As a self-starter, resilience could just be the greatest skill you possess, but you might not even know it’s part of your arsenal. It’s an attribute that powers you through hours of hard work, and prepares you mentally and physically for taking the risks that come with being a self starter.
At RedZed, we believe resilience is the defining edge of the self-employed. Resilience is what makes powerful self-belief possible. And choosing to back yourself when making important decisions, selecting staff, designing a business plan or planning for the future is the ultimate act of self-belief.
It’s more than just being a master of your craft. It’s about creating balance between working in and working on your business. It’s about having the persistence to learn new skills and keep your business growing. And it’s about knowing when and how to take risks, and how to pick yourself up and try again if you fail.
Are you thinking about finance for your business? See how RedZed can help, and find out if a RedZed loan is right for you.
Resilience is a habit of the head, the heart and the mind. It requires cultivation and nurturing through physical effort, emotional reassurance and mental rituals. It’s a holistic skill that must be approached deliberately.
You do it by practising breathing techniques that keep you calm under pressure. By doing the physical exercise that allows you to work faster, harder and for longer. By embracing diverse new ways of learning that grow the skills you need.
Dr Rosemary Fisher, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology says that potential inexperience and the lack of additional personnel during the early stages of a new business place “mission-critical” demands on self-starters.
“Obtaining customers, finances, skilled employees and time are all complex, interdependent variables without which a businesses’ survival is threatened,” Dr Fisher says.
“And that is without factoring in external environmental threats, such as the response of competitors to your venture.”
Dr Fisher believes that resilient self-starters who create resilient businesses are likely to better cope in the face of these threats and challenges, and in doing so will find their way to more successful outcomes.
What about me?
The truth is, you’re already far more resilient than you might think. Just by getting out there and making it this far as a self-starter, you’ve proved yourself to be able to weather a storm. As you may have read in our The Truth About Growth report, 21% of small businesses struggle to make it to their first birthday.
In this second themed edition of The XYZed, we’re going to explore how resilience can help you succeed, and how it forms the basis of a suite of abilities and mindsets that can be nurtured, developed, learned and grown.
A second set of tools
Tiler, teacher or tour guide, we all have a toolkit we use when we work. It might be the latest MacBook filled with a set of software you can’t live without. It might be mum’s old overlocker and a cupboard full of fabric that you’re turning into trendy shirts to sell online.
Dr Fisher says that resilience “is a trait or set of characteristics displayed by people who are optimistic, hardy, tenacious, have self-efficacy, persist at things and maintain emotional and cognitive control under pressure.”
Much of what we’ll be sharing is designed to help you build this resilient set of tools, and make you better able to identify, plan for and face the toughest challenges.
Part of this will be examining why maintaining a good understanding of your market, your staff, your customers and your community is crucial when make the best decisions for yourself and your business. Then taking a look at what all self-starters can learn from small startup companies that make an art form out of agility.
We’re going to explore why taking care of your physical and mental wellbeing is also important if it comes to building resilience – including why putting in place simple practices to help you switch off when you’re not working can make big impacts on your capability to be resilient.
We’ll also be looking into how you can appraise and predict your own resilience, how you can look out for resilience in potential employees, and how and why your own resilience can be a reflection of your business success.
Get ready to rumble
Being better prepared for growth means opening yourself and your business up to bigger, more difficult challenges and less-stable situations.
We’re here to help you recalibrate your resilience, and be ready to stand strong in the face of whatever comes your way. Let’s do it.