Simeon Sunday – adahzionblog Business Article

Who is an Enterpreneur

An entrepreneur is anyone who starts a new business venture and risks his own capital to finance the business with or without prior knowledge of what it entails to run the business. An entrepreneur uses his own resources to start up a new venture, without minding the future outcome.

One of the better definitions of an entrepreneur is from Howard H. Stevenson, a professor at Havard University. He says, “Entrepreneurship is an approach to management that we define as follows: the pursuit of opportunity without regards to resources currently controlled.”

Some people quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, while”: some still maintain their daytime job and venture into a new business of their own in other to have passive income. Before venturing into entrepreneurship, one must understand the core things it takes to start up a business of their own.

Are There Born Entrepreneurs?

Are people born entrepreneurs or are they trained to be entrepreneurs? Many people think they’re such things as being born entrepreneurs, according to ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert T. Kiyosaki, “People are trainable, they can be trained to be either employees or entrepreneurs”. Looking at the stages of child development, you will see that it is whatever a child sees, hears, smells, that they become immune to. Knowledge comes from learning. Nobody is born a genius or with any special skill, it is in the nature of everyone to learn and become masters of what they learn in the long run.

We are born as a blank slate and we gain our knowledge and ideas through new experiences and our memory of them. Parents admit their children into various educational institutions of learning so they can learn social, religious, and communal values, and have knowledge on various subjects of life. it is in so doing that knowledge is acquired.

Before jumping into entrepreneurship, one needs to learn and make necessary research on the field of business they want to venture into in order to avoid the pitfalls most entrepreneurs fall in. Never start any business you have no knowledge about, avoid the belief that you will learn in the process because there may not be room for learning or a second chance of regaining the resources that may be lost in the process of trying.

Excuses of Want-To-Become Entrepreneurs

Million of people out there in society want to become entrepreneurs but find many excuses to give for why they have not started a business of their own. Below are some excuses many give;

1. I don’t have anyone who want to help me financially.
2. Am afraid of buiding a business because its too risky.
3. It takes too long to build a business.
4. Am too old to start a business.
5. The economy is too bad.
6. The rate of inflation is geting high.
7. Cost of start up is too much.
8. I don’t have the entire capital.
9. I can’t quit my job now because i have much responsibility at home.
10. I don’t have the knowledge.
11. I can’t deal with employees, no money money to pay them.
12. Government task on small business owners is too much.

The reason most people who want to become entrepreneurs can’t become business owners is is that they have some excuses that keep them from taking the first step. For many people, the power of their excuses is more powerful than the power of achieving their dreams.

For those who are already in the entrepreneurship journey or are considering becoming an entrepreneur, there are the 10 most common mistakes entrepreneurs make which many are ignorant of, and many are paying dearly for it for the lack of this knowledge.

Common Mistake Entrepreneurs Make

1. Want To Be Perfect

Have you ever noticed that one of the giant software companies such as Microsoft produces many versions of Microsoft’s windows such as Windows 2.0 and Windows 3.0? What that means is that they have improved their product and now want you to buy the better version. In other words, the first product they sold to you was not a perfect version. They may have sold it knowing it had flaws, bugs, and needed to be improved.

Many entrepreneurs fail to take their products to the market simply because they are always/constantly perfecting them, they are waiting for the right day when they will become a hundred percent (100%) good at their product like the person who is waiting for the traffic light to turn green before crossing the road.

Some entrepreneurs never take their product to the market because they are constantly working on, perfecting their product, or writing the perfect business plan.

Entrepreneurs need to understand the fact that there are no perfect products in the market, every business is constantly working on their brand while they are still sending the available ones to the marketplace for sale. Entrepreneurs need to start up their business ideas and continue improving on them as time goes on. There is no perfect day to launch your brand, just launch it with the best you have put in make the necessary upgrade along the line.

Knowing when to introduce a product into the market is as much an art as a science. You may not want to wait for a product to be perfect; because it may never be perfect. It just has to be good enough, it merely has to work well enough to be accepted in the marketplace. However, if the product is so flawed that it doesn’t work for its intended purpose, or otherwise does not meet marketplace expectations or causes problems, it can be very difficult to reestablish credibility and a reputation for quality in its next release and upgrade.

