Category: Entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurship

How to Ensure Your Business Reaches its Full Potential in 2021

Experienced professionals already know that a great business idea alone isn’t enough to ensure long-term success. Sadly, many excellent business concepts have failed for one reason or another over the years. And even the most dedicated entrepreneurs may have trouble launching a new business in the current economic climate. The good news is that you can take steps to protect your investment and ensure your company reaches its full potential this year. Just make sure to follow these four tips: 

Focus on Education

For a company to grow and evolve in any meaningful way, its employees need to grow as professionals first. As such, one of the best things a business leader can do to promote long-term success for their company is to invest in training and education now. Hiring a learning consultant to help your team develop new skills and perform with greater efficiency will provide immediate and future benefits. Plus, thoroughly training your staff will make it easier to promote from within and retain excellent employees. 

Set Realistic but Ambitious Goals

2020 was a rough year for most business leaders. However, just because things have been difficult in the past, it doesn’t mean you should stop making ambitious goals for yourself, your team, or your organization. Rather, just the opposite is true. If you want your company to improve, then you have to set realistic, but substantial goals to pursue. Merely going through the motions at work shouldn’t be good enough for you or anyone else. 

Identify New Opportunities

No matter how successful your organization is, a few things will always remain true. There are always going to be new markets to explore. There are always going to be new products you can develop. And there are always going to be better ways to connect with customers. The key to unlocking your business’s potential is –– in many ways –– simply being open to new possibilities when they arise. 

Invest

At the end of the day, money talks. As a business owner, you have an obligation to invest in your infrastructure and your organization to make sure that your employees have all the resources they need to succeed. Note of course that investing in your business can take many forms. It may include purchasing tech upgrades for your staff, for example. Additionally, though, it’s  just as important to “be invested” in your business as it is to support it financially. Small businesses in particular require time, energy, and support from leaders to fulfill their potential. Ultimately, there’s no substitute for old-fashioned hard work.

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Entrepreneurship

What Does It Mean To Be An Entrepreneur?

 

 

What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? It’s more than being a business owner; it’s a perspective and a lifestyle.

The road to entrepreneurship is often a treacherous one filled with unexpected detours, roadblocks and dead ends. There are lots of sleepless nights, plans that don’t work out, funding that doesn’t come through and customers that never materialize. It can be so challenging to launch a business that it may make you wonder why anyone willingly sets out on such a path.

Despite all of these hardships, every year, thousands of entrepreneurs embark on this journey determined to bring their vision to fruition and fill a need they see in society. They open brick-and-mortar businesses, launch tech startups or bring a new product or service into the marketplace.

What does an entrepreneur do?

An entrepreneur identifies a need that no existing businesses addresses and determines a solution for that need. Entrepreneurial activity includes developing and launching new businesses and marketing them, often with the end goal of selling the business to turn a profit.

An entrepreneur who regularly launches new businesses, sells them and then starts new businesses is a serial entrepreneur. Additionally, although the term “entrepreneur” is often associated with startups and small businesses, any founder of a successful household-name business began as an entrepreneur.

If you want to become an entrepreneur but worry you don’t have the money for it, your finances don’t have to stop you from achieving your goals. Many entrepreneurs seek the initial funding for their pursuits from external sources such as angel investors, who may provide entrepreneurs with capital to cover startup costs (or, later, expansion costs.) If you can demonstrate a high growth potential for your business, you can also turn to a venture capitalist, who offers capital in exchange for receiving equity in your company.

Examples of successful entrepreneurs

Many household-name businessmen exemplify entrepreneurial success. Here are just a few examples:

  • Steve Jobs, the late tech leader who started Apple in a garage and grew it to the dominant tablet, smartphone and computer company it is today.
  • Bill Gates, the Microsoft creator and founder who has often been listed as the world’s wealthiest individual and has become a global leader on pandemics and how to handle them.

