You feel excited that your business plan is ready! Your niche, product or service is defined, you are prepared for your customers, your social networks are already activated, your website is ready and the desire to start your business is irresistible!

But do you know what motivates you as an entrepreneur? How these motivators may influence your decision making? Do you have self-knowledge? This is the part which many entrepreneurs don’t pay attention to when creating their business.

Imagine being able to understand how your motivators influence your decision making and your work style. Imagine being able to detect easily details you usually miss! These are just some advantages of having self-knowledge about yourself as an entrepreneur.

In my beginnings as an entrepreneur, I didn’t have the opportunity to develop this knowledge about myself and there were many learning experiences and economic losses. Back in 2008, I formed my first company; a recruitment and consulting agency and in 2013 my second company specialized in offering Coaching, Training and Brand Development. Neither of these two businesses generated the money I expected. They had good exposure; good opportunities always came, but, even so, the return on investment was very low.

One day, I learned the value of knowing myself as an entrepreneur and, from that day forward, I have put that knowledge into practice. How did I achieve it? Through the MindSonar assessment tool. This assessment integrates the theory of motivations of Dr. Graves where 7 motivators are evaluated: Security, Power, Order, Competition, Ideals, Learning and Completeness. Each of these motivators has a very important value when starting a business; from how we are as entrepreneurs to how we market our product and develop our brand.

My MindSonar results were a portrait of me as an entrepreneur. I could see the reason my company was not meeting its goals reflected in the analysis. What did I learn? In 2014, I learned that I was an entrepreneur who sought to maintain a good reputation (Power), that disciplined work (Order) and helping others (Ideals) were important to me.

It was difficult for me to face something within my analysis, and this was a score of zero for Competition. It turned out that I was not motivated to seek success by generating profit. This was hard for me since, due to my high motivation regarding Ideals, I gave good quality service, but at low prices or for free. So I could understand that my Achilles heel, at that time, was to put a value on my services and charge accordingly.

All entrepreneurs have something in common, we develop a business that we are passionate about and/or seek to succeed. But Napoleon Hill said it well, “anything that the mind can conceive and imagine can be achieved.” So, what if you invest in knowing yourself and conceive and achieve your goals with greater certainty?