What it Takes to Move You from Wantrepreneur to REAL Entrepreneur
Perhaps nobody tells you this, but being an entrepreneur REALLY is not as good as it sounds. It’s not just about your dreams or vision, or your future possibilities of financial freedom.
The bad stuffs are there too, and it will eat you alive if you don’t prepare yourself.
Wantrepreneur — An Introduction.
The terms “Wantrepreneur” is a shortened version of the words ‘Wannabe entrepreneur’. And let’s just face it, some other resources describe wantrepreneur as someone horrible.
“They do every business-related crap… But never really do the necessary steps to do the actual business”.
“They make business card, design their brand, writing out their business plan… But never really go out of their way to produce REAL products to then market it to real potential customer.”
“It’s always ONE MORE for the wantrepreneur. ONE MORE course and I’m ready to start working on my own product. ONE MORE book. ONE MORE podcast. ONE MORE lecture. So many one more. Yet their time to actually starts, NEVER come.”
While above statements aren’t false, I think it’s a bit too harsh to judge these ‘wantrepreneur’ as someone so low just because they haven’t start.
I personally think that the main reason they haven’t start anything worthwhile for their business is this : Fear.
They are afraid of being judged. By society. By their peers. By themselves.
They are afraid of the possibilities of being a ‘failure’.
They are afraid that their big dream and vision is not gonna be received well by the world.
And so they procrastinate, by doing more and more of the ‘seemingly business related but not so much useful craps’.
Signs That You are A Wantrepreneur
You could be one of these people if you feel like you have several of these signs :
- You do it because of money
Of course money is a good reason to start an entrepreneurial business. After all, you need money to sustain your life in this lovable planet.
HOWEVER, if money is the only reason you want to start a business, there is almost a guarantee that your business won’t take off.
Successful start ups and businesses are often taking off because they have a good WHY. They have purpose and mission to follow, that’s why they keep going even if failures after failures tackled them.
They do it because of their vision.
If you are doing it ONLY because of money, you will be led from one business to another without a clear reason to hold on when you face your first few failures. You will always chase another business that you think will work, often because other people has succeeding while pursuing the exact same business.
Here’s what you need to understand : what works for someone else, doesn’t always work for us. That’s why it is very important to differentiate ourselves from another and make our own reason to success.
2. You are easily discouraged
Again, this is no brainer.
Being in an entrepreneurial journey means you have to hustle very hard in your first few years. You WILL face failures after failures, and you have to have a good durability and believes towards your own business.
If you are easily discouraged and decided to change your cause (Or even stop altogether) after you face failures, it will be very difficult for you to be success in entrepreneurial journey.
3. You are moved because of other people’s passion, not your own
Just like point number one, if you decided to move because of other people’s cause, there is a big chance that you will wear yourself down in the future.
There will be hard times ahead (There WILL ALWAYS be hard times in your business). If you don’t have good enough reason or even understand why you do what you do, you will give up pretty easily.
This is why having your own STRONG reason is very important.
These vision and purpose of your OWN helps you hold on in tough times, and therefore gives you courage to try just ONE more time.
4. You don’t wanna take risks
If you wanna stay safe and collected in your entrepreneurial journey, I’m sorry to break it to you : Entrepreneurship is not for you.
True entrepreneurs knows that there will always be risks. There will always be things they need to sacrifice if they really wanna be successful doing their cause.
Big entrepreneurs are often bold gamblers.
They know very well that in order to get something big in life, you must also be ready to loose something big.
5. You are negative most of the time
I have said over and over again, and I will say it once again : Being an entrepreneur, You’re gonna face a whole lot of failures.
And in order to survive all of that, you’re gonna need to have a positive outlook.
Things WILL look up to you.
You WILL see results and improvement from your dedicated actions.
It might takes several months or even years, but you WILL make it.
And this is why a negative outlook in life will get you nowhere.
When you have negative outlook in life, you will be easily discouraged and give up just on your first few failures. Forget about improving and make adjustment, you will be long gone before anything is even started!