What motivates entrepreneurs to venture forth when so many others would run in the opposite direction? Though each person’s motivation is nuanced and unique, many entrepreneurs are spurred on by one or more of the following motivators:

  • Autonomy: Entrepreneurs want to be their own bosses, set their own goals, control their own progress and run their businesses how they see fit. They recognize that their business’s success or failure rests with them, yet they don’t view this responsibility as a burden but, instead, as a marker of their freedom.
  • Purpose: Many entrepreneurs have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish and will work tirelessly to make that happen. They genuinely believe they have a product or service that fills a void and are compelled by a single-minded commitment to that goal to keep pushing ahead. They abhor stagnation and would rather fail while moving forward than languish in inactivity.
  • Flexibility: Not everyone fits into the rigidity of traditional corporate culture. Entrepreneurs are often looking to free themselves from these constraints, find a better work-life balance or work at times and in ways that may be unconventional. This doesn’t mean they are working fewer hours – often, especially in the early stages of growing a business, they work longer and harder – but, rather, they’re working in a way that is instinctual for them.
  • Financial success: Most entrepreneurs realize they aren’t going to be overnight billionaires, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in the potential of making a ton of money from a hugely successful business over which they have full control. Some want to establish a financial safety net for themselves and their families, while others are looking to make a huge profit by creating the next big thing.
  • Legacy: Entrepreneurs are often guided by a desire to create something that outlasts them. Others want to create a brand that has longevity and becomes an institution. Another group wants to pass on a source of income and security to their heirs. There are also those entrepreneurs who hope to make a lasting impression on the world and leave behind an innovation that improves people’s lives in some tangible way.

How to become an entrepreneur

If you’re contemplating entrepreneurial activity, you should first identify which of the above motivators serve as your guiding force. Then, consider if you have the specific character traits and attributes that will enable you to thrive as an entrepreneur.

To help you determine if you’ve got what it takes, here’s what 25 company founders and business leaders told Business News Daily about what they think makes a truly successful entrepreneur.

  1. “Entrepreneurship is at the core of the American dream. It’s about blazing new trails, about believing in yourself, your mission, and inspiring others to join you in the journey. What sets [entrepreeurs] apart is the will, courage and sometimes recklessness to actually do it.” – Derek Hutson, president and CEO of Datical
  1. “Entrepreneurship is a pursuit of a solution, a single relentless focus on solving a problem or doing something drastically different from the way it is done today. [It’s] aiming to do something better than it’s ever been done before and constantly chasing improvement.” – Blake Hutchinson, CEO and small business expert at Flippa
  1. “Entrepreneurship is … the constant hunger for making things better and the idea that you are never satisfied with how things are.” – Debbie Roxarzade, founder and CEO of Rachel’s Kitchen
  1. “At its core, [entrepreneurship] is a mindset – a way of thinking and acting. It is about imagining new ways to solve problems and create value. Fundamentally, entrepreneurship is about … the ability to recognize [and] methodically analyze [an] opportunity and, ultimately, to capture [its] value.” – Bruce Bachenheimer, clinical professor of management and executive director of the Entrepreneurship Lab at Pace University 
  1. “The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who possess grit. Grit is made up of persistence, passion and resilience. It’s the passion to achieve long-term goals, the courage to try again in the face of rejection, and the will to do something better than it has been done before. The most successful entrepreneurs tend to be gritty ones … they do not give up until they exceed their goals. When the going gets tough and they get knocked down, gritty entrepreneurs bounce right back up and try again.” –Deborah Sweeney, CEO of MyCorporation
  1. “The ability to listen, whether it be to the opinions of customers or employees, is also integral to success. While … you must have the confidence to make your own choices, it is still incredibly important not to become detached from the people whose needs you are trying to meet.” – Tirath Kamdar, founder and CEO of TrueFacet
  1. “Being an entrepreneur is like heading into uncharted territory. It’s rarely obvious what to do next, and you have to rely on yourself a lot when you run into problems. There are many days when you feel like things will never work out and you’re operating at a loss for endless months. You have to be able to stomach the roller coaster of emotions that comes with striking out on your own.” – Amanda Austin, founder and president of Little Shop of Miniatures
  1. “To be a successful entrepreneur, you must have a passion for learning – from customers, employees and even competitors.” – James Bedal, president and CEO of Bare Metal Standard
  1. “Entrepreneurship is, fundamentally, the art and science of building profitable systems to help people in ways that other systems do not. The core competency of the entrepreneur is not business acumen or marketing ability but rather empathy – the ability to understand the feelings and needs of others.” –Logan Allec, CPA and owner of Money Done Right