2. Lacking Knowledge

Have you ever heard of someone saying “Don’t worry, I know everything about it?” Those words come from people whose cup is full, those words come from people who believe they know it all and don’t want an improvement or the latest version of what they knew.

Entrepreneurs should know that they can never know the answer to everything, they need to give room for learning new strategies, new models, new modules, new principles. They should their success depends on the latest information about the product, the new way to produce it, the new to market it, the new way brand it, the new way to make sales offer, etc.

The difference between an employee and an entrepreneur is that; an employee is expected to know all the answers to a problem else they may be fired or promoted for knowing it all. Entrepreneurs do not need to know all the answers who to call in time of difficulty on a particular issue they might be facing if it’s beyond something they can handle, that’s what mentorship and advisors are all about.

Entrepreneurs need to be generalists, in simple terms, a generalist is someone who knows a little about a lot of things. People go to school to become specialists. People go to school to become accountants, lawyers, nurses, Engineers, Doctors, pilots, Computer Programmers, etc. All these are people who know a lot about a little.

What makes an entrepreneur different is that they need to know a little about accounting, law, engineering, business, insurance, finance, marketing, people, sales, public speaking, product branding, raising capital, and dealing with different kinds of people. True entrepreneurs must always be open to learning knowing that they don’t know it all. An entrepreneur must be a proactive learner, they research on subjects relating to their pursuits and also outside their business line. An entrepreneur should be a book lover, should be able to read good books on business development, and always seek mentorship from the right people, etc.

3. Not knowing When To Start

Before embarking on the entrepreneurial journey, people need to decide if they are ready to start the process because the road to success is never an easy one nor is becoming a successful entrepreneur. Anyone seeking to establish his or her business needs to know the right timing of that business. Considerations should be made regarding the availability of start-up capital, location, target audience, financing methods, government laws and regulations, type of business, materials needed for production, etc.

If an employee is planning to quit their jobs and transform into the world of entrepreneurship, then they need to decide if they want to make the transition from employee to entrepreneurship. The transition or metamorphosis requires a change to some of the following traits

1. Ability to change philosophy from job security to freedom
2. ability to operate without money
3. Ability to operate without job security
4. Ability to focus on opportunity rathan than resources
5. Having different managment styles to manage different people
6. Ability to manage people and resources they do not control
7. Team and value oriented rather than pay or promotion oriented.
8. Active learner-no graduation day
9. Generalized education ratha than specialized
10. The courage to be responsible for the entire business.

4. Poor Business Design

When I was growing up as a kid, my parents often said, “Go to school, get good grades, so you can find a good job with good benefits.” They were encouraging and preparing me to become a good employee in the future.

One businessman once told me to learn how to build my own business, and hire good employees to work for me. He was advising. me to become an entrepreneur.

Many entrepreneurs fail in their business because they have a poor preconceived idea about their business before it was built. They didn’t sit down to plan on the kind of business they wanted to start and it would be run. They didn’t sit to plan the location and the financial responsibilities involved in it. They didn’t sit to calculate the number of people that would be running the business with them and how those people would be paid.

Starting a business is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. In the mid-air, the entrepreneur begins building a parachute and hopes it opens before landing on the ground, if the entrepreneur lands on the ground building the parachute then there would be a serious injury and disaster.

The most important job of an entrepreneur begins before there is a business.

Entrepreneurs need to do their homework of making strategic planning of whatever business line they intend venturing. An entrepreneur needs to sit down and draw a map of their business of how they want the business to look like.

Many entrepreneurs fail to design a business that can grow in expansion, employ more people, add value to its customers, be reasonable corporate citizens, bring prosperity to all those that work on the business, and be charitable.

Many entrepreneurs fail to build a business that can eventually continue to run without their presence.

5. Forgeting About Competition

Many entrepreneurs fail because they forget that everyone/business has a competitor.

There is no business out there that exists without competition. You can take the grocery/provision store as an example. Go to the marketplace, you will see how crowded the market is, it is filled with over 100 persons selling the same product and with customers making choices of the seller they want to buy from, not because they are familiar with the seller but because of the quality of goods they are looking for.

Entrepreneurs must never forget about competition because it is what controls the inflation rate of every commodity in the market.

Also read: 12 Hot Business You Start With Little Capital in 2022