6. You don’t believe in yourself
If you decided to be an entrepreneur, You are the only people that is responsible for your whole business.
How can you even ask another people (And most importantly : your clients) to believe in you if you don’t even believe in yourself?
If you want to attract the right people in your business and encourage them to invest their money on you and your business, you have to be able to market your business first. Which is why believe in yourself and your own ability is very-VERY-important thing to do.
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If you feel like you are one of these so-called wantrepreneur, I know what you feel now : Hurt.
It’s like a slap right to your face.
I know this, because I feel this too at some points of my life.
However, there are ways to change yourself from wantrepreneur, to real entrepreneur who takes REAL action to implement just by shifting your self-awareness.
Understanding You and who you are will give you so much more clarity about your motives and drives of being an entrepreneur.
It will give you strong foundation to keep going no matter how much you are being rejected.
And how to make sure that every failure you face is not really a failure.
It’s just another catalysts for your growth.
Another reassurance that your success will be even greater because you have known what it’s like to live on the puddle.
Here are 7 ways you can shift your self-awareness to move you from being a wantrepreneur, to real entrepreneur.
- Recognize Yourself
In order to be strong enough to overcome every obstacles, You need to understand yourself CLEARLY. Recognize your own strengths and weaknesses.
(You can start the exercise of knowing yourself right here, it’s a good website and I personally recommended it.)
The reason why this point is so important is because being an entrepreneur could be really hard sometimes. You will face failures after failures and if you don’t have a strong WHY, these failures could knock you down any moment, making you want to give up your dreams.
However, when you understand yourself and WHY you move behind your cause, you will experience a strong ‘help’ from your core self.
Each one of us has a blueprint as to what we best fits to do in this lifetime.
Each one of us has a core purpose AND it is our duty to find what these purposes are.
No one gonna tell you what it is.
YOU have to find it out yourself.
Try to understand what your likes and dislikes are. What MOVES You strongly. What tickles your fancy.
Things that gives you strong feelings (Whether it is positive or negative feelings) are usually what you want to hit on here. Combine them all, and you will usually hit the sweet spots you wanna concentrate to make things happen in your business.
2. Understand That You’re Gonna Suck — SUCK HARD — at First
“Genius are made, not born” — Ahmed Soliman.
This is important.
You gotta give yourself permission to be failed, suck, and rejected in some points of your journey.
NO SINGLE Successful people is being successful overnight. Even those that are considered brilliant and genius on their chosen field.
99,99% of them has to work hard to be able to get to the position they are in. Things doesn’t happen overnight, and this is no secret in the world of entrepreneurship.
Even those who are considered to be achieving ‘overnight success’.
Yes, they achieved success ONE NIGHT because of ONE brilliant performance. But, it needs years and years of practice to be able to produce that kind of performance.
So to put it simply, when you find what you need to be doing in your life, and you started doing it, and you find that you are SUCK at it : Don’t get discouraged.
YOU WILL suck at first, and it doesn’t matter.
Keep doing it everyday, and you will get there.
3. SHOW UP. Everytime.
Quality is the most important thing we could ever ask in a product.
Quality product makes customers happy and satisfied, not to mention give an inexplicable satisfaction to the creators.
However, let’s not forget this very important, often forgotten fact : Quality occurs when there are quantity first.
Thomas Alva Edison needs 1000 tries to be able to invent the light bulbs.
Albert Einstein needs to published hundreds of dissertations before he was recognized as someone brilliant in his relativity theory.
This tells us something, is it not?
In order to achieve the best kind of quality in our works, we need to produce and produce. Keep maintaining good amount of quantities of products, and MAYBE one of them will be recognized and blow up.
We can’t control WHICH products, and WHEN it’s gonna blow up. So what we CAN control, is that the amount of products that we create every single time.
By the way, this is another valid advice that I could give to you (based on the work of ‘Real Artists Don’t Starve’ writer, Jeff Goins).
He said (And I quote), “The difference between a good writer and bad writers has little to do with skills. It has everything to do with perseverance. Bad writers quit. Good writers keep going.”