  2. “Being a successful entrepreneur also means being a good leader. Leadership is the ability to bring people to a place where they want to follow you, not feel like they are forced to follow you. This takes investing in your team personally. They must know you’re not only going to hold them accountable and drive them to be better, but [you will] also look out for them when they are struggling. It’s not transactional, it’s a relationship.” – Steve Schwab, founder and CEO of Casago
  1. “Entrepreneurship is the ability to recognize the bigger picture, find where there’s an opportunity to make someone’s life better, design hypotheses around these opportunities and continually test your assumptions. It’s experimentation: Some experiments will work; many others will fail. It is not big exits, huge net worth or living a life of glamour. It’s hard work and persistence to leave the world a better place once your time here is done.” – Konrad Billetz, co-founder and co-CEO of Offset Solar
  1. “A key skill an entrepreneur must possess is self-awareness. An entrepreneur must know who they are and what they need. Self-awareness is the first step for an entrepreneur to build their team.” – Krystal Nelson, founder of Impakt Consulting
  1. “[Entrepreneurs] have to be people-oriented. Your business will die without a good team to back you up. Study management techniques, learn from great leaders, [and] review where you’re succeeding and failing so you can help others improve. An entrepreneur has to be able to build a team who cares about its work, and to do that, you have to care about how you create your team.” – Jonathan Barnett, president and CEO of Oxi Fresh Carpet Cleaning
  1. “To be a successful entrepreneur, you need perseverance. Most successful business people or entrepreneurs have never given up on their idea. When challenges arise, they have found innovative ways of overcoming them. You must be able to adapt to changing economic conditions, and innovate and embrace technological advances to keep your customers engaged. These things take determination and a strong focus on the end goal.” – Stacey Kehoe, founder and director of communications of Brandlective Communications
  1. “Entrepreneurship is the mindset that allows you to see opportunity everywhere. It could be a business idea, but it could also be seeing the possibilities in the people who can help you grow that business. This ability to see many options in every situation is critically important; there will be unending challenges that will test your hustle.” – Preeti Sriratana, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Sweeten
  1. “Entrepreneurs and business owners definitely need to get used to taking risks … You have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Trying to grow a company or execute on an idea is difficult. It’s not always going to be roses and unicorns. At some point, you’re going to run into issues, lose customers and have financial constraints. It’s at this point you need to get back on the horse and take another risk, whether it’s in the form of a new product, new marketing campaign or a new customer recruitment strategy.” – Mathew Ross, co-founder and COO of Slumber Yard
  1. “Successful entrepreneurs look past [the] ‘quick buck’ and instead look at the bigger picture to ensure that each action made is going toward the overall goal of the business or concept, whether or not that means getting something in return at that moment.” – Allen Dikker, founder and CEO of Potatopia
  1. “Being an entrepreneur is ingrained in one’s identity. [It] is the culmination of a certain set of characteristics: determination, creativity, the capacity to risk, leadership and enthusiasm.” – Eric Lupton, president of Life Saver Pool Fence Systems
  1. “Entrepreneurship is an unavoidable life calling pursued by those who are fortunate enough to take chances. [They are] optimistic enough to believe in themselves, aware enough to see problems around them, stubborn enough to keep going, and bold enough to act again and again. Entrepreneurship is not something you do because you have an idea. It’s about having the creativity to question, the strength to believe and the courage to move.” – Jordan Fliegel, managing director of Techstars
  1. “You may need to also be a bit of a contrarian. Sometimes it takes a person who thinks differently than the herd to start something new and defy the odds.” – Akshay (Asher) Khanna, founder of CareClinic
  1. “Entrepreneurship is seeing an opportunity and gathering the resources to turn a possibility into a reality. It represents the freedom to envision something new and to make it happen. It includes risk, but it also includes the reward of creating a legacy.” – Maia Haag, co-founder and president of I See Me! Personalized Books and Gifts
  1. “An entrepreneur must be able to accept failure. Everyone thinks they can accept failure until they come face-to-face with failing at a major thing they have put their everything into. To be a successful entrepreneur, you have to be someone who is able to risk failure at the deepest personal levels.” –Steven Benson, founder and CEO of Badger Maps
  1. “[Entrepreneurs] must be able to pivot. If something isn’t working, keeping at it won’t make you successful. But changing your approach, changing your business model, changing your plans to make it work is the power of the pivot. You’re adaptable regardless of what’s thrown at you.” – Michael Maher, chief idea officer of Matters of the Cart
  1. “Entrepreneurship is about always moving forward: never stopping, never allowing self-doubt or fear to take over, and believing wholeheartedly that even a wrong decision is better than no decision.” –Adam Sherwin, founder of Viakix
  1. “Entrepreneurs are the dreamers and the visionaries. Without them, the world stagnates and progress stops. Society needs entrepreneurs the same way the body needs air.” – Cynthia Kirkeby, founder and CVO of Seasonally Fresh

Entrepreneurship Defined: What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur[BusinessNewsDaily]

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Entrepreneurship

3 Business Advice No One Ever Discussed with You as a Business Owner

Every business owner seeks advice in one way or the other, the belief is that advice usually is a thoughtful statement, and when acted upon, there is a result to show. When it comes to advice, you have the right to choose which one to ditch or follow. Often, this is a long and confusing process. However, it is well-deserving and demonstrates a new way to act in the future. So, we have gathered some relevant business advice in this article.

