How to build strong personal development foundation on yourself as a business leader.

 

The battles that count aren’t those for gold medals; the struggles within you—the invisible battles inside all of us—that all that’s where it’s at. —Jesse Owens

Competition has made the business world a wrestle ground; Wrestles between lions and elephant, tigers and leopards, cats and dogs, giants and the brave or between the vibrant and the intelligent people. All these competition are purposed to determine who rules the jungle. Somebody going for a wrestle competition always get a physical personal preparation in order to be the winner or the most powerful wrestler in the field. All these he does before stepping out.

Having all equipment required and knowing the functions of each, you can be able to make efficient use of them. Wrestles are not meant to be violent and so are business environment not supposed to be. Every competition is meant to have focus on excellence, and not brutality. Brutality in competition makes the field to plateau in advancement, but a healthy competition is a high gear for maximum millennium development. 

My blog is all about the change of mindset; because every change that can be effective has to start from within. So, business people should know that competition is a positive measure to make a business more attractive, reachable, understandable and enjoyable to those it was created for, by the use of development, innovations, improvements and advancement. Instead of having, the negative belief that success comes from charms or concoctions, you belief that it comes from your excellent performance. We should start to see things the way they really are, not through superstitious conceptions.

This is also why I came here to assert that 80% of successful people take 100% responsibility to ensure their success; where the rest 20% of successful people take the 90% influence, and the remaining 10% based on what happened to them. 

As I always say, “True success is acquired, not received or given”. 

To be successful in your field you have to do all the required routines to get you ready and prepared for the competition. 

Below here are those things you should do in preparing yourself for entrepreneurship, because if you are not strong, you can’t be able to control a strong business. These are the processes through which you can lay the strong foundation starting from you yourself:

Invest and improve in yourself

 Now I’m going to show you why those high income earners you know in your field earn so much; while others are just there looking. Whatever an entrepreneur earned from his business is as a result in his mental functionality. The best place to invest your money and other thing is in yourself, your body, your mentality or thought. If someone can make an effective use of your time, money, skill and other resources like people and machines; the possibility depends on how his mentality functions. If your mentality works very well, competent to such function programmed into it you can perform at your peak. You performance in those any field depends on the level of your mentality, and physical health.

Areas you need to work on are: self confidence, decision making, positive thinking, effective time management, project finishing, self control, appetite control, self-esteem, effective communication skill, persistence, consistence, multi-tasking, sensitivity and body languages.

In order to be able to improve you have to invest in yourself, through many measures while might include: eating delicious foods, sleeping well, exercises, self-praises, learning, and outspokenness. See what you have to do:

Study everyday: Reading important books pertaining to your field everyday to get as much information as possible and see farther than others. — asking questions on issues you should know about is a good move to learning more new things.

Create a usable and mandatory activity schedule: This is for an effective time management and efficiency. It is an important area that you should try your best to get better in life. Time is a respecter of no man. Time is money, and a wasted time is a wasted opportunity. It’s the most expensive lost.

Engage in continuous weekly exercise: Do this to get stronger, smarter bolder, more mature, more flexible, more courageous, and more intelligent.

Eat balanced diets Also, to become ‘healthier, stronger, more confident, and intelligent’. Eat less meats and fats and eat more of vegetables and fruits. Reason why people advice you to eat fruits isn’t because they are selling it, it is because fruits and vegetables already has mixtures of several vitamins and minerals already contained inside them. 

Acquire all skills in your field: If you know more skills in your fields, you will probably reduce expenses and become expert, confident, straight-forward and trust-worthy.

Acquire other skills to improve your self-image: Cope-up and develop more courage. Learn other skills in other fields that you can share with you customer while having interactive dialogue with him.

Believe you can do more thing than you have in your field and actually dare them. One characteristic of successful people you should emulate is "daring".

Find a mentor

No matter where you are with your career, there are many advantages to having a good business mentor. Mentors are not going to solve all your problems for you, or may not directly solve any. But, they will guide you closely on the easiest and most effective ways to solve them, and not make an expensive mistake.

