Managing resilience
Watch the following video on how to bounce back from low points in preparing yourself as an entrepreneur to navigate hurdles and jump at opportunities.
‘Nearly all Australian small business owners (96%) believe resilience is critical to their success, but their perspectives on where resilience comes from and how to develop it differ.
Two-thirds of small business owners (63%) feel resilience is a combination of innate and learned characteristics. In comparison, almost all (96%) believe resilience is a talent that can be developed like a muscle. More than half (51%) define resilience as knowing how to use tools and resources to help themselves.
However, small business leaders also rated the following measures highly for building and maintaining resilience outside of meeting challenges head-on.’25
Nine tools to build resilience
‘The good news is that even if you are not a naturally resilient person, you can learn to develop a resilient mindset and attitude. To do so, incorporate the following into your daily life:
- Learn to relax
- Practice thought awareness
- Edit your outlook
- Learn from your mistakes and failures
- Choose your response and be flexible
- Maintain perspective
- Set your own goals
- Build your self-confidence
- Develop strong relationships.’26
7C's of being resilient
Building resiliency can seem intimidating, but some fundamentals can help build a strong foundation for resilience.
- Competence: Measures the ability to know how to handle situations, trust own judgements and make responsible choices.
- Confidence: True self-confidence is rooted in competence when dealing with real-life situations.
- Connection: Belonging and security are provided when close relationships are fostered with family, friends, and community.
- Character: Having a fundamental sense of right and wrong helps people to make responsible choices, contribute to society, and experience self-worth.
- Contribution: Having a sense of purpose allows you to contribute to the community, reinforcing positive, reciprocal relationships. It is also a powerful motivator.
- Coping: Learning to deal with stress effectively allows you to handle adversity and setbacks better.
- Control: When you learn that you can control the outcomes of your decisions, you view yourself as capable and confident. Internal control helps you act as a problem-solver and not a victim of circumstance.
- Make Setbacks a KPI
Review your setbacks as it is any of the traditionally measured KPIs of a business. How to do it: Make a spreadsheet, document, project or checklist to keep a running list of your obstacles, setbacks, challenges and mistakes.
Entrepreneurs need to know their numbers, but it is also critical to know and understand the less quantifiable aspects of your business, and this is a great place to start.' - Build Your Day Around Solving Meaningful Problems
You can build resilience by reducing the decisions you have to make in a day and focusing on the choices that matter most.
How to do it: Plan your day—tasks, to-do lists, and projects—around the activities that will have the greatest impact. Avoid non-essential busy work and instead focus on actions that will get you closer to your goals. - Remember Your Mission
Focusing on your purpose effectively deals with the hard times in life and maintains perspective. If resilience is about constantly adapting to change, then it helps to know that one thing will stay constant: your mission and meaning in the world.
How to do it: Make it a daily habit to think of the people you are on a mission to help and the problems you are working to solve. Understand that solving problems and helping people requires going through all sorts of obstacles, especially if you are working on something never done before. - Know When to Quit
It may seem like a paradox, but sometimes resilience means knowing when to fold your things. How to do it: Remember that resilience is a form of wisdom and sticking with something simply because you are afraid of going against the never-give-up grain is not always helpful. Be open to selectively quitting the things that are not working, and realise that quitting does not mean failure.
Tap into your reserves - Dealing with setbacks can be taxing—mentally, physically, financially, and otherwise—but you would be surprised by how much resilience you have already built up from years of work and life experience.
How to do it: When you are feeling tapped out, keep in mind that you still have plenty left in the tank. The entrepreneur's journey can be extremely difficult, so keep in mind that it takes incredible perseverance to stick with it.
So how does tapping into your reserves help build resilience? You will become more comfortable with pain and discomfort. Most people go to great lengths to avoid pain, but by embracing pain and discomfort, you will find that it is easier to push past mental boundaries that you have often set for yourself.27
Why do business plans get rejected?
There are a variety of reasons why business strategies fail. Missing important dates for completing the business plan, or sketching hockey stick profit estimates, for example, can turn off potential investors
Investors and banks lose interest for various reasons, some of which are less nuanced and sophisticated. These pointers will help you in avoiding the minor but common mistakes that people make when developing a business plan.
