The Constant Factor: Yourself

Hey everyone,

So this week I will be speaking at a local Youthspeak Forum event - organised by AISEC Malta. I will be speaking about entrepreneurship - however I chose to focus on what often is under looked at when talking about the topic. That is the entrepreneur themselves. 

I think most of us heard the term that investing in yourself is possibly the best investment you could possibly make. That argument holds ground due to the one simple fact - that no matter where you are in life, at any point; what is common from your past to your future - is that you yourself are there. This means your skills, ideas, personality, abilities, weaknesses - all these things are there. More importantly - your mindset is there. 

The implication of this is a bit stronger than a lot of people seem to care to believe. Focusing a lot on qualifications within many educational systems tend to reinforce this - but often what differentiates the entrepreneurs is their mind-set tends to be very different than that of others. I speak for myself - switching mind-sets is difficult, but not impossible. In my case - I did it over a course of a few months, always building and improving myself in the ways I believed would be beneficial. However when we talk about mind-set it goes a little bit deeper than that.

Mind-set in terms of - in your every day choices, do you pick the easy way out even if it's not great? Are you willing to push through the hard obstacles presented to you - even if you have no support? Are you willing to not let anything push you down - even when it seems like nothing can possibly pick you up? The answers to these questions seem obvious - though in the day to day life, they can be as little and as large as we can image. Simple things like - going to the gym or exercising over sitting down and doing nothing. To large things like - pushing my dream and vision over following a plot that was readily paved for an easier time but a career I did not actually want. 

In a fair amount of countries - European at the very least, there has been a large emphasis on supporting start-ups. More than that - the environment of the market as is rewards it to a certain extent. E-commerce in many ways created a vast open market that many enterprising individuals can benefit from. Moreover, certain industries (we talk about game development often here) have had the tools required become fair more accessible and fair cheaper. You can go online today - download a number of game development tools and get to it. So why is entrepreneurship still seems like it needs a boost?

Well - the way I see it, as someone pursuing it personally, as well as having studied and read on other entrepreneurial individuals. The opportunities definitely help - but the ultimate basis is the individual. The individual is the entrepreneur - and whilst providing opportunities will help - I think the truly determining factor of entrepreneurship comes from the individual themselves. Which can be taken in two ways. 

One, the opportunities and support given are valueless (which is not true) or two - which is how I see it: that the individual is empowered to forge their own path. Empowering the individual is key to entrepreneurship. So my advice to those pursuing entrepreneurial dreams - make sure you do not neglect yourself. It may seem like funding, ideas, support, opportunities and so on are the essential aspects; but you yourself, are the essential aspect. Your mind-set and perspective is extremely important; as well as your skills and abilities.

Until next time,

Dylan