To start with, mentors help you build the type of career that matters to you with an upfront encouragement. A mentor gives you encouragement motivate s and strengthens you. He or she gives the drive to take your business career to the next level. That’s the encouragement you get from a mentor. 

Furthermore, if you want a successful career, you need someone to tell you your strength and your weaknesses. You need that person who can be honest with you. Somebody that points out your weakness regardless of what it is, not to put you down but to enable you identify things you should work on to make a better move. Because when you understand where there is room for improvement, you will make the proper adjustment and strengthen your career.

Searching for a mentor?

If you have picked up an interest on finding your own mentor, as an entrepreneur, kudos, it’s a good move. Now, look around that your business environment very well, there are lots of things you should have in mind as an objective based on what you want from mentorship relationship, knowing that finding a mentor can mean a difference between success and failure in a business. A good mentor acts like a moderator for your ideas. This means that he up votes you on the wonderful ideas and disapproves the wrong ones. He holds you accountable for commitment and provides you with encouragement and wise advice when you need it. So, what kind of person would you like to make your mentor? 

I have made some suggestions for you; basing them on social, mental, emotional, intellectual, physical and economic qualities. Following are they:

Someone who fits you

As a business at the start-up phase, you should be looking for the successful entrepreneur with a broad range of business knowledge and skills. But beyond that you need to make sure that you have a good personal chemistry with your mentor. Do you understand? I mean somebody that you can understand his intention even when he hasn’t spoken; and who does so to you as well. Someone, who perhaps has same vision as you, that’s why you should go through self assessment or evaluation, Consider your strength and weaknesses, your vision for your business and what you have in mind as the scope for mentorship. 

Use your time to find-out who will be in perfect match with your belief. You don’t really need to settle with the first person, so, cross-check to know the best person for you.

Someone that will be available

It’s important you find a mentor who will be there to identify your problem by himself and provide solution from his own experience. Your mentor should talk to you on a regular basis. A weekly one-on-one exchange of thoughts is ok, but there are occasions that you people will need to more frequently come closer, and at times you people may need to be less close in contact.

A good mentor makes sure that you are fed-up with insight every time he is with you. He can also use text-messages or calls to reach you when he isn’t with you. What you should look into, at this point, is whether you mentor will be committed to your relationship and has time to devote to it.

Someone who’s a good listener

Your mentor isn’t there to solve all your problems for you, instead he should help you think through the challenges and find out the right answers. That’s how you learn to become a better entrepreneur.

When a mentor asks the right question and listens, pretty-soon, a young entrepreneur will find an answer simply by telling you what they are facing. And it starts to be evidence to them as they explain what they solution might be. 

Somebody with a positive attitude

A mentor’s role in encouragement and building your confidence is crucial. Choose someone who has a quality reputation; a person with all-round positive values. Mentors are supposed to be motivators for positivity, as a person who has undergone many processes and discovered the best one to go with. A mentor is supposed to be that generous hero, great support, cheer-leader and someone who can help you regain when you had a set-back. Don’t follow a person known for any criminal addictions it may transfer to you.

Someone with an open mind

Entrepreneurs accumulates battle scars over the years—attitudes that reflect their own business experiences. So find people who will be sincere with these attitudes (battle-scar-attitudes). These attitudes may sometimes color the reactions towards your ideas and challenges in a way that may be appropriate to your situation. That’s why you should look for a mentor who keeps an open mind to your unique approach and business situation, someone who tells you nothing but the truth. More generally, a good mentor should be learning oriented; people who are always looking to develop and improve themselves, will go into mentoring relationship with more of an open mind and not be rigid or misleading.

Someone who will treat you like an equal

You know what I’m talking about—someone who knows that you shall one day be like him or be more than him, not the one that see you as a minority. Treating you like an equal means that he wants you to come up and be like him. He is going to be your friend and not your parent, not your boss, though he might be that in his own business. He doesn’t mean to pamper you or treat you like a slave.

 He wants you to have good esteem of yourself. You are not looking for a boss but if your mentor defaults to that role of a boss, accept it, because they are used to managing their employees in their own businesses. Don’t use your parent or family member for mentorship; they don’t make any match in the role at-all.