Elements of Success: Step 2: Know Yourself

When you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, you’ll spend much of your time trying to figure out your market, audience, day-to-day operations and company success. The challenges surrounding your business can often be traced directly back to you as the owner. If you are struggling in your business, a little self-knowledge can go a long way towards figuring out what’s wrong.

Hard to be the Boss

Business is incredibly complicated. There are many reasons that you’ll be successful and a few reasons why you could potentially fail. You are only one person, so it’s vital that you learn where you’re lacking and shore up those skills with more knowledge or skills. You could also hire employees who can help fill in the skills gap.

Many business owners don’t want to look at their weaknesses. They believe that they shouldn’t acknowledge them. Successful business owners will admit their weaknesses and take steps to fix those weaknesses.

Words of Wisdom

Gary Vaynerchuk is a business owner who took his family’s wine business from a few million dollars in worth to approximately 60 million.

He says, “stop trying to fix the things you’re bad at and focus on the things you’re good at.”

Gary Vee is currently worth approximately 50 million dollars and spends most of his time encouraging others to be successful.

Acknowledge Weaknesses

Most business owners believe they are as good as their strengths, but like a chain, they’re only as good as their weaknesses. This is why you should take the time to understand and acknowledge weaknesses. You don’t need to improve them. Once you admit that they exist, you can hire a company or employee to fill the gap.

For example, you might be horrible at managing your time. Hiring an assistant will ensure that your time is managed properly. When you can’t answer your phone, you can hire someone to fill in that gap. These are obvious weaknesses in knowledge and skills that can be filled with employees or other businesses. While you can take a course to fill gaps in your knowledge, some soft skills can be harder to gain.

Potential areas that might be lacking:

• Self-motivation
• Interpersonal skills
• Innovation
• Time management
• Understanding of technology

You’ll need to assess your strengths and weaknesses before you can decide how fixing them will benefit your business. In some cases, you might want to gain more knowledge yourself, or you might want to hire an expert. Without honest reflection, though, you won’t know where to start fixing your business or improving yourself.

Click here for the next installment in our 10 Elements of Success series where we explore Getting The Help You Need.