where nearly everyone answers incorrectly which is what leads to them not taking the necessary action that success requires. About 75-80% of entrepreneurs tend to overestimate their ability especially when talking about it in comparison to other people. This psychological phenomenon is known as illusory superiority. Of the remaining people around another 10-15% underestimate their ability which leaves only about 5-10% of people who see themselves in an accurate light.

You need to know how good you are so that you know what skills you need to develop. Too often I see entrepreneurs who believe they are 8 out of 10 and they are confused to why they are not reaching the level they want and the answer is clear it’s because they are not an 8 they are more like a 6 out of 10 but because they believe they were at a higher level they never put the work in that you needs to be done in order to become a real 8. They discovered their reality too late.

What are the challenges standing between you and your goal?

When you think about having a successful business it’s a great feeling but the reality is that the majority of businesses fail and they do so because the challenges that made them fail were identified too late in order to overcome them. It’s easy for the glory of success to mask the reality of the many challenges you will face in order to get there so the answer is research, research, research. It’s not glamorous but the more information you have the better your chances of succeeding and the biggest advantages that young entrepreneurs have is that they live in a world where there is a world of information just a click away. 

Whatever your ambition there are people out there who have already done it and in their success you will discover that they have left behind lessons, in their stories of success and failure. You  will find clues that will help you on your own personal journey.

What do you need to do in order to succeed?

If you want to become a successful entrepreneur then you need to fall in love with the journey yet too many only fall in love with the destination. I remember reading a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger back when he was a world champion body builder  in a gym lifting weights. Those around Arnold observed him smiling as he was doing the lifts and he was asked why are you smiling because no one likes doing lifts. His reply was he was smiling because each lift was taking him one step closer to his goal. Champions fall in love with the journey, everyone else falls in love with the destination.

Every successful business is built upon many individual behaviours and habits Get those right and the question no longer becomes if you will be successful instead the question is when you will be successful. Being a successful entrepreneur is a long and difficult journey but once you identify the single steps, the habits then that journey becomes a lot easier. 

Everyone has a dream of a better life unfortunately for most people their ambitions remain just that, a dream until time passes by and they reach an age where the dream is replaced by regret. In order to avoid that you need to turn your dream into reality and it all starts with discovering the reality about yourself - how good are you? What are the challenges standing between you and your goals and what  you need to do in order to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

As a young entrepreneur there has never been a better time for you to succeed. Information that in the past were restricted due to geographical or financial reason is now available. You just need to go and get it.

Posted: Thursday 16 December 2021


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