What it means to be resourceful as an entrepreneur and why it's important. Plus, how to be resourceful when you're stuck, according to those who've been there.
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Once they start, entrepreneurs can't stop. But that doesn't mean they never get stuck.
For many business owners, it’s a familiar feeling. When you’re short on cash and have to build your business on a limited budget. When once-frequent sales suddenly become scarce. When a pandemic forces you to close your doors. When stress starts to take a toll on your mental health .
Building a business is like navigating a maze without a map. And from time to time, you're bound to hit a wall. Knowing how to be resourceful in these difficult situations and finding creative ways to overcome challenges is what sets successful entrepreneurs apart.
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We explain what it means to be resourceful in business, why it is important for solving problems as an entrepreneur, and how to put your resourcefulness to work when you feel stuck,canadian consumer email lists according to entrepreneurs who have been through this experience.
What does it mean to be resourceful?
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Everyone has their own definition of what it means to be resourceful.
For many, business ingenuity means doing what you can with what you have. But there is a concept that psychologists call “learned skill ,” which refers to business ingenuity as a set of skills and behaviors that help us control how we respond internally to difficulties, and thus adopt the right mindset to find solutions.
Early research on learned skill focused largely on forms of self-control:
Engage in positive self-talk. Negative self-talk leads to defeat before we even try. Many entrepreneurs are unwaveringly optimistic when it comes to their ambitions.
View problem solving as a process. Steps include clearly defining the problem, exploring potential solutions, evaluating and prioritizing each solution, and executing the best one. We often do this intuitively, but it's also a process we can consciously put into practice when we feel stuck.
The willingness to delay gratification. Working toward a larger goal, such as a profitable business, often requires you to put in a lot of effort before you can taste the fruits of success. Depending on the scope of your vision, it may take months or even years before it materializes. That doesn't mean you can't celebrate the small victories and big milestones you encounter along the way.
Self-sufficiency. The belief that we have the ability to control ourselves, our environment, and our outcomes.
Learned ingenuity has evolved to include “social ingenuity”—not just our ability to help ourselves when we’re stuck, but our ability to find connections and ask for help. This skill is useful in both your professional and personal life.
In speaking to a dozen entrepreneurs about this topic, all of whom had felt stuck at some point, learning to be resourceful meant embracing both definitions to find solutions.
5 Ways to Be More Resourceful in Business, According to Entrepreneurs
Pause, broaden your perspective and find your North Star
Learn to search on Google. Problems are rarely unique
Find inspiration in the competition
Don't be afraid to ask for help
Consider pivoting your business
1. Pause, broaden your perspective and find your North Star
Many business owners hit their first speed bump not when they are building their business, but when they hit a sales ceiling.
Hitting what feels like a limit can be frustrating, especially when you're far from where you'd like to be.
While action is an antidote to such times, you may also need to take some time off to evaluate what you are doing and what you have accomplished so far. Or, as Adam from N/A Stock Company puts it :
Sometimes you need to go around in circles a bit before you figure out how to build a well-oiled machine.
Adam Libunao, N/A Stock Company
Stuck
During the early stages, my partner and I were making plans almost on the fly. We were making sales, creating new products, getting new opportunities, but on a very small scale. In the end, we felt like we had hit a wall. We went months without launching new products and weeks without making a single sale, almost to the point where we thought that only by making deep discounts could we make any sales.
Unblocked
It wasn't until we set annual goals that we saw any difference. We needed to go through that first phase so we could have a point of reference. This gave us time to look at what our customers wanted, what wasn't working, what could be improved, and what a realistic sales goal was.
We took our annual goal and started planning projects around those goals, every 6 weeks. This change helped us take the business more seriously. We went from having too much inventory to having to replenish more. Our sales tripled, our chemistry improved, the process became easier, and we started enjoying it again! We were like a well-oiled machine.
Adam Libunao, N/A Stock Company
Adam says slowing down and rewriting his business plan , based on everything he had learned, helped him organize his thoughts, focus his time and efforts, and see a path forward through new product launches.
If this sounds familiar, you can use our business plan template to think through every aspect of your business, from your mission to your place in the market, set ambitious but achievable goals, and work to get there.
Entrepreneurs may be known for bravely jumping in first and “building the plane as you fly down,” but going through the planning process—putting your thoughts on paper—can help you clarify your goals and prioritize the best path to achieving them, whether that’s creating a more profitable pricing strategy , outsourcing to free up time, or securing new capital to grow.