In my opinion, this is a universal thing that could apply not only for writers, but also for entrepreneurs (Or even employees) of all kinds.
If these people needs many many tries to be able to crawl to the top, I am sure that you are getting the game now.
It is not the most brilliant that make it to the top, most of the time.
It’s the most persistent.
4. Start Slowly. Build Momentum. Discover New Habit.
Do you remember that pumped up feelings when you first wanted to be an entrepreneur?
That vigorous, brilliantly-sparkly energy inside your body that you just can’t explain?
You are IN! You’re gonna kill it!
Yes, inspiration often starts us up in our journey.
That, and motivation. What else could you possibly need for your journey in entrepreneurship? Right?
Again, I hate to break it to you. But motivation and inspiration alone doesn’t last.
It will wear off in sometimes and if you are completely relying your journey on them, you need to be wary because you will have no strong foundation.
Do you know why 92% people fails their new year’s resolution?
It’s because they do not have a strong foundation to begin with. They rely on motivation, and as a result, when their motivations are gone, their will to change their lives are also gone.
Strong foundations are built slowly. It takes a little bit rolling of the ball every single day to build momentum who will make us do what we needs to do everyday.
It is no longer a ‘resolution’, it’s becoming a habit.
And these things are exactly what we want to hit : make the process of becoming better a habit, not just a goal.
5. Be Smart and Work Smart (In other words : Keep Learning).
Whether you’ve heard it or not before, here is another information for you : successful people read.
They read a lot.
Well, at least they are learning and processing information related to their niche and probably their own self development. Every single day.
Have you heard about how Warren Buffet, Oprah, Bill Gates, and other bunch of multi millionaires often dedicated their success to their ability to be discipline in learning something new every day?
Yep, that’s what I’m talking about.
Try to make time for learning something new. Even 30 minutes/day is enough.
If you are like me who don’t really like to read a whole book when learning, you can always learn by listening to podcasts, listening to kindle ebooks, watch educational videos related your area of study, or whatever it is.
Important thing here is this : never stop learning.
Never stop improving.
Keep sharpening the greatest tool you will ever own : Yourself.
6. Balance Other Areas of Your Life
The process of creating sucks when you have other things that bothers you in the back of your mind.
Maybe your loved ones getting sick. Or there is a problem with your financial flow.
Whatever it is, I’m sure that it is much harder to work and envisioning yourself going up if you know that there’s something that’s ready to bring you down ANYTIME.
Key to this? Balance.
We can’t dodge problems, it will always be there in our life.
The only thing that we can do to make it easier is if we shift our perspectives towards that problems.
I know this thing has been said over and over again. But it’s really important for you to be balance in all areas of your life.
Take care of your body by consuming good foods and exercise every now and then.
Take care of your spiritual and mental space by giving it enough time to meditate and look at the big picture.
If it’s not gonna matter in five years, why even waste your time worrying about it?
All those times you spent worrying will be much better used for working on your dreams and doing things you enjoy with people that you love, am I right?
7. Start. Today.
Now, everything has led to this point. What good is informations if you can’t just use it to bettering your life?
Apply all of those informations above in your life and STOP being a wantrepreneur.
You know you can do it.
Just start today. No more tomorrow, NO MORE next week.
Today.
Use whatever it is that you have right now, with whatever mental state you are in.
Start working on it.
You have a working laptop in your lap? Good. Try to plan something with it. Get yourself in the game.
The sooner, the better.
I wish you all the best luck in the world.
Call for action
If you think that your life lately has been boring and repetitive, there is something that needs to be shaken up. You need to do something about it. Don’t just leave the feeling alone, waiting for your own soul calling to die of hunger.
I strongly believe that every person is special and has their own purpose in life. Each one of us has such distinct function and life-calling that will leave such huge void when we failed to acknowledge it.
I don’t want you to be one of those people, so I will try my best to help you finding yourself.
The true nature of you, and how to fulfill your life-calling.
If you like what you read, Let’s keep in touch!
Contact me further on my instagram account (I post everyday there), facebook, twitter.
See you there!
Xoxo,
Vour aka. Shella.
