5 Bad Habits You Must Do Away With Before Becoming an Entrepreneur in Zimbabwe!

Through the recent entrepreneurial education, Zimbabweans now understand the importance of entrepreneurship and the positive effect it can have on a nation’s economy. 

Scholars and economic experts are partnering with governments and non-governmental organizations to inculcate the attitude of self engagements into the minds of the young generation and this effort is yielding positive result to the African continent. There are lots of success stories resulting from this new development and we will discuss some of the mind-blowing ones by next year, 2016.

One thing most would-be-entrepreneurs (especially individuals previously engaged in an establishment as an employee but wish to start their own business) fail to understand before venturing into starting their own business is that you do not run a business with the same mindset as an employee.

Below are 5 bad habits you must do away with before venturing into entrepreneurship:

5 Bad Habits You Must Do Away With Before Becoming an Entrepreneur in Zimbabwe!

1. Not having a plan for each day. Most startupper entrepreneurs set out the day without having a defined schedule. You can get away with this habit in a paid job, but as an entrepreneur, that is the beginning of your failure.

If your priorities are not well defined, you may end up achieving less to nothing before the day runs out. Always pen down each task for the day according to priority and thrive to achieve them.

Schedule your day

2. Running late: Most employees have this lackadaisical attitude when it comes to keeping to time, responding on time and replying mails promptly. This can cause you a big deal as an entrepreneur. You may lose an important appointment for being a minute late. Also, some clients may see you as an unserious business person and any investor or customer who values time WILL not want to deal with you. Most importantly, you must be time conscious in order to set an example for your team. They can easily imitate your time culture. Always keep to time.

Never get late to appointments. Always respond promptly to your customers.

3. Postponing important tasks: Procrastinating over important tasks could worsen your current situation. If you cannot meet up with certain tasks that might be instrumental to the development of your business, delegate or even outsource such tasks, either ways, make sure they are done if your business must grow.

Always give priority to important tasks.

4. Delaying hard decisions: As an entrepreneur, you are left no choice but to take decisions, both the easy and the very hard ones. That is one of the functions of an entrepreneur. As an employee, your bosses take the decisions and assign the task to you but as an entrepreneur, you are solely responsible to what happens in your business. You determine your business objectives and what is suitable for it per time. You determine and maintain the potential investors or financiers of your enterprise and manage the funds available. No one is going to do that stuff for you, if you leave it like that, it remains so.

If you, therefore, delay in taking decisions, you are slowing the pace of your success story. The sooner you make decisions, the better for your startup. If you are cut on a crossroad on what to do at a giving point in time, go back to your mentor/advisor and seek help but you must do this as quickly as possible so as not to keep your business on a stagnated point.

Eliminate the habit of delaying taking decisions.

5. Multitasking: You can never do all the tasks at a time. Even the guy with a high intelligent quotient can make mistakes or achieve less when multi-tasked. Do one thing at a time so as to get the maximum result. Multi-tasking could be dangerous for you and your business. You might think you are saving yourself time and resource but might be achieving less result than you could have to do them one after the other.

One thing at a time

BONUS:

Learn to say NO

The word “NO” is not negative per se but a way of protecting what we love or our interest while taking decisions. While chasing business opportunities, you are bound to be presented with lots of options, learning to say NO can help you not to make a terrible business decision.

As an employee or while you were growing up, you hate hearing the word NO any time you request for something. Well, it is your turn to be saying NO to;

Opportunities you are not clear about.

Request that will not benefit your business.

Advise that might hurt you business.

Note that by saying no, you are actually saying yes to the things that really deserve your time and attention, and to having the time for the right opportunities when they come along. By saying no, you are able to preserve your clients and investors interest.

Please note that these bad habits may not necessarily destroy your business but they can reduce your productivity thereby loss in profit, customer. thetotalentrepreneurs.com