FE: Awareness pulse check

What does it really take to be a successful entrepreneur?
When asked, many people often dive right into creativity, drive or resilience.
I want to talk about self-awareness. Specifically, why self-awareness is so important for entrepreneurs and how we can become more self-aware.
What is self-awareness?
Self-awareness can be defined as the conscious knowledge of one’s own character, motivations, strengths and weaknesses.
This needs adding to; self-awareness is also about knowing how you are perceived by others and how your actions affect them.
As an entrepreneur, it is also about how this affects your business.
Why is self-awareness important for entrepreneurs?

1. Is entrepreneurship right for you?
This is a reality check question for anyone thinking about starting their own business. The process can be challenging; long hours, personal sacrifice, financial difficulties, tough decisions and, of course, failure.
Aspiring entrepreneurs need to be self-aware enough to honestly ask whether they possess the skills and resilience necessary to survive and succeed.
2. What really drives you?
Being self-aware enough to find out what really motivates and drives you is a critical step in any entrepreneurial journey.
What is your vision?
What problem are you passionate about solving?
What legacy do you want to leave behind?
If you cannot honestly answer these questions, you may struggle. How can you ensure that you remain goal-focused unless you truly know what you want? How can you inspire others without having a clear purpose and vision?
If, on the other hand, you are self-aware enough to know what really drives you, remaining focused, authentic and inspiring will come more easily.

3. Leverage your strengths
As an entrepreneur, you will probably need to play the role of ‘all-rounder’ and wear more than one hat on most days. Even so, your time is precious and limited (I keep asking Santa for a 36 hr day but, year after year, he’s failed to deliver), which means that you need to know where you can have the greatest impact.
For this reason, it is absolutely vital that you identify what your strengths are and leverage them as best as you can.
4. Address your weaknesses (part 1)
Being self-aware enough to identify your weaknesses is absolutely critical. Entrepreneurs need to be able to adapt and improve quickly, but in order to do so, they need to know exactly what needs to be improved.
In this respect, self-awareness provides entrepreneurs with an opportunity (and a necessary starting point) for self-improvement.
5. Address your weaknesses (part 2)
As your business grows, you will find yourself needing to hire staff. As you do, being self-aware will ensure that you can hire staff who are strong where you are weak.
In the process, self-awareness will enable you to simultaneously fill any ‘skills gaps’ in your business and build a team with complementary but not overlapping strengths.
6. Building team and culture
It is often said that ‘team is everything’ when growing a business. It is not enough for your team to be individually talented; they also need to work together collaboratively and effectively. The right team culture has to be in place, along with sufficient levels of mutual trust and respect.
As an entrepreneur, your staff will look to you as an example of how to act.
What is your work ethic?

Are you open-minded to the views of others?
Do you remain helpful when stressed?
Do you accept responsibility for your mistakes?
How, in other words, do you treat others?
Remaining self-aware and tuned into the way you treat other people is essential to creating both the right culture and an effective working environment.
7. Selling
When you run your own business, you are going to have to sell. This could involve selling your product or service to clients, but it could also involve selling your vision to staff or selling your financial credibility and future (meteoric) growth to investors.
How do you come across during the sales process? Pushy and overbearing? Uncertain and lacking confidence? Arrogant and presumptuous?
Self-awareness can provide an insight into how you come across to other people, something that is especially useful in a sales context where establishing rapport and rapidly building trust is critical.
8. Work-life balance

The seemingly never-ending balancing act.
As mentioned above, being an entrepreneur can bring with it a very particular set of challenges in the form of long hours, stress, strained cash flow and the need to place the business before anything else in your life.
Despite this, and as the most valuable asset in your business, you need to ensure that you remain as healthy, fit, happy and mentally stable (yes, mentally stable!) as possible.
Due to the relentless stresses and demands of entrepreneurship, this is often easier said than done. It can often feel impossible to not travel at 100mph — or realise you are doing so until you hit a brick wall!
Here, once again, self-awareness is vital. By listening to your body and mind, by recognising when you are struggling, by realising when you need sleep and, more generally, by prioritising your health and wellbeing, you will (contrary to what it may feel like) be acting in the best interests of your business.

Thanks for reading and we welcome your comments below.
Akasha Lin
Akasha Garnier for #TheWishwall
Author, Brand Expert, Filmmaker
http://www.akashagarnier.com

#ShineThroughtheNoise
Read more from Future Entrepreneurs: http://thewishwall.org/future- entrepreneurs

Photo: AkashaLin, Marina del Rey, CA
Inspo: Conversation with an entrepreneur during our flight to the U.S. Open