5. Three characteristics you should have or develop in order to become a successful entrepreneur.

In my honest opinion… 😊

Hi everyone and welcome to a new blogpost! As some of you may know, I am and have been an entrepreneur for over 1,5 years now and I would love to share some of my findings with you.

For today’s blogpost I was inspired by looking into how to best manage time and in relation, how I manage my time. To be completely honest with you, I am not the best at time management yet. For me, time is very much a fluid thing going on in the background. And when I am in the zone, I pretty much pay no mind. However, for me to work a sustainable amount of hours IN the business as well as ON the business, I need to manage my time. So that I keep having enough income, but there’s still room to grow and expand the business at the same time.

As I was looking into the matter of dividing my hours, I realised it won’t look the same every week. I haven’t followed the same schedule every week since high school, basically. And I love that about my life! I love how no day is the same, I have freedom to work whenever I want to, and am able to do fun stuff whenever I want to!

That brings me to my first point, however! I found that a characteristic you need to have or should develop as an entrepreneur is:

You have to have discipline.

Yes, discipline! Because if you don’t have a boss telling you what to do and when to do it, guess what? You have to tell that to yourself! And actually do it… That takes a healthy amount of discipline. Especially in this day and age where distractions are all around you. Notifications, as well as easy and entertaining apps like Instagram, TikTok, and many more. They distract you from your work. So you need to be strict with yourself and actually do the work. Have discipline. And how do you keep up your own discipline? Mostly by doing what you love and reminding yourself that you love it. Or set goals and crush them! How exciting is that? I think that’s way better than mindless scrolling…

Secondly I think you should be a social person.

Yes, you are your own boss and can do things by yourself behind your laptop, but if you’re a social person you will find it so much easier to find clients. In my opinion, those who socialise get the best and easiest referrals. If you talk to a lot of people about what you do, or start up conversations on different types of topics, they will remember you. And the next time they or someone they know needs a copywriter? They say:

“Oh, I know this really fun and easygoing copywriter named Esmée, you’re gonna love her!”

— And then those referrals become a consistent stream of your favourite clients. 😉 Besides, if you make a few entrepreneurial friends who have a different expertise than you, they add you to their team as their in-house copywriter, and you can add them to your very own freelance team too.
You have to befriend them first, though. But that’s really fun! 🥰

The third characteristic I believe you absolutely need to be a successful entrepreneur is:

You have to be passionate.

As a business owner you have to wear many different ‘hats’ in order to keep it up. You need social skills and discipline, yes, but also you need to be willing to put in the time to hone your skill and craft.

Are you willing to learn and constantly evolve as a person? Because then your business will grow with you. — Esmée

Think of all of the different areas in business you have to become familiar with when you start out. From networking to bookkeeping to social media strategy and marketing. It is an ongoing learning process and you have to really LOVE it for it to work!

And if you try it out and find out you don’t love all of that, then please know that that is okay! You can be happy in a job, earning a steady income, just doing what you love and not having to focus on business stuff besides doing your job.

Because that really is what entrepreneurs do. They work in their area of expertise and they work in business. Two completely different jobs, but they really do need each other to work. (Work..! see what I did there, hehe 😄 )

I hope you enjoyed this blog as much as I loved writing it. Maybe you got inspired or maybe you were reminded that you’re not the only one experiencing this. Hi! Welcome. Let’s be friends 😁

See you next week!

Esmée
Write this way ✍🏻