How Improving Yourself Can Help Improve Your High Risk Business
Taking the initiative on improving yourself takes guts and a lot of self-awareness. It takes a wise leader to recognize they have skill or knowledge gaps when they’re running a business.
Running a business has enough risk. It’s well-documented that almost half of all businesses fail in the first few years.
If you are running a high-risk business, you need to be on your toes
Read on to learn about areas where you can improve yourself and make your business better at the same time.
Self-Awareness
At the most basic level, you have to learn a lot about yourself before you master yourself. You have to know what triggers your emotions, whether that’s fear, anger, sadness, or disdain.
You might have very little patience for people who talk too much. You might get anxiety over financial decisions.
Those are major things that affect how you run your business. Not to mention, there may be business skills that you’re lacking.
You have to know what makes a good business leader. You can use other successful people as examples. Look at the skills and temperament that they possess. You can then assess what your strengths and weaknesses are and plan to fill those gaps accordingly.
Leadership
Are you a leader or a manager? There’s a big difference between the two.
A leader is someone who is more involved with people. They’re concerned about their staff and focused on building relationships with people.
A manager is focused on processes. They only care about productivity and “running a tight ship.”
As a business owner, you need to be a leader. You need to learn how to motivate your employees and customers and keep them loyal. Otherwise, you’ll have to deal with turnover, which can cost your business.
Physical Fitness
Entrepreneurs often overlook physical fitness and overall health. They eat horribly and often on the go, they are too busy to workout, and they’re stressed out.
Those entrepreneurs are either going to burn out or have a heart attack. You don’t want to be one of them.
Instead, understand the benefits of fitness. You’ll feel better, look better, and have more confidence to close big deals. Not only that, you’re setting a big example for your employees.
If they see that you’re finding the time to prioritize fitness, they will too. Fit employees are more productive.
Raise Your EQ
Did you know that emotional intelligence is as important as any other skill? Your ability to relate and connect with people is huge as a business leader.
Emotional intelligence is also known as EQ, or your emotional quotient. It’s an indicator of how much you’re in touch with your emotional and empathetic to those around you.
That helps you sell, build relationships with vendors, create loyal employees, and build a successful business.
If you want to know more about emotional intelligence, check out the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.
Law and Regulations
You don’t need to be an attorney, but as a high-risk business, you need to understand that your industry is likely subject to a lot of rules and regulations most businesses aren’t.
Businesses that are in the cannabis industry, for example, are considered to be high-risk, but a cash-heavy business. Since cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, many businesses can’t open a business bank account.
Business owners of high-risk businesses need to educate themselves on the regulations in their state and at the federal level.
You need to understand enough to know how your business will be impacted and how you can do things like getting a credit card processor to accept payments. Click here to learn more and educate yourself on that topic.
Tips for Improving Yourself and Your Business
When you start to improve yourself, you’ll see those around you respond accordingly. They might get inspired to take the initiative to improve themselves, too.
Now that you’re familiar with areas of self-improvement that would have the biggest impact on your business there’s one final question. Where do you go to learn?
There are dozens of resources at your disposal. If you want to learn about business, there are free courses online, podcasts, books, and seminars to attend.
Start by taking stock of your strengths and weaknesses in both business and personal lives. You might find that you’re overweight and out of shape. You could also discover that you’re not that great at money management or you aren’t very empathetic.
Once you get your list down, you’ll want to prioritize what you want to work on first. After a while, you’ll start to see improvements. Then you can take on the second or third item on your list to improve.
You may also decide to hire a coach or get a mentor for your personal and business lives.
Put Your New Skills to Use
One thing to be aware of is getting addicted to acquiring information and doing nothing with it. There are so many entrepreneurs out there who are taking webinar after webinar and spend thousands for a seminar that is run by a “guru” in hopes of transformation.
They’re looking for that missing piece that will transform them. They’re often looking for that a-ha moment that will solve all their problems.
You have to remember that learning is a process. You also have to put your learning to use.
As you’re learning new information, take notes as to how you can implement something new in your life. Maybe it’s a new habit to meditate every morning or making sure you connect with someone in your network daily. No matter what it is, you have to follow through and take action.
If you’re just getting more and more information and doing nothing with it, you’re going to be right where you started.
Start to Improve Your Life Today
As the business owner of a high-risk business, you have a lot more to learn than most business owners. You have to navigate complicated regulations and be a great leader at the same time.
The key to improving yourself is to put what you learn into action. All the knowledge in the world won’t help you succeed unless you apply it.
For more great tips, be sure to check out our self-improvement blog today.