Two focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. No matter what type of business you are running, you must figure out ways to make yourself stand out amongst the crowd. The following contributed post is entitled, Marking Your Individuality In A Horde Of Entrepreneurs.
* * *
Let’s face it, entrepreneurs are a dime a dozen these days. It seems that the only qualification you need to be an entrepreneur is to label yourself one. Does this mean that automatically denigrates anyone who adopts this label while genuinely trying to make something happen? Of course not. But it’s also true that ‘hustle culture’ and social media entrepreneurialism is much different from trying to implement value, and make good on an idea.
Put simply, there’s no way around hard work or having to prove yourself and build an appropriate reputation. These things are hard-won and can help distinguish you from the rest of the crowd. For this reason, and in line with the best entrepreneurial operating system, it’s important to consider what differentiates you from someone else trying to make an initiative work.
In this post, we’ll discuss that, and perhaps provide food for thought to help you get the momentum rolling. After all, if you’re bothering to read articles like this, it shows you care about the substance, not just the style, of being an entrepreneur.
What Issues Are You Trying To Solve?
It’s important to recognize that the best entrepreneurs tend to have real goals that they’re working towards. These do need to have the chance of working with a market capacity of course, but they’re certainly parallel, but not only focused on the revenue it will grow. For instance, perhaps you care about making a certain industry more sustainable, and as such have committed deep research to see what possibilities lie here, while also taking inspiration from other industries that have tried the same. If you are a solutions-first entrepreneur, the revenue will flow as you structure a system to help make good on that vision.
It’s Not Just About You
Entrepreneurs can sometimes find themselves becoming a little self-centered, perhaps imagining them being interviewed by Forbes or even pictured in a suit on the cover of GQ. But the truth is that any entrepreneur worth their salt is a team player, able to collaborate, sometimes compromise, and learn to manage client relationships or the people they’re responsible for in their startup brand. The more connections and the better you can network, the more flexibility and utility they’ll have. Moreover, if an idea is better than yours but offered by a team member, you won’t see your ego as an obstacle.
Let Your Work Speak For You
When it comes to entrepreneurialism, you can tend to distinguish those worth paying attention to and those worth ignoring based on how promotional they are about themselves, or how promotional they are about their work. The work should always be the focus. It’s not about raising your profile but the profile of the goals you hope to achieve, and the solutions delivered. Then you can let your work speak for you, and people will feel naturally inclined to know its author, as opposed to trying to win the popularity contest and then funneling that towards your initiative. In this way, you also attract the right kind of audience.
With this advice, we hope you can mark your individuality, even in a horde of entrepreneurs.