| Common mistakes during business plan development | |
|---|---|
|
Your business does not fill a need. |
You will not attract investment interest if your business plan does not clarify what needs your company aims to solve and how it will do so. |
|
Trying to be the master of all things. |
Investors are looking for more unique strategies, particularly start-ups with little or no prior market experience. They prefer to see a single product or service that solves a need in a single, large or expanding market and can be sold via a well-established distribution strategy. |
|
No clear go-to-market strategy |
Many business proposals are also rejected because they do not define the sales, marketing, and distribution strategy. Investors will want to see your specific approach to these three areas. |
|
Overly technical terminology |
While discussing your technology, keep technical terms to a minimum in your business strategy. Concentrate on displaying your knowledge of the company and industry. |
|
No risk analysis |
One of the things investors look for in your business plan is an explanation of the risks that your company faces and how you plan to address them. |
|
Poor organisation |
Your business plan should be written in a traditional structure, with the executive summary coming first, followed by your company overview. This corresponds to the way investors normally scan and evaluate documents. |
|
Too long |
Most investors are too busy to read long business plans, so keep them as short as possible while still including all of the crucial data they will find interesting.28 |
|
Poor spelling and grammar |
You create the sense that if you can not avoid such errors in your business plan, your company will undoubtedly lack attention to detail. |
How to validate your start up idea
New ideas contain unpredictable parts, and if a few go wrong, they can completely derail your goals. Validation lowers risk, speeds upmarket delivery of a value-creating service, and lowers costs. Idea validation aims to ensure that your proposal has genuine demand; otherwise, it risks becoming "just another great idea."
Steps to validate your idea
Although there are a variety of approaches to validating an idea, the overall validation procedure is rather straightforward:
Idea Validation: Steps and Tools for Testing Your Idea by Julia Kylliäinen © 2022 Viima.
Here is how to get started with the idea validation process:
- Define your goal
Just like any idea management-related activity, validation starts with defining your goals. You will decide what you want to learn and what aspects to validate in this stage. The objective of your goal is to discover the most important assumption relating to your unique idea. - Develop a hypothesis
It is time to build a hypothesis based on your concept validation aim after establishing it. A testable statement with a prediction is referred to as a hypothesis. - Experiment and revise
Once you have formed a theory, you can begin testing it using experiments.29
The goal of experimentation is to find the quickest and cheapest means to put your hypothesis to the test in real life.
An experiment is a test (or a series of experiments) that measures the consequences of a hypothesis and determines if you should pursue your idea. - Validate and develop
You should confirm your assumption to be either valid or invalid in this stage. If your idea has potential, and the most critical assumption is correct, you can start refining your idea."
Validation board
The Validation Board is a tool for validating and pivoting assumptions, as well as tracking those pivots. You can use the Validation Board to define customer, problem, and solution hypotheses and the core assumptions that underpin them.
For individuals searching for a structured and active way to define goals and decide whether to pursue an idea or pivot, the Validation Board can be a beneficial tool.
How to handle critique
Thanks to social media, companies are now closer than ever to their customers' input. On the other hand, these buyers may or may not be generous in their judgments. A business may come across a customer dissatisfied with their experience or the goods themselves.
Handling customer critique and not taking it personally
‘It can be difficult for entrepreneurs to separate their reactions from brand criticism. Let us look at some tips on how to deal with criticism without taking it personally.
- Talk about it
- Step away before responding
- Decide if the criticism has merit
- Be grateful for the insight
- Humanise the reviewer
- Be analytical, not emotional
- Understand that it is not directed at you
- Keep a sense of perspective
- Remember that you are not the only one.’30
How to use feedback effectively
‘The fuel that promotes growth and greatness is feedback. We all rely on comments to stay on course, to know what we are doing right and where we might improve. Entrepreneurs must master the art of giving and receiving effective feedback.31
Watch the following video on how an entrepreneur can win over a client who does not believe in your product and accept feedback.’
We constantly witness examples of helpful feedback. Whether it comes from our colleagues or our consumers, negative feedback is an inevitable aspect of being an entrepreneur. In this line of work, the adage "you can not make everyone happy" is frequently verified.
The way someone says something will tell you if they offer you constructive feedback or constructive criticism. E-commerce platforms, for example, are constantly subjected to product and service reviews. This type of review you want if you manage an internet store. However, some individuals like complaining just about expressing their viewpoint.
Constructive feedback is a kind manner of pointing out shortcomings in a business plan. While that person may have no idea what your day-to-day job requires, they provide an outside perspective that could assist you in enhancing your bottom line.
How to respond to constructive feedback
It is never a good feeling when you lose a client or a business partner due to a disagreement. However, it is critical to consider their reasons for departing while evaluating your company. What if you lose another client because another individual notices the same fault later?
It is critical to maintaining a professional approach when responding to constructive remarks. You do not want to burn any bridges, after all. Although it may be tempting, resist the urge to lash out at the other person. Remind yourself that they attempt to provide you with constructive and affirming comments rather than telling you how to manage your company.
Do Not Take It Personally
Whether someone is providing you with genuine, helpful input or simply insulting your company, try not to take it personally. It is quite acceptable to be offended, but do not show it to them. Instead, get precise about what they did not like about your product or service by questioning them. You can then use that information to your advantage rather than avoid feedback. Do not take constructive criticism personally; instead, think about it.
Resilience quiz
Let us find out how resilient you are. Read the article in the link and fill in the questions.
This short quiz will give your insight into your choices to further your resilience.
Share your findings with your peers in the forum.
