It is very important for entrepreneurs to be self-aware so to develop successful brands and to achieve entrepreneurial growth. Being self-aware means you understand your strengths, you are aware of your feelings, motives and you can identify areas that you need to make changes and improvements. It gives an opportunity for personal growth and to learn the necessary skill and importantly to perceive others accurately. When you perceive people accurately you will be able to build a specific team for your brand according to the abilities of everyone you hire.

How does self-awareness lead to success?

• A better understanding of oneself will be helpful with a beneficial decision-making
• Self-awareness will help you identify what drives you
• It will help you to maintain a balance between work and personal life
• It will assist with the leverage to align key strengths to the business
• It enables you to build a solid and genuine personal brand
• It will equip you to wisely control your emotions during difficult times
• It assists you to better recognize the impact you have on your team as a leader and how they perceive you
• You will know your weakness and that will help you be aware of or pinpoint areas that need to be improved
• You will understand others better and you can  be able to hire those who can do well in categories in which you lack the acumen
• As a leader, you will know how to be a team player who takes responsibility and can be able to build an effective relationship within your team or subordinates.
• When you are self-aware, you are capable of being honest to ask yourself whether you have the skills to survive or if you are resilient enough to succeed

What creates self-awareness in entrepreneur?

• Take a personality test – this is a structured approach to make you understand your personality more. Ensure to accept whatever outcome it says about you
• Take time to self-reflect – proactively reflect on your actions daily
• Seek feedback – periodically asking what others think and maturely looking into it will help you a lot. Ask people from both the workplace environment and those in your personal life
• Keep a record – write down your inspirations, goals, fears, key issues down so as to review and revisit them later at some point
• Stay conscious and objective – review your actions objectively and learn to observe how your actions or decisions affect others or how they react to them. Be clear as to why you act a certain way and find the best approach
• Humility – humility defeats pride and aggression and the best key component in knowing that you can learn from your subordinates. Humility is self-confidence

Self-awareness traits that can make you an effective entrepreneur

Believe in yourself – an effective leader is the one who is comfortable with their good, the bad, and the ugly because self-awareness builds self-confidence. Before the next person can believe in you, you firstly need to believe in yourself.

Be disciplined and consistent – initiate tasks, complete them and reach your targets without allowing distractions and be consistent about it. You also need passion, determination, and putting in more work and time more than anyone else to build a successful startup.

Treat people right –as an entrepreneur you sell your skill to the people. As mentioned earlier you will need help from your subordinates that are stronger where you lack. Do your due diligence then hire and treat them right. Building the brand further, you will need to network so to connect and collaborate for more opportunities.

No expectations – focus on how to create value for others and forget about what you could get from them. Have a give-first mentality. Never focus on money rather focus on chasing the dream with persistence, success and money will fall into place.

Stay flexible – adapt and adopt the new business cultures and practices. Nothing stays the same, embrace change. Keep thinking positive.

Work on your business skills – the inability to keep a sustainable business will be inevitable if you lack business skills, knowledge and if you don’t stay informed. Continue doing research and strive to be competitive at all times by challenging yourself. Dare to make an impact and to make a difference.

Take risks – ask yourself what have you got to win or lose, then be bold and take the risk and necessary steps to improve. Taking a risk can go in hand with being decisive. Some other opportunities will need you to be quick in assessing them and making a decision before they pass you by.

Be proactive – regularly analyze your business operations and as quick as possible address threats and issues with effective long term solutions. Communicate with everyone involved, business associates, your customers, your team, and or your employees. Communicating means actively listening and welcoming feedback; ideas and valuable opinions may come your way and you can use them as the way to making improvements and identifying areas that need it.

Be financially smart – learn the value of money, investments, how to build and accumulate wealth. Avoid unnecessary expenditure and live within your means.

Value your wellness – in the midst of all your hard work prioritize your health. Eat healthily, exercise, and have your ‘me’ time, have time for your loved ones, and get into habits that will protect your mental health.

We have seen how the Covid pandemic has hit the entire world, now is the time for entrepreneurs to highly be flexible and start asking themselves that should it happen again in the near future; are they going to be able to sustain their business? It is time for more opportunities, to find gaps, and to really find ways of changing business cultures so as to stay relevant.

It isn’t only about the pandemic, which can only be used as another eye-opener for those who refuse to accept change. Change is an opportunity to learn. We have already witnessed how traditional business practices have gone obsolete more especially with the social media times.

**WHEN SELF-AWARENESS GROWS, ACHIEVABLE GOALS ARE THE DEFINATE END RESULTS**