Mountain Zebra

Finding your inner compass is integral part of building your business. Your inner compass helps you stay focused, make good decisions, overcome hurdles and look ahead.

When starting my own business, I first had to find my inner compass. And why is that? On the one hand, this was deeply buried by my previous life as an employee; on the other hand, in self-employment you get to know yourself all over again. Completely! You're constantly confronted with new situations, which is quite challenging. After 1.5 years in my own business, I would now say: I have my compass - and I'm constantly realigning it.

What is your experience?

It‘s Wiesn! One of my first steps towards an entrepreneurial life: a pop-up store for hand-made aprons & accessories for the Oktoberfest back in 2014. It was a true creative and fun experience! And for all of you out there dreaming of building your own business: a pop-up store is a great way to test your products, collect feedback from your customers - and a good way to de-risk your business idea. A pop-up is not as financially risky as renting a shop long-term and you don’t need a full range of products but only some to get started. The only question remains: what would you sell in your pop-up? Feel free to share in the comments below 👇

What does it take to keep a business running? A strong vision!

I believe a vision is something which always covers two ends:
Your vision guides you - and is convincing in a way, that you can follow on easily.
Your vision is both challenging - and yet realistic.
Your vision is personal to you - and meaningful for your customers.

Founders need to be visionary. They start their own business to create a better place - how else do you do that than not following your vision?

Which competence does it take to start & run a business? Lately I have been thinking about this a lot. And I guess one major competence is to endure and master uncertainty. Times are not always easy when being self-employed; you need to overcome a lot of situations outside your comfort zone and where you do not always fully understand what the result pf your decisions could be like. Uncertainty can mean jumping into the cold water - but hey: then you can discover an ocean full of new options.

What does it take to start a business? Definitely a bold move!

We have a new series where we want to share ideas on what it takes to start and run a business. What are your ideas around typical characteristics of founders? Please feel free to share in the comments below.