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Entrepreneurship is all about getting ideas, executing those ideas, and converting those ideas into a business.
While the definition of entrepreneurship is so easy to say and understand, the process to become an entrepreneur isn’t so. Getting ideas can be easy, but the real game starts when the execution process begins.
To start a new business, you have to take risks, sacrifice so many things you love to do. You have to be super aggressive towards your goal to accomplish it. Here is a breakdown of what you should do to kick start and sustain your business venture.
Read along to know everything about entrepreneurship, like what entrepreneurship is, how entrepreneurship works, and how you can become a successful entrepreneur.
What is Entrepreneurship? Definition of Entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is all about innovating something or solving people’s problems and generating profit from that. It’s an act to create a business and scale it to generate the maximum profit.
To come up with a new idea and accomplish that in reality needs great skill, passion, consistency, and patience, and financial risk to achieve it. Starting a business is easy but scaling and generating a profit by helping people is where most people fail. But an aspiring entrepreneur with a great passion will never give up and will accomplish it. Those are real heroes or entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship is the process of setting up a business. The business can be based on new ideas, services, goods, etc. If you are thinking of starting a business venture, research which services are lacking, and you can provide the best. If you are going to make a new product, create a product that people are willing to pay for. You are solving someone’s problem, and they are spending the money for the solution.
Who is an Entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is an individual who takes risks to create and scale a business from scratch. While setting up a new business might be daunting, the rewards are more significant. You must be an innovator to become an entrepreneur. Without innovation, you are unlikely to be a successful entrepreneur.
Innovation doesn’t always refer to a product; it can be a new strategy to promote an existing product. Imagine you are going to create a product that is already available in the market. To become an entrepreneur provide services that are lacking so people will be eager to pay for that product. This is why every entrepreneur is called an innovator. And the process from creating your business from scratch to establishing a successful business is called entrepreneurship.
To be an entrepreneur you must take financial risks. In the initial stage, you might need some money (this isn’t a risk). Making money with that money is the risk. You should implement an excellent strategy for your new business so that it will pay you back. You should know how to spend the money so that it is not being wasted.
How does entrepreneurship work? Features of Entrepreneurship.
One business venture will differ from the other thus, not every piece of advice will be applicable for everyone. Still, the core process to become an entrepreneur is the same for any kind of entrepreneurship.
While you have decided to become an entrepreneur, you need to be versatile to run a successful business. You will be responsible for hiring the best talent for your company who can grow your business in the right way. You must create a business plan for your business and keep executing the plan and see the results.
Once you establish your business venture, you will lead the employees in the right direction to establish your business. Also, you will be liable to keep them happy.
Famous entrepreneurs either failed to get a job or chose to quit their jobs. Later, they created jobs for others. Amazing, right? Small business entrepreneurship is important for our society. Apart from helping people to solve their problems, startup entrepreneurs create more opportunities for job seekers. Thus help in alleviating unemployment from our society.
An entrepreneurial venture is a boss-free life; you are the boss of yourself. Many people choose to be entrepreneurs because of this. They like to work from anywhere they want, and there will be no one to order them.
It’s good because you are your boss, and there is no one to regulate you. But, if you don’t regulate yourself, you will lose the entrepreneur’s tag because this is something that you have to maintain yourself. A single mistake can ruin your business. So, it’s better to research the mistakes of other entrepreneurs and learn from them. So, in a nutshell, in this entrepreneurship journey, you will need the following features-
- A great strategy to run your new business.
- Hiring talented people.
- Maintain financing.
- Avoiding destructive mistakes while running the business.
Types of Entrepreneurship.
The types of entrepreneurship are dynamic. Many new types of entrepreneurship are being discovered every day. So, without focusing on all kinds of entrepreneurship, isn’t it better to focus on the leading types?
There are seven different leading types of entrepreneurship, and we will discuss those briefly.
1. Small Business Entrepreneurship
Small business entrepreneurship is for those who want a hassle-free life. When you are maintaining a large company, you will need to focus on various factors. But, when it comes to small businesses, they hire a minimum number of people and run a smooth business.
2. Large Company Entrepreneurship
When an existing larger company wants to offer more services, it comes under large company entrepreneurship. This is for professionals who know how to manage a large company and get maximum growth. They play with the innovation and test how they perform. You will need a big team to manage a large company. Want some examples of a large company? See Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, etc.
