Our daily routine is based on different acts which we are repeating in a certain period of time. The way we act tells much more about us than words…it is the same with every action we take.

As we are paying attention to our daily routine, while starting your entrepreneurial journey, you should be mindful about your “entrepreneurial routine”. This is made up by a series of consequent phases, multiple functions alongside tasks related to the development of your business. This can go smoothly provided your needed skills are developed 100%. As you are only at the beginning of starting your business, this might not be the case. You may have no experience, as you are only at the beginning. How should you know which are the skills you will need on your entrepreneurial path? How can you recognize what and how should you improve?

Don’t despair if you haven’t got a clue, don’t feel lost…you are never alone in your entrepreneurial adventure. You will be accompanied by your emotions, strengths and fears. But bear in mind, fear can make you vulnerable which would not benefit your newly born business, nor your personal development.

It may seem that it is not worth going further… but it is! Even though there is no magic pill or an extremely easy way “to get experience”, a thoughtful advice or a “fun story” may have the power to teach you more than years of theory studies.

You should start with taking a piece of paper and jot down what are your strengths and weaknesses in regards to your business, in the light of what you have proposed to achieve with your business. We’ll show you how…

What are you good at? That’s a question we all want to know about ourselves, as well as the question that occasionally comes after it: What aren’t you good at?

If you don’t know how to answer these questions about yourself, we’ll show you a few ways which can help you out. So, let’s begin!

1. First create two lists!

To help you think about what to include in your strengths and weaknesses, try asking yourself questions like:

• What am I good at?
• What have others complimented me about?
• What have others had to help me with on more than one occasion?
• Which projects and tasks seem to drain my energy?
• Which projects have I spent hours on without getting tired?
• What are my hobbies, and why do I like doing them?

2. Talk to people you trust

After you’ve spent some time honestly assessing your strengths and weaknesses, it’s time to get input from those closest to you: a significant other, persons you trust and admire, close friends, or family members. They can help you out in analysing your identified strengths and weaknesses more objectively.

3. Take a personality test

In addition to the time you’ve spent thinking about yourself and the opinions you’ve gathered from others, personality tests are another useful resource to help you identify strengths and weaknesses.

You can use the following links for this:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp#questionnaire

https://articles.bplans.com/bplans-quiz-are-you-entrepreneur-material/

4. Try new things

One problem with identifying strengths and weaknesses comes when you have a lack of experience. In some cases, you might look at your list of weaknesses and notice that it mostly boils down to “I don’t know, I’ve never tried.” For instance, how do you know if you have an athletic or artistic ability if you’ve never tried to do something athletic or artistic? Pay extra attention to this!

So…don’t forget, it´s important to identify which weaknesses you have to focus on, so that they become your “future strengths”.

While entrepreneurial ideas may be really diverse, doubts and questions related to them tend to be quite similar. Interesting, isn’t it?

After you identified your strengths and weaknesses, now you know what are the skills you should improve in order to have a successful business. If finding a mentor to help you may require certain time, try to find courses which can help you out. You might be looking at training organisations, university courses, the chamber of commerce or similar in your close area.

Joining a training programme for nascent entrepreneurs you will meet peers you are in the same shoes with, therefore you will feel more comfortable seeing that is not only you facing obstacles at the beginning of your entrepreneurial path, and you’ll also mutually learn from each other by changing experiences. Most probably, you would find a course/training programme for social entrepreneurs, yet we encourage you joining also general trainings as main check points and phases of the idea shaping and enterprise creating are similar.

Once general information is received which is ESSENTIAL to know – let it be by a book, a face-to-face course or an online training – it´s time to talk to somebody who has more knowledge in the social sector. Maybe even one of the trainers of the course you attended…or, somebody who can give you some good piece of advice or… maybe even might become your MENTOR.