Any young entrepreneur can find themselves being pulled in various directions. Not just in a physical sense, but emotionally and mentally. Being pressed for new and exciting ideas means that you are exerting every part of your brain. This can lead to a lot of mental exhaustion or burnout. As a result, you can feel bereft of ideas, inspiration and have a generally dry feeling in your mind. This is why it’s important for you to replenish your knowledge stores on a regular basis. It’s not just about using all of your ideas and then finding the time to study new things, you need to keep doing it all the time. So, how can you do this effectively, when the time constraints of running your company take over every part of your life?
Find a mentor
If you are new to the entrepreneurial game, and you’re looking at building your startup, but have no idea how to go about it, a mentor is one of the best options. You can learn about the best ways to go about running a business from someone who has been there before. In addition to this, you can learn from their mistakes and so you don’t need to make the same ones. Having a mentor isn’t about regular weekly meetings in person, but this can help, you can do it online. But in seeking out a mentor, it can be difficult, but if you put in the leg work and find an appropriate person, you will learn so much in so little time.
Look to benchmarks
If you don’t have the opportunity to seek out a mentor, looking at people who inspire you, either online, or reading about these people, will give you little doses of inspiration here and there. It’s exciting to read about someone that inspires you, and it’s going to sink into your brain much more than sitting around idly researching trends. Look at people who are your age, so you can see what they’ve done on their journey, and if there’s anything that you can implement into yours. Someone like Danny DeMichele, who was one of the Young Influentials finalists in 2014, runs his own marketing agency, and if you can empathize with so many of his struggles, or any other entrepreneur that has had a similar journey to you, this can help you learn the good and bad aspects. It’s important to not copy other entrepreneurs, but forge your own journey. You can use these entrepreneurs as benchmarks, and as inspiration, but there is no point in making a facsimile of what they’ve done.
Make allocated study time
Bill Gates goes on vacation and reads, and although you don’t have the opportunity to sit on the beach and read for a week or a month, you can set aside a strict block of time and use it to study. If you struggle with the work life-balance, this can be invaluable when it comes to structuring your working week.
It’s important to stay on top of your knowledge in every aspect of business, because it keeps you agile. So, consider the best ways to replenish your knowledge stores.
