Becoming a business owner requires you to be your best self. It’s dealing with the stress, with people, with big and risky projects, the highs and lows of your revenues, and more. Each situation and everything or everyone you have to interact with may necessitate different kinds of values and attitudes you have to learn and embody. Getting rid of bad habits and learning new ones can seem impossible, but it’s not. To be successful in personal development, discipline is needed, together with patience and perseverance.
Personal development must always be a goal for every individual, especially for business owners, as the success of your business may depend on how you deal with and make decisions in different situations that you and your business may encounter. Every decision matters. Making errors or mistakes as a manager may cost you your business or your employees’ and customers’ support. The better you are as an individual, the better manager you can be for your business, and the better your business is directed to a path of success.
Personal Development
Personal development is the process of improving yourself, assessing your life goals, and working on acquiring skills and values for your growth and to maximize your potential. It can be through taking steps to achieve your educational goals, having a new hobby, learning a new language, boosting self-confidence, or improving your relationships with others.
Related: 9 Self-Management Skills and How to Improve Them
If we get into the nitty-gritty of personal development, there are multitudes of concepts studied and discussed relating to personal development, but we will be focusing on personal development as a business owner.
What are the benefits of personal development for a business owner?
Having more skills and the characteristics needed as a business owner can benefit you in many ways. Here are some of the advantages you can get from working and investing in yourself:
Trust from employees and customers
One of the most important things to improve on is your social self — your interpersonal characteristics and communication. It is important that your employees and customers perceive you as a trustworthy business owner; someone who is honest and who has integrity. When people get to see these desirable traits as part of your identity, they will be able to trust you and your company better. Thus, brand loyalty from customers is created.
Related: 10 Traits and Qualities of an Awesome Accountant
Avoid errors and wrong decisions
Some of the skills you can set as your goal for improvement are skills specific to work ethic and what your work requires you to have. For example, in financial matters, you will need the skill of attention to detail. For decision-making, you need to be a critical thinker and know how to evaluate the benefits, the tradeoffs, and repercussions. Moreover, self-growth leads to an overall improvement and step towards being a well-rounded person. Being able to cope with stress and your emotions will hone you to be a strong and composed business owner in the face of crisis. This will help you avoid errors and wrong decisions that are incurred when you let your emotions get the better of you or when you lack the certain characteristic needed for the matter at hand.
Related: 10 Reasons Being An Entrepreneur Is Better Than Employment
Self-growth and business growth
In being successful in personal development, you also bring success into your business. As you grow and improve as an individual, you also become a better manager. When your mental health is well taken care of, you don’t lash out at employees, make impulsive decisions, shut off people or partners, and such. You can also inspire your employees with the work you’re putting in personal development. You are able to create an environment that makes constant improvement in oneself a goal for everyone. With this, you are also showing your humility as a business owner as you exemplify that everyone is held by the same standard of accepting weaknesses or vulnerabilities and working on them.
How you can work on personal development
1. Read about it
One of the most common and powerful ways people try to improve themselves is by reading about what they want to improve in. There are self-help books and there are personal development blogs. You can even read novels that teach life lessons and values like The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason when you want to improve in saving money and more. There are many reading materials readily available in bookstores and on the Internet.
2. Find a life coach or mentor
They say finding a life coach or mentor is one of the fastest ways of learning and improving. Their experience and expertise in the areas you seek to have progressed in are the most valuable things to learn from.
3. Keep yourself in check
Reflect on your daily progress. What have you done today to work on the goal you have set. Self-improvement requires self-awareness. You have to consistently track your progress and evaluate what you do every day to know what you still need to develop.
4. Reward or Punish yourself
For parents, they know that the reward/punishment system is one of the most effective ways of teaching their children. This system does not only work for children. It can work on anyone! After a long day or hours of learning a new skill, reward yourself with your comfort food. In punishing yourself, you can do a chore you’ve always hated. This can help you with your progress on self-development.
5. Be honest with what you need to improve and with your progress
To know how you can improve yourself, you can ask people you trust for honest opinions and observations on attitudes and skills you need to improve on. With this, you also have to be honest to yourself and accept them. In the process of working on them, don’t cheat on yourself by believing you’ve done enough in that area. Slow progress is still progress. Developing yourself will take a lot of time, patience, and consistency until you make it a part of your identity.
Personal development will always have advantages, especially for business owners. You have to keep in mind that your business’ success is heavily impacted by your decisions and your relationship with your partners, suppliers, employees, and customers. Being the best version of yourself will always be what’s best for your business. Success is always within anyone’s reach. Work on it. Grab it!
