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4 Qualities That Will Kill Your Brand Before It Takes Off
How you sell is just as important as what you sell.
I’ve been freelancing and running my own business teaching martial arts for a year now.
I am constantly interacting with entrepreneurs, founders, and business people who are way more ambitious and successful than I’ll ever be. I’ve worked with multi-millionaires, dreamy-eyed startup founders, gritty small business owners, and just about every other type of entrepreneur in between.
I’ve worked with companies that are emerging, companies that are failing, and companies that are just stuck in the mud and aren’t going (and won’t go) anywhere. There are some founders that I am eager to work with and others that make me want to run for the hills.
These are the 4 qualities that I’ve noticed destroy small business and solopreneurial dreams.
A Lack of Self-Awareness
Unfortunately, there’s no psychological screening process that helps us differentiate between ambitious founders and delusional ones. I’ve had to figure this out the hard way.
I’ve worked with business owners who are big dreamers but fail to realize where they’re at right now. They preach about building a million-dollar company when they haven’t received any funding or even established a product. They want to be successful, but they don’t want to admit that they’re at square one.
To put it blankly, they were building nothing and lying to me about it.
Overly ambitious business owners are a dangerous breed because they’ll run from project to project without learning from mistakes. They’ll fail and fail never learn. They’ll exploit workers, pray for handouts, and then complain that when they fail it’s the world that is responsible for their failures, not them.
I’m not saying that dreaming is bad, but I am saying that you can’t use your ambition to mislead your team, your loved ones, and yourself. Ambition is a neurochemical state, not a sign that you’re going to be great. Pay attention to the person that you are when that ambition wears off.