First, Always Announce your Business 

One major challenge most business owners face is that they do not have selling skills. Especially if they are new to the business world, however, it is inarguable that selling a product or service can be quite difficult, but it takes conscious and consistent efforts to get it right. If you are discouraged about what people will think about your business when you announce, you need to build confidence in what you sell. Anyone who needs to succeed can’t afford to be shy; instead, be keen on always facing your worst fear. Speak confidently about your business anytime, anywhere you find yourself and any day.

Be a Problem Solver

A business is much easier to run if it is set out to solve a significant problem, making it easy to gain a solid customer base. When your business focuses on a specific niche fixing a problem, then, you’ve successfully created a brand. Know the problem that your target customers are facing, and what is critical is how you can solve them. 

Have a Comprehensive Database

Countless businesses lose it all when it comes to keeping a comprehensive database. This is critical for every business because they help communicate information about income, expenditure, assets, customers, and marketing activities. Having a database is beyond possessing a skill in the accounting niche because it outweighs that course. A comprehensive database can help to determine a better strategy channeled towards the growth of your business. To read more business advice follow this link.

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Entrepreneurship

Never Too Late To Start Your Business

Most people George Zweig’s age are long retired. But for the 78-year-old — who has enjoyed a wildly successful and varied career as a physicist, military strategist, CalTech professor, inventor, software entrepreneur and hedge fund investor — not working isn’t an appealing option.

“I’ve still got it,” he told The Wall Street Journal, adding that without work, “life can be very boring.”

And so instead of joining his peers in their leisure-filled golden years, Zweig is entering a world typically reserved for men and women less than half his age: He’s starting a hedge fund.

As the WSJ notes, the cutthroat industry, known for its low startup success rate, is a notoriously tricky one to master, even for founders at the prime of their career.

But Zweig feels he’s up for it. “It’s a fantastic challenge,” he told the outlet.

As a man of a riper vintage, Zweig is not alone in chasing (and finding) success later in life. While Silicon Valley may fetishize youth — a bias compounded by Hollywood’s embrace of the dorm-room-startup narrative — the reality is more nuanced. For many, the big breaks arrive long after the crow’s feet.

Unconvinced? Charles Flint founded IBM at 61. Ray Kroc opened McDonald’s in his early 50s and Harland Sanders started KFC in his 60s. At 44, Sam Walton wasn’t exactly old when he founded Walmart, but he was far from a college-aged teenager.

Still skeptical? A recent report by the Kauffman Foundation found that most people who became new entrepreneurs last year were in the 45 to 54 age bracket, followed next by those in the 55 to 64 demographic. Pair that with another study (which examined 502 successful engineering and technology companies and determined that the median age of their founders was 39), and there’s a solid case to be made that experience, not youth, is the key to entrepreneurial success.

As he embarks on his next chapter, Zweig will certainly tap into his extensive library of life experience, particularly with algorithms: His hedge fund plans to differentiate itself from competitors by developing software that turns large amounts of data into visual images, the WSJ reports, which can be used to uncover patterns and predict movements in the market.

For more examples of entrepreneurs who started businesses well after they graduated college, check out this infographic, embedded below, from startup organization Funders and Founders and information designer Anna Vital.

It’s Never Too Late: At 78, This Former Physicist Is Starting a Hedge Fund [Entrepreneur]

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Entrepreneurship

Defining Your Ideal Career Using an Effective Step by Step Model

Defining your ideal career path is a pretty daunting prospect. We spend large chunks of our lives at work, so we want to make sure we pick something rewarding and enjoyable.

Whatever you decide upon, it’s not set in stone, and there are lots of people who end up doing something completely different to what they expected – and love it. When it comes to making this huge decision, though, fortunately, you don’t have to struggle alone. There are many effective step by step models that exist, which you can follow systematically. In this guide, we will take you through one such example. By following this, by the end, you should start to be forming ideas on exactly what it is you are destined to do in your career and how you can achieve it.

