Working on Your Inner Capacities
Last time, in this series about self-employment, I touched on why paying for personal development is important. As I approach the main body of this sequence, about developing a new business, I shall consider the inner capacities you need to build a business.
What are Inner Capacities?
An inner capacity is something behind the scenes that helps make your business viable. Someone observing your working day, will see you do things to deliver your offer to your customer. This may mean various meetings, technical work, paperwork, preparation, etc. Your customer might not see all this but they see the results. Much of the work, behind the scenes, is not an example of an inner capacity.
Inner capacities are not activities so much as those factors that build your resilience to setbacks and keep you going. So, here are three examples of inner capacities:
Emotions
You need to work consistently and so being able to handle emotions is essential.
Let’s say you have an interview with a prospect and it goes well but they don’t take up your offer. Or they say yes and then change their mind. It is difficult not to feel emotion when this happens but the key thing is being able to process it and move on.
Not dwelling on setbacks and being ready to keep going is essential to the success of any business.
There are several ways to deal with negative emotions and the one I use is to walk. Walking allows my mind to settle. There is some value in rehearsing what you said and asking if you could have done things better. If you can take note and do things better in the future, that is good. But there comes a point when dwelling on some event and going over and over it becomes counter-productive. You really must move on.
Expectations
Every internet guru makes promises of untold wealth if you follow their prescribed path. Many have a lot to offer and can point to the success of their business and the businesses of those they have helped.
There is, however, a problem, rarely voiced. Not everyone will get access to untold riches and more to the point most people don’t want to and don’t have to. Why? Lots of reasons:
- Many people set up in business to deliver a service and gain great satisfaction from that. Making money is important because without it they can’t keep going but it is secondary. They don’t want to know how to become mega-rich but how to make enough to keep going.
- It is a statistical inevitability that some business will fail whilst others do very well indeed. The Pareto principle shows this. The people who have done well have been in one way or another lucky. They can share how they did it and sometimes it has value but it is impossible for everyone to make the same journey.
- The issue is not for most people riches (a massive income) so much as wealth (being able to break even). The main point is most people are happy to break even and perhaps save a little. However, savings are not crucial if you have a regular and reliable source of income, which can come from trade or investments.
So, there is scope for variation in expectations. I suspect most people would settle for a reliable income that covers their outgoings. Their needs may vary over their working life but the key is understanding what you need and how to get there.
If you do exceed your current needs it is worth considering what you would do with any surplus. Consider the following:
- Invest in assets that guarantee future financial independence. Do this before you spend on things you don’t really need, ie while you’re still used to your current lifestyle.
- Expand your business and offer others employment opportunities.
- Invest in other businesses
- Contribute to community projects and / or charities
If you get the first in the list right, you may find you are able to do at least one on the rest of the list. These are expectations of not so much your own wealth but your contribution, as a business-owner, to your local economy. If you get your financial affairs on a secure footing you are free to make sustainable financial contributions to the local economy.
Time
Patience is critical and most business people have stories about their failures before they were able to find a sustainable business strategy. You can be sure you will fail, repeatedly and be frustrated by making the same mistakes several times.
Your vision for a better future will keep you going. Remember your aim is sustainable wealth and not necessarily vast sums of money. If you think in terms of wealth, for you and your local economy, you will know what to do should good fortune bring in massive riches.
If your focus is solely on making money, you will crash and burn. Business owners need to visualise a future for themselves, their families and their communities. Without that money becomes a numbers game, a game of power untempered by humanity.
I have been in business for a few years and these are some of my observations. If you have other observations, please comment.