Please kindly accept my apologies again for skipping some posts, occasioned by some unavoidable circumstances. Otherwise, welcome back.
I thought today I should give a motivational piece regarding resilience. Candidly, every entrepreneur requires resilience as the entrepreneurship journey is oftentimes full of obstacles and challenges. If you happen to interview 100 successful entrepreneurs today, probably about 80 – 90% of these will have stories of a failure (and even several failures) before they became very successful in their business endeavours. Don’t you think so? I challenge you – just proceed and do that. If you can’t discuss with 100 just do about 10 and you will still find this common factor. There is hardly any free sailing in the business world. For those who are not resilient and tenacious enough severe business challenges often means closing the business and blaming everyone. I don’t think that is the right approach.
So, what is resilience anyway? It is the ability to withstand, and come back into shape or recover quickly after difficult conditions or situations, change or misfortune. It is the ability to be tough, hardy, flexible, and strong. For an entrepreneur, these qualities are very vital. Challenges and setbacks in the business world could be many. It could be loss of or damage to a critical business asset, or even departure of a key staff. It could be severe activities of a competitor that wipes out 50% of your market share, or a government regulation that technically closes your revenue lines. It could be a difficult debt or cash flow situation that makes your suppliers and the public lose confidence in your business or a humongous fine by a regulatory body due to your non-compliance to some laws and regulations. It’s endless.
While many enterprises carry out planning and efficient and effective execution, there are still some business scenarios that simply decide to be outside your meticulous planning. There are still situations that will defy your risk profiling and contingency planning. It is commonly said that today’s business world is full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA), but this also depends on factors such as the kind of business, size and other factors anyway. If you are running a small retail shop in your local trading center you might not take these matters seriously, but if you are a large business employing hundreds and thousands of people, and operating regionally and globally, then you may appreciate the importance of these issues.
So, can we now consider my 9 reasons why an entrepreneur must be resilient? Come on.
Ok. I believe you have enjoyed reading my 9 reasons why an entrepreneur must be resilient. Haven’t you? I will not carry it any further as I have already taken a lot of your time.
Till then – with every good wish,
The Wise Entrepreneur