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What are your strengths and weaknesses as a founder?

What are your strengths and weaknesses as a founder? How are you capitalizing on your strengths and compensating for (or improving) your weaknesses?

on February 4, 2019
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    Learning to be kinder to myself - Despite the best plans in the world, and organisation, and determination..... sometimes it just falls apart. And it's ok to have an occasional down day where everything is s**t. Next day you pick yourself up, assess what went wrong, learn from it and go again- What do you do @csallen?

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      I had a down day last week where I jumped into some code prematurely and wasted a lot of time doing something the wrong way. I wouldn't say I'm good at being kind to myself, though. That's tough for me to do, certainly one of my weaknesses, so kudos to you on that! But perhaps one of my strengths is remaining fairly resilient even when I'm mean to myself.

      To answer my own question, my main strength is breadth of skillset — code, design, writing, etc. Main main weakness is a tendency not to rely on others, not to hire others, and to bite off more than I can chew. I'm working on these things by doing my best to start hiring :-D

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        Great answer!

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    I'm still finding new strengths every day as a founder, that's what's great about being out of your comfort zone. My weakness is 100% letting the bad days affect me mentally. I have to keep reminding myself that things will pick up and they can't always be profitable days every day.

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      What I've found helpful is to keep a running log of what makes the bad days bad. Over a long enough time period, you'll see some patterns, e.g. you were overworked the day before, or you got off to a late start, or had too much multitasking, or you had some type of work that typically drains you, or a customer canceled, etc. This helps with prevention, although not sure about mental recovery.

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        Love that journal idea, will 100% start that. Mental recovery for me is the gym, plenty of water and good food. Works everytime.

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    Strengths:

    1. Visionary: Having a clear vision and direction for the business can help to motivate and inspire the team to work towards a common goal.
    2. Decisive: Making decisions quickly and effectively can help to keep the business moving forward.
    3. Creative: Being able to come up with innovative ideas can help the business stay competitive and relevant.
    4. Good communicator: Being able to effectively communicate with team members, customers, and stakeholders can help to build relationships and achieve business objectives.
    5. Resilient: Being able to bounce back from setbacks and failures can help to keep the business on track.

    Weaknesses:

    1. Micromanaging: Being too controlling and involved in every aspect of the business can lead to burnout and a lack of trust in the team.
    2. Impulsive: Making decisions too quickly without proper analysis and consideration can lead to poor outcomes.
    3. Indecisive: Being unable to make decisions can lead to delays and missed opportunities.
    4. Poor time management: Not being able to manage time effectively can lead to missed deadlines and reduced productivity.
    5. Lack of empathy: Being unable to understand and connect with team members and customers can lead to a lack of trust and loyalty.

    In terms of measuring gender factors in business, there are several tools available such as:

    1. Gender Pay Gap Calculator: This tool helps businesses calculate and analyze the difference in pay between men and women in the workplace.
    2. Gender Diversity Index: This tool measures the percentage of women in leadership positions in a business.
    3. The Gender Scale: This tool helps businesses measure and analyze their performance in areas such as gender equality, diversity, and inclusion.
    4. Reality Check Calculator: This tool helps individuals determine if they are being paid fairly based on their gender, job title, and location.

    By using these tools, businesses can identify areas where they need to improve and take action to promote gender equality in the workplace.

  4. 1

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  5. 1

    I would definitely say my weakness is my negativity. It can be such an energy drain when you're forcing yourself to work on things while in the back of your mind you just keep thinking this is going to fail.

    Strength would be my desire to treat customers with the utmost respect and care. From days of working retail to my saas, I just want the customers to be happy. It can take more time and effort, but I really enjoy that something I did made someone happier in their lives.

    My belief in my current project making people's jobs and lives easier provides me with hope that it'll find an audience and that keeps me going. Often the negativity is strong so it can be a real struggle, so I try to make sure I mix in the more enjoyable aspects with the need to get this done items.

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    Strengths:

    • I have a wide and voracious appetite for learning. This has helped me build a fairly uncommon set of skills.
    • I don't give up. Sometimes I'm forced to change tactics, but that only delays me.

    Weaknesses:

    • I'm easily distracted by interesting things and often find myself exploring fractal rabbit holes.
    • I don't give up, even when the personal costs are high.

    How I'm trying to compensate/improve:

    • by choosing projects that force me to learn and that are particularly interesting
    • by trying to be patient enough to build some resources and most importantly, by having an ultimate goal that's worth it
  7. 1

    My strengths have always been about building community. That got lost along the way as everything grew.

    As things grew I really didn't enjoy the managing side of things, so I hired a CEO to take over that and for me to 'go back' to doing more community/marketing stuff.

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      Are you available for consulting?

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        Sure/possibly, feel free to msg me.

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          Rosie, can you help me with community building? How can my users help each other? This could be an additional glue to create stickiness.

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            Do you have something live for me to look at? Or email me?

  8. 1

    Biggest weakness is my tendency to conflate work with my identity. While work is a big part of my life, it isn’t my life. I used to be on a rollercoaster of emotion that correlated to the recent successes or failures of my business. Joy when things went great, anxiety and depression when things fell through.

    I’ve gotten better at separating the two. A family you love, friends who care about you, and a good relationship with God are of much more value than anything work or business can offer. It’s only taken me ~30 or so years to learn this.

  9. 1

    It's funny, but my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength.

    If I'm doing something I don't believe have value, I start slowly to decay. If I persist it's only getting worse. I have experience getting to the point of total apathy and depression that way.

    In other words, I can't do things I don't believe in. At some point, I realize what it really means. It is extremely bad if you are an employee and extremely beneficial if you are an entrepreneur.