3. Social Entrepreneurship
When an entrepreneur has a passion for serving society and making it better for others, they choose to be a social entrepreneur. This entrepreneurial mindset isn’t to generate maximum profit but to start a social enterprise for the betterment of society. Sometimes, these entrepreneurs create non-profits companies for social work. When you hear of social entrepreneurship, some famous names such Rachel Brathen, Bill Drayton will definitely come up.
4. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship
When a startup has an innovative idea to change the world, they become one of the scalable startups. They create each step of a business plan to grow their business rapidly. They intend to start getting the most profit from a short period. It’s not easy to establish a scalable startup because it requires education, hard work, and experience. If you are looking to see some examples of a scalable startup, then look at Facebook, Instagram.
5. Hustler Entrepreneurship
This entrepreneurial venture needs hard work and effort to become a hustler entrepreneur. People who want to start small and aim to grow their business by hard work rather than capital are in this category. They believe in themselves and keep their consistency towards their goal until it’s achieved. When people have a low budget to start a business, they use their hard work to gain some initial boost.
6. Innovative Entrepreneurship
While there is no doubt that every entrepreneur is an innovator, innovative entrepreneurs are those who always come up with new ideas. They always seek ideas and build them in reality. They know how to stand in the crowd with innovation. Steve Jobs is an example of an innovative entrepreneur.
7. Imitator Entrepreneurship
It’s not easy to become an entrepreneur, but it’s relatively easy when you are practicing to be an imitator. This entrepreneurial mindset needs you to be innovative. This is because you will target other company’s products and try to replicate them with better features. So, you have the idea and strategy to promote the product; you just need to add some extra cool features to it.
Characteristics of an Entrepreneur
We have already come to know that there are various types of entrepreneurship, and the number is increasing day by day. But, when it comes to characteristics, all forms of entrepreneurship lie in the same boat. They get the same characteristics, and those characteristics make them successful entrepreneurs.
You must be eager to know the characteristics of an entrepreneur. Let’s learn and compare these characteristics and test whether you own any of the characteristics.
1. Motivation
Entrepreneurs don’t need any external motivation because they are naturally motivated. They understand the entrepreneurship definition and love their dreams so much that they sacrifice everything for their goal. They put in long hours to build their empire with their entrepreneurial skills. They know that the new business might be risky still, they never give up and stay motivated.
This is the first characteristic of an entrepreneur. Do you also chase your dreams even when you know that you might fail?
2. Passion
Passion calls for you to work even when you do not expect payment at the end. This is especially true if you are a start-up small business owner. your entrepreneurial activity will revolve around building your small business. Entrepreneurs are always passionate about their goals and ready to sacrifice anything for their dreams to be accomplished.
While the struggle is at its top, the rewards are greater. When a small business owner becomes successful after failing several times, every day will be a salary day for you. Are you passionate about your dreams?
3. Confidence
Confidence is a recipe for success. You need to be confident both in yourself and in your product or services. While undertaking an entrepreneurial activity, you will face many difficulties and discouragement. Yet, you need to be confident in yourself. This is how one becomes a successful entrepreneur.
4. Vision
An aspiring entrepreneur must have a vision. You should know exactly what you want to achieve and what should be the process to reach your destination. It’s like a compass that gives them the direction of their business. If you want to become an entrepreneur, your vision should be clear to you about what goal you want to achieve.
5. Decision making
For successful entrepreneurship, you should be a decision-maker for any task in your company. Also, making a decision isn’t enough. You should make the right decision quickly to avoid any mistakes. This is a great skill that every entrepreneur with an entrepreneurial mindset should strive to acquire.
How to Become an Entrepreneur
As every business is different, the way to be successful for any particular business is different. Yet, we have come up with a formula that can be applied to any type of entrepreneurship. It doesn’t matter whether you offer any services or have made any physical product. The principle is applicable everywhere.
1. Create a business idea
To become a successful entrepreneur, you need a unique business idea. It is said that “Everything begins with an idea.” So, you need a business idea to create a business. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a service or a product. You can even copy a business idea from another business, but in that case, you need to produce a better outcome than your competitor. Once you are ready with your business idea, follow step two.
2. Plan your business
Getting a business idea isn’t enough to establish a successful business. It’s essential to create a business plan. The business plan will represent how you and your team should be working to reach a particular milestone. Without a business plan, it’s impossible to make your business successful and you will only waste your venture capital. A business plan also helps in tracking the company’s progress. You can check what you thought to implement and what you have executed.
