Category: Entrepreneurship

Article Contributed by Chris Burgess

As the job market gets more competitive and the promise of a career for life goes the way of the dodo, entrepreneurship has become more popular than ever, with many schools and colleges now offering classes in private enterprise. Go to any bookstore, and chances are you’ll find literally dozens of books on the topic, each promising to hold the key to startup success.

But can entrepreneurship really be taught in school, or does it represent a more intangible set of skills that can only be acquired through real-world experience?

Educators will argue that learning entrepreneurship isn’t really all that different from learning business, and that most of the same skills apply. This argument is bolstered by the fact that research in the field has improved drastically in recent years, with educators now much better equipped to help students avoid many of the pitfalls of turning their dreams into reality.

Some lessons are still best taught outside the classroom

While it’s true that many of the skills that underpin good entrepreneurship, such as effective time management and financial planning, can certainly be taught, there are a handful of less-easily-defined skills and qualities that identify the real entrepreneur – and many would contend that the only way to gain them is by doing.

One of these is, quite simply, people skills. As an entrepreneur, it’s inevitable that you will have to deal with many different personality types. Virgin founder Richard Branson, who was actually a painfully shy child, was thrown into the deep end at age 7 by his exasperated mother: she dropped him off several miles from home, requiring that he find his own way back. He didn’t show up until 10 hours later, but in that time he’d learned many invaluable lessons on how to communicate with adults in order to arrive home safely.

Another is the ability to take on calculated risk, along with the willingness to accept failure and uncertainty. At the end of the day, you simply have to do it, and this will get easier with experience. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in an endless cycle of planning and product development.

Instinct is important, but data is better

Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on their impeccable business instincts and their innate ability to spot trends before the competition does. “Gut feel” is a good thing to have, but it shouldn’t take the place of hard data if available. One common example is underestimating the time and resources required to have everything in place and reach a state of profitability.

If self-employment remains your dream but your fear of failure is too great, there are still options – you could buy a franchise, for example, or partner up with someone with more business experience.

While there’s no substitute for simply doing it in some areas, the teachability of entrepreneurship continues to increase, due to the emergence of alternative learning methods such as role playing, self-evaluation exercises, and working with mentors. The result is that while not everything about good entrepreneurship can be taught, most of it now can. It just takes time, commitment, and acceptance that not everything in life can be predicted.

About the Author

Chris Burgess is the CEO of Mailplus and has extensive experience in the courier services and business-to-business service market, having successfully franchised over 150 territories throughout Australia. Mailplus currently has franchises for sale in all major metropolitan areas.

It’s a familiar scenario: Solo business owner is swamped just wading through emails, keeping up with social media, serving customers. No time to create new products or work on that marketing campaign.

Is this you? If so, I have four proven ways that successful solo entrepreneurs use to wrestle back control of their business, get the daily job done and still have time to grow their businesses.

1.    Tame Your Inbox

Email is probably the number one task that sucks up our time. Answering customer questions, reading newsletters, responding to joint venture requests, communicating with your support team — it can add up to dozens of emails seemingly needing your instant attention. And even if you clear your inbox in the morning, new emails come in hourly that can distract you from tasks that require concentrated attention.

Ways to take control of your inbox:

• Unsubscribe from half of the newsletters you are currently getting. Starting with the ones that you haven’t had a chance to read in the last few months. If they were important to your business efforts now, you’d be reading them. You can always sign up again later.
• Deal immediately with items you can delegate, respond to in less than two minutes, or file away.
• Set up filters to put certain emails into different folders. Gmail makes this easy. Client emails in one folder, newsletters in another, to-dos in a third. Keep your inbox focused on items you need to deal with this week.
• Check your inbox twice a day, and turn it off the rest of the time. This allows you to focus on other work without the distraction of incoming emails. [Disclosure: It’s great advice although I find it hard to follow myself!]

2.    Use Social Media Tools to Schedule Your Tweets and Facebook Posts

One of the keys to successful use of social media is to post updates at the times your audience is most likely to see them. But this doesn’t mean you have to be on Twitter and Facebook every hour. There are many tools that allow you to pre-schedule both tweets and status updates, minimizing your actual time attending to your social media efforts. My favorite tools are Hootsuite and Pluggio. My virtual assistant uses Hootsuite once a week to pre-schedule posts that I put out regularly and I also use it to automatically tweet new blog posts, YouTube videos and more (via the RSS Feed functionality.) I use Pluggio to pre-schedule tweets on a daily basis — I can sit down and in one session schedule retweets, answer questions and thank those who have mentioned me, without flooding the tweet stream with a dozen posts in a short amount of time. And Facebook now lets you schedule status updates to publish at a later time/day.

3.    Go With The Flow

Some days, you just don’t feel like working on the items on your to-do list. Other times, you may find yourself up in the wee hours of the morning, on a roll. GO WITH IT. If you find yourself stuck (and there is nothing you really have to do right now(change to then??), go for a walk, take a nap, play hooky and go shopping. Too many times we set artificial deadlines for ourselves and then stick with those deadlines, pushing through when we are struggling to concentrate – making the task take far longer than necessary, and sometimes resulting in less than our best work. Be flexible with yourself and your deadlines (isn’t that why we are solo business owners?) I guarantee that when you are truly ready to tackle that task, it will go more smoothly.

