If you are looking for an easy path to success with no risk and little effort, becoming an entrepreneur is not likely for you.
Entrepreneurship is all about opportunities. Each opportunity has pros and cons associated with it. Successful entrepreneurs are good at working with information and people to connect and combine resources into a profitable business model. Their road to success is paved by hard work, courage, and a willingness to do what needs to be done even when they don’t want to.
Overview
It is said that entrepreneurship and opportunity are two sides of the same coin. Entrepreneurship is all about opportunities, and opportunities are all about situations and information. Entrepreneurs use the information to envision new ways to connect and combine resources and transactions. In the right situation, that new combination will create new value.
An entrepreneur is any person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks to capitalize on an opportunity. The seven most common characteristics found in a successful entrepreneur are the following:
- Willing to take financial and personal risks to do what they believe in.
- Self-motivated with high energy and passion for acting on their ideas.
- Have a vision for how their solution will serve a need or satisfy a want at a profit to them.
- Confident and comfortable in networking to accomplish their goals.
- Possess basic money management skills and knowledge.
- Flexible and tenacious in adapting to obstacles and working through them.
- Advocates for change through innovation that enables new markets to be developed.
Successful Entrepreneurs are always selling their business ideas to potential investors, the product or service to target customers, and themselves to employees. Below are the most common challenges entrepreneurs must overcome on their way to owning a profitable business:
- Poor sales skills. The best entrepreneurs are always reaching out to create new business opportunities. They enjoy the process of persuading people to buy their solution. Those who don’t like the idea of selling struggle with generating enough topline to create an acceptable bottom line.
- Underdeveloped management skills. Very few entrepreneurs bring the right mix of sales, operational, and financial management skills to their businesses. They aren’t comfortable working with the transaction data flowing through their business and, as a result, don’t make informed decisions as they should.
- Spouses, family, friends, and employee relations are not as black and white as they should be. In the early years, an entrepreneur is too quick to engage a spouse, sibling, in-law, or child in their business—next thing, they have friends working for them, collecting a paycheck, yet too few acting like an employee. There is nothing wrong with hiring family and friends as long as they come in understanding that while at work, they are the employee, and you are the manager holding them accountable for results just as you hold yourself accountable.
- Bad and Unhealthy habits. Being an entrepreneur is demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally. Failure to take good care of your health on all three of these dimensions puts you and your business under unnecessary stress.
- Discipline and self-control. The best entrepreneurs follow through on their commitments and do what they say they are going to do. What’s more, they are disciplined in control of their actions. Because they do this, they earn higher profits and worry less about cash flow than those who let things drop and are quick to lose their temper.
- Successful entrepreneurs are accountable for results. They work hard with passion and purpose in their businesses because they believe in what they do. They are quick to see answers to their questions and are always learning from what works and what they could do better. Our world is a better place because of the courage and tenacity of entrepreneurs to bring to market their vision for a better world.
If you are uncomfortable with the above challenges and are looking for an easy path to success with no risk and little effort, becoming an entrepreneur is not likely for you.