3. Network
Networking is something that every innovative entrepreneur needs. Through networking, you can get the skilled person you were looking for. Most businesses want some investors who will invest in building their products better. Through networking, you can get some investors who might be willing to invest in your product. So, if you are in the business field, don’t ignore any networking opportunity that might come along.
4. Marketing
Building products isn’t enough. You will hardly get a single sale if you don’t advertise your product or bring your product in front of people. You should keep seeking new ways to promote your products. If your product is genuine and solves problems, people will be willing to spend money on it. If they become happy by using your product, they will recommend it to others.
You should always build the best product in your industry, at least, better than your competitor. Do not be afraid to employ creative destruction if the products are not bringing in the needed profit. You can creatively replace them with new products until you discover what customers want.
After reading these four points, it seems effortless to become an entrepreneur, isn’t it? While it might seem easy, you will need a burning desire to overcome these four steps. While they will focus on a single step, many sub-steps will come, and they have to overcome those too.
It will not be too difficult for them if they own those characteristics that a successful entrepreneur had. That is how one becomes an entrepreneur.
How Some of the Most Famous Entrepreneurs Define Entrepreneurship
When a successful entrepreneur says something about entrepreneurship, it should be given more priority because they have more experience. In this section, we discuss how successful entrepreneurs define entrepreneurship.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, Says, “People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you are doing, and it’s true, and the reason is that building something of value is so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up.”
In the entrepreneurial ecosystem, do not be afraid to take the challenge to start a new business. The corporate world is not for everyone, and new start-up businesses will offer employment opportunities to many. That means whatever service you are going to offer, make sure that you have a great passion for that, or else you will end up giving up.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, defines entrepreneurship this way, “I think it is very difficult to start companies, it’s quite painful. A friend of mine has a good phrase for doing a startup: it’s like eating glass and staring in the abyss. If you are wired to do it, then only do it, not otherwise. So think of it this way- if you need inspiring words, DON’T DO IT!”
Musk is also emphasizing passion as the main thing to have. When people have the passion to do something, they will do it in any way, they don’t need any external motivation to do that.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, says, “I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people try, they can figure out how to invent things that have an impact”
Bill likes to learn new things and implement those things. This is one of the main characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. They should always have the curiosity to learn about new things and apply them. It doesn’t matter whether they will fail or succeed. They want to see the results.
This is how some successful entrepreneurs define the core things of entrepreneurship. If you want to become an entrepreneur, these words of some great entrepreneurs will help make your way easier.
Importance of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is important because it creates innovation globally and makes the world a better place to live. Entrepreneurs take the initiative to make some changes; no matter what difficulty they face, they overcome it to better society or the world.
That’s the reason we need entrepreneurs or innovators who contribute to the world.
Their contribution isn’t limited to this small number of grants. There are numerous reasons for that. Some are:-
1. Entrepreneurship accelerates economic growth
Entrepreneurs are the real artisan for economic growth. They take normal financial risks, create new products and opportunities for others.
They provide job opportunities that ultimately result in economic development. This is how they remove unemployment and accelerate economic growth.
2. Entrepreneurs add to national income
When an entrepreneur builds a new product and sells it worldwide, it generates money from all over the world. Also, as they create more employment opportunities, the overall income of that company becomes high. Thus they pay more taxes to the government, and the Government can use that money to invest in other sectors.
3. Entrepreneurship promotes innovation
Every Entrepreneur needs to be an innovator and bring forth an innovative product first to become an entrepreneur. They come up with a unique idea and make that happen in reality. From them, the youths of the country get inspiration and try to create a new product. This is how they motivate others to serve the people and make the world a better place.
4. Entrepreneur creates social change
Entrepreneurs change some traditional rules that have been in society for decades. They teach humanity how not to be dependent on others for a career, lifestyle, or anything. They bring innovation in everything and motivate society to do the same. If something was there for years, they try to get some improvements to the existing things in other words- they bring an innovative product. So, we must appreciate the importance of social entrepreneurs.
5. Community development
Entrepreneurs in the corporate world also involve themselves in community development. They always provide some financial support to the charity from their fund. Some great entrepreneurs also finance their money for good causes like education for the poor or Public health. This is how they develop these communities.
Why Do People Become Entrepreneurs?