4.    Mistakes Are OK

One of my favorite sayings is: “ If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t moving fast enough.” It doesn’t have to be perfect, whether it is an email, a newsletter, a product, or a marketing campaign. Business owners tend to have exceptionally high standards for themselves, but are very understanding and forgiving when others make mistakes. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Get it done, get it out there; you can always fix any missteps later.

A new year means new opportunities for entrepreneurs around the world. What do you need to know for this year? Well, you need to know how to be better than you were the year before. That’s what being an entrepreneur is all about: constantly moving forward. Smart entrepreneurs know how to develop new skills, as well as hone in old ones. This year, you need to make sure that you’re at the top of your game. Nothing should be overlooked or neglected.

Develop Better People Skills

As an entrepreneur, you encounter people everyday. You need to know how to interact with them in a way to build trust and confidence in you as a person. Only once potential clients trust you will they ever be able to trust your product or service. Spend time studying how to perfect your people skills. Quiet entrepreneurs that keep to themselves may need to speak up more, while loud, “in-your-face” kind of salesmen may need to cut back a bit this year.

Know How to Make a Decision

Ultimately, entrepreneurs are businessmen. Businessmen must know how to make tough decisions. In 2013, put away the Magic 8 Ball and start making the difficult decisions you need to for your company.

Ditch the Napkin and Make a Plan

Many entrepreneurs are notorious for flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak. This year, take time to actually write a business plan and some goals for your business. As you grow, planning is going to be an essential part of your success. Whether you’ve been doing this a month or ten years, you still need to learn new and better ways to plan your business.

Take Some Time Off

This is something that most entrepreneurs never learn. Taking time to disconnect from the business for a while is a foreign idea to people that start their own businesses. However, you need to have time that you can get away from everything and relax your mind. Take friends or a loved one to a nice dinner a couple of times a month, use GOLFZING to plan a weekly game of golf, or simply take an hour every morning for some yoga and meditation. Whatever you decide, disconnect and enjoy it. Your business won’t run away while you’re gone.

Don’t let this year pass you by because you didn’t take the time that you needed to develop new skills and hone in old habits. Entrepreneurs face many difficulties and you need to be able to handle each and everyone that comes your way this year. It may be a good year or it may be a difficult one for your business, but that does not take away your responsibility to get out there and be better. Whether you need to know how to interact better with the people around you or take a vacation and relax while playing on some golf courses in LA, do it. Your career may depend on it.

Article Contributed by Kavin Matthews

The essence of entrepreneurship is the ability of individuals to take risks of trying something new. Now, if it is with regards to business entrepreneurship, it will have to be those individuals who are trying to establish a new business with some new ideas. Though entrepreneurship is related mainly with business, there is a major difference in being a businessman and an entrepreneur. Usually, an entrepreneur is more of an innovative person who manages a business much better than a businessman.

Importance of entrepreneurship in business

In order to succeed as a business, having entrepreneurship skills is extremely important. So, who actually is an entrepreneur and what are the basic skills that are required of him/her?

Entrepreneurs are bold and more project oriented and believes in innovation. An entrepreneur creates a business out of his own idea unlike the businessmen who in general inherit a business. In case of the entrepreneur, it is the business that works for him.

Entrepreneurship is not only important for the development of a business but is also a vital part of the economy as a whole. They and their work are vital to the growth of the economy and helps in constant up gradation of our living standards. Thus, it is quite obvious that the entrepreneurs help in bettering the business in the process.

Thus, the main idea is that entrepreneurs provide the needed new beginning to the new industries. It helps in development of fresh and new sectors. There are three main roles of entrepreneurs with regards to businesses and these are:

• Planning the business development – Planning the business includes the main architecture of the business. An entrepreneur is that person who envisions and externalizes the structure of the business – the planning. He/she is the one who writes up the whole business plan. The entrepreneur sets the goal the plans that are designed during the start up of a business and this is an extremely crucial point for any business. This also includes the right option through which the business should be financed.

• Researching business prospective and capturing the mass – Entrepreneurs are required to constantly research on how the business is going to evolve and what are the steps associated with it. Just like a sales man, in order to establish the business in the right way and to bring in profits, the entrepreneur is constantly required to research on anything and everything required for the business. These can include recruitment of new employees with high working abilities and skills, raising funds for the developments in the business and so on. The entrepreneurs may choose to hire those individuals who are technically more important for bringing in the development in the business. The entrepreneurs shape and design the business and the marketing strategies in such a way so as to capture the mass.

• Executing what is needed for the business development – The entrepreneurs are not only required to plan and research on the business development. They are also required to execute certain tasks. So, the entrepreneurs are also required to bring in a set of rules and principles so that the functions with regards to the business are carried out in the right way.

So, these are the three main things that an entrepreneur does and this help in development of a proper and successful business. The entrepreneurs fill up the gap between the wants and the needs of the business and also the customers at the same time. Setting up a new business is not at all an easy task. Considering this fact, it can be said that the entrepreneurs are the ones who makes all of these possible.

About the Author

Kavin Matthews is a finance based writer associated with the Debt Consolidation care Community. He has written numerous articles for different finance based websites like on debt, credit, business and debt and so on. For more details you can refer to http://www.debtconsolidationcare.com/.