Step One: Get to Know Yourself

We live with ourselves 24hrs a day, 7 days a week, and yet, we don’t often take time to look at ourselves in detail.

What are the things we enjoy, how do we work, what makes us tick, how do we communicate? These are all valuable things to know about ourselves, and when we understand them better, we can better understand what kind of careers we would be suited to, and most importantly, enjoy.

Understanding yourself isn’t easy, and it’s something that takes time, which is perhaps why it can take people much of their careers to find the job they truly love. However, by actively thinking about these things, you can give yourself a head start.

Step Two: Think Career, Not Jobs

No matter how well you plan, the journey never looks exactly how you expected it. If you asked many people, they would probably tell you they would never have expected to end up in the job they’re in, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

If you focus in too narrowly on a certain job, then you might cut yourself off from other opportunities that present themselves. Instead, if you take a more macro view of things and focus on careers more generally, then you’ll be more open to the different opportunities that present themselves throughout your journey.

As you progress further through your career, then you can start to focus in on certain jobs and positions, but make sure you’re never limiting your ambitions.

Step Three: Prepare for the Future

Imagine you wanted to build cars in the 1900s, and you got yourself your ideal job in a car manufacturing factory. You get to work with your hands, put things together, and work as part of a team to build an amazing piece of machinery. Not many years later, though, machinery starts to take over many of the processes, and suddenly you’re left with a job that looks very different to what you expected.

The world changes very quickly, and just because things are done a certain way today doesn’t mean they will continue to be the same in the future. Another great example of this is in nursing. The role of the nurse has changed greatly over the years and continues to do so. The healthcare industry is going through changes, and nursing is adapting to meet new challenges.

This is why you need to always be on the lookout for the trends of the future. It’s impossible to predict exactly what’s going to happen, but if you take an interest in your industry, then you can prepare yourself for the changes that might occur.

Step Four: Money Isn’t Everything

Money is important; it’s something we all need. However, when you’re choosing your career it shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all. You’re going to spend huge portions of your life working, and if you don’t enjoy what you do, those hours are going to feel much longer.

People who love what they do often tend to do it better as well. Just think about it; it’s much easier to learn something if you enjoy reading about it.

So, making sure you enjoy your chosen career is something that’s well worth putting time and effort into. Money will always be a consideration because we need it to live, but it shouldn’t be the only thing to think about.

Looking deeper into your career path

It is at this point that you should have a better idea of what career path you want to go down, but how do you know if it is the right one, and how can you then achieve it?

Step Five: There’s No Substitute for Experience

How often do you meet someone who had a dream, only to realize when they achieved it that it wasn’t what they expected?

The nice thing about choosing your career is that is always a good idea to get some experience before you make any commitments. Of course, if you want to be a surgeon, they’re not going to hand you the scalpel just so you can find out if it’s your perfect career, but you can get practical experience in the healthcare industry that can give you a feel for things.

If you think a certain career is the route you want to go down, then try and get some experience and see how it feels. It might confirm the fact that this is the ideal occupation for you, or you may find you hate it. Either way, you’ve learned something useful.

Step Six: Invest in Your Education

Sticking with the previous example, once you have had experience working in a hospital and you know that this is the right career path for you, the next step will be to make sure that you are investing in the right education. As we mentioned previously, nursing is one of those industries that constantly changes, and requires expanding responsibilities and new skills. However, by following the model systematically, you will already know this and, therefore, be on the lookout for the right course you need. In this instance, to kickstart your nursing career, before you take a relevant nursing degree, you will know that it would benefit you to first take an online MBA in healthcare administration. In a course such as this, you will gain more skills and be able to undertake more responsibilities, such as understanding the US healthcare system fully, opening up the opportunities to you in the future. Investing in the right degrees can make such a difference to your career.

The same is true for many careers.

Step Seven: Accept Guidance

There are lots of people out there who can help you with your journey, so make the most of it. Navigating yourself through life is difficult enough, but it’s even more difficult to do it on your own, so seek advice from the people you trust.

Not everyone’s advice is going to be right for you, but if you take it on board and analyze it, then you can do with it what you want. You are your own person, and ultimately the decision is up to you, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking on board other people’s opinions.

It’s not always easy to find help in life, so if people offer it to you, then accept it.