Every successful entrepreneur has a different story for their entrepreneurship journey. Also, they didn’t become entrepreneurs accidentally. There are some reasons why some people decide to become an entrepreneur, and we are going to discuss those unnoticed facts.
1. They are passionate about learning
The main difference between an average person and an entrepreneur is that, after a certain period, ordinary people stop learning new things. Their knowledge is limited to traditional education and not further. At the same time, entrepreneurs seek to learn new things every day by reading books, watching educational stuff. They don’t leave any segment of learning in their field.
These enthusiastic manners lead them to become successful entrepreneurs. Also, they not only gather that knowledge for inner fulfillment, but they also apply that knowledge in reality to serve humanity or for the betterment of society.
2. They want a boss-free life
This character is familiar to every entrepreneur. They don’t want their life to be controlled by someone else the way the corporate world operates. When someone does a job, they need to obey specific rules like changing lifestyle, behavior, formality, etc. But entrepreneurs don’t like it. They want to rule their own lives as they wish.
This is also one of the main reasons people chose to become their boss instead of having a boss.
3. They don’t like 9 to 5 Job
Entrepreneurs think that bounding their life into 9 to 5 cycles is weird. They don’t want to live their lives in this way. They want to work any time, and from anywhere they want. One of the essential characteristics of an entrepreneur is that they want to test and change. That means they change their routine and check which practice gives them more productivity. But, when it comes to a 9 to 5 job, the same way becomes boring for them, and they can’t change anything in this process.
4. They end up with no other choice
It’s strange when people hear this, and they say, how is it possible?” A person who has such great passion, a skill of never giving up, ends up with no other choice? Sometimes, entrepreneurs don’t like the traditional education system, so it becomes quite challenging for them to get a job. When we read the history of successful entrepreneurs, we come to know that most of the entrepreneurs are college dropouts. They don’t like the way they were taught.
So, after not getting a good job, they create their own business and create opportunities for others. They know that a traditional education degree can fail to deliver the results that a passionate person can. So, while they hire people for their company, they look for the skill instead of seeing the degree and marks.
5. Corporate environment restricts them
They don’t like the corporate environment because it restricts their ability to perform better. They can’t try any new things there; they have to do the scheduled work that has been given by the corporate. But while running their business, they can test many strategies; some strategies might fail, some will win. This is how they build the best system for their business.
Relationship Between Entrepreneurship and the Economy.
For economic development, entrepreneurs play a vital role. They create a business, then the business creates opportunities for the people, and people create a satisfied customer. This is how economic evolution comes.
They build products people would pay for
Why does an entrepreneur build a product? When an entrepreneur comes to know of any specific problem for which people are struggling, they create a solution. They know that if they can build a product that will solve the problem of people, people will invest their money in that product. This is how they create valuation.
They create employment opportunity
It’s a common problem for most of the country. Government fails to provide enough jobs. In that time, entrepreneurs come up and create job opportunities for people who deserve jobs. Those people help the company to grow and generate more money. The more money they earn, the more taxes they have to pay. This is how, with their economic development, they also develop the economy of the country. This is how they create a win-win situation for everyone.
Are You Ready to Be an Entrepreneur?
We have discussed some ways to become a successful entrepreneur. But there is no single right way to enter the field of entrepreneurship. You don’t know how and when you will become an entrepreneur. You just need to have a great passion and a burning desire to chase your goals and accomplish your dreams.
Also, make sure that you own all the characteristics an entrepreneur should have. After analyzing hundreds of entrepreneurs, we have come up with some common characteristics that every successful entrepreneur had.
You might face many difficulties and discouragement while starting the business, but eventually, you will make it happen. As Elon Musk says, ” When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.” odds will come, but when you have a great passion for accomplishing that, you will find the way to overcome it.
You just need to have faith in yourself that you will never give up no matter whatever the situation comes. If something isn’t working for you, that means the way you choose is not right. So, try to change the direction of your work, not the goal. Also, even if a strategy is working for you, try to test another. Who knows which is going to perform better? When you are in entrepreneurship, experimenting with a new plan or strategy should be your first aim.
Bottom Line
When you are starting your corporate entrepreneurship journey, you should never be afraid of failure if you find hundreds of ways that don’t work and hundreds of ways that work. When you have the guts to learn something new, you will keep doing and learning new things. Also, if you are holding an intention to give up too early when the odds are not in your favor, you will not be an entrepreneur. Because entrepreneurs try, try, and push until they get what they wished for!
