Six superpowers to develop to be the best entrepreneur you can be

An entrepreneur is someone who decides to create or run a business, even though he or she might lose some money. Entrepreneurs are often creative, daring people, and the businesses they operate are very important to communities.

Here are six skills to develop in order to ace entrepreneurship:

1. CURIOUSITY

Curiosity is a key skill to develop as an entrepreneur. Watch the world around you closely, what do people want? What are people struggling with? What can be done to improve things? How can YOU solve an issue everyone is struggling with?

Here’s a cool trick to help you flex your curiosity muscles. Write down 10 good ideas a day. Which equates to 3500 ideas a year. Maybe only 3 or 4 ideas will work, but if just one goes BOOM, wouldn’t it have been worth it to do this small exercise every day? Do you think you will be good at this initially? What if you did it every day for a year? How good would you be then? You’d literally be an idea machine!

2. FAILURE + RESILIENCE

How many of you follow very young, very rich people on Instagram? They make it look easy and tell you to follow them (and probably pay them) to find out how you can do it to! Hmmm…deeply suspicious…dubious eyebrow is officially raised.

I don’t want to throw shade because sure, you might be lucky, come up with an idea and smash it from day one, but most successful entrepreneurs will tell you they failed more times than they succeeded.

Who likes to fail? Me neither TBH - it really doesn’t feel good. When I was pregnant with Bridget, our second daughter, I was retrenched. I decided to start my own business. Here’s the game plan. I create and develop series aimed at teaching parents how to raise perfect little children. Amazing, right? But I missed one key element, I didn’t do any market research. I produced the series and put it out into the world, expecting people to form longs queues to buy the series. But no one did. We failed hard and expensively. I was totally rattled. For a long time after that, I felt like a failure, too scared to try anything new.

Eventually I realized that the problem is not failure. The problem is giving up. We have to be able to learn from our failures then quickly get up start again and keep trying. What if failure is just opportunity for new beginnings?

Whenever you fail at something, imagine it happened to one of your closest friends. What would you say to them to help them through it? Now tell yourself that too, dust yourself off and get back in the game.

3. WHO DO YOU SURROUND YOURSELF WITH?

Look around you, who are your 3 best friends? Do you know that you are likely to be the same as them – you are likely to rock the same fashion trends and earn the same amount of money?

Does that thought make you realise your bank account could do with better friends? I feel you. The good news is you can something to improve the people you surround yourself with.

You can follow successful people online, you could ask people who you think are successful if they’d mind sharing some ideas with you, perhaps even create a small mastermind group where you can learn from each other. The support and positive example they set will motivate you to do more and make the right decisions. The right people will help you stay focused. And why does that matter?

Without focus you are wasting time on unnecessary activities and slowing yourself down. We are surrounded by so many distractions, social media, TV, cell phones. It can feel impossible to find time to do your regular work gig, never mind start a business! To win at the game of life, you need to create a clear vision of where you want to be and then do everything you can to get there. Every morning when you wake up, write down your main focus for that day. One small step in the right direction every day adds up to massive progress over time.

Now for the three skills that matter the most:

4. IS IT GOOD FOR YOU?

When John Lennon, the lead singer of the band The Beatles, went to school, they asked him what I wanted to be when he grew up. He wrote down 'happy'. They told him he didn't understand the assignment, and he told them they didn't understand life.

John Lennon was right. Life is short –if you are not having fun and being happy most of the time, you are wasting your time.

Which is why it is really important to think about something that you are really passionate about and could start a business with.

What makes you feel great, what energizes you, and what you cannot imagine life without. And no, I don’t mean your cell phone. Think deeper than that. Write your ideas down. Then think of which activities can make you money and reduce your list to that which you are passionate about and can make you money. Passion is your fuel. Your business will have its ups and downs, but passion will make your stay in the game. Plus, it can be contagious. Your vision and energy will motivate people in your team. Steve Jobs once said, “People with passion can change the world.” Are you going to change the world?

5. IS IT GOOD FOR OTHERS?

Will your product or service help or harm people? Let’s say you decide to start selling guns – good or bad idea? What about illegal drugs? Think about the impact your idea will have on people around you. If it is not making life better for them, is it really worth doing?

6. IS IT GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

Who loves cheap clothes? You can buy them from places like Shein or Lightbox. Hey, maybe you could even start a business importing cheap clothes and selling them for more than you pay for them. But what is that doing to the environment? The clothes have to be shipped thousands of miles to end up here. Surely it is better to support local? Local is lekker. Now take that back to the business you want to create. There is so much talent and creativity right here on our doorsteps, think about how you can work with what you have, where you are. Your grandchildren will thank you for it.

Believe in yourself and dream big. You can achieve anything you really want to. Start writing down your goals and dreams. Take small steps every day towards those goals and who knows, you could be the next Elon Musk – maybe with a few less kids!