In a recent survey, it was discovered that more than seventy percent of people want to be some sort of entrepreneur.
There are many reasons why many wants to become an entrepreneur and why you should consider taking that giant step and creating your own world but before we talk about how to develop an entrepreneur mindset, let’s look at the difference between an intrapreneur and an entrepreneur.
An Intrapreneur
An intrapreneur is an employee of an organization creating values for the company he or she is working with.
An intrapreneur is someone who has passion for entrepreneurship but is using the passion and the knowledge to serve another man and by doing so, he or she is creating values in the company and he is been rewarded accordingly.
You are promoting innovative products development the same way an entrepreneur would.
Intrapreneur usually have the resources and capabilities of the firm at their disposal.
Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur vary in their level of focus. Whereas an entrepreneur envisions a company from start to finish, an intrapreneur has a much broader vision for an established company.
Since the intrapreneur works on solving bigger issues within the organization, he typically has more directly applicable skills for given tasks and takes more risks within the context of his job.
Just as an entrepreneur starts a company as a means of providing goods or services, intrapreneurs seeks policies, technologies and applications that will help increase a company’s productivity. As an intrapreneur builds the aptitude for recognizing and solving important problems, he also builds skills required to start his own business.
Similar to how entrepreneurs’ experiments, an intrapreneur possesses the freedom and anatomy for professional growth.
An intrapreneur has the independence to analyze and understand trends necessary for planning the company’s future. Intrapreneurs synthesize their findings and determine methods for staying ahead of their competitors.
Intrapreneurs become company’s executive leaders over time. They move the business forward and rise to the top as they understand the business from all levels.
A company should recognize and promote successful intrapreneurs so the business can succeed and grow. When intrapreneurs work at solving problem, they foster the growth of other talented intrapreneurs and integrate processes for the greater good of the entire company.
An Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business or organization, taking some personal risks to do so. He may quit a secured job to devote time to starting the business, use personal savings as capital or convince investors to finance the business.
Successful entrepreneurs need the strong characteristics of trust, confidence, competence, courage, self-discipline along with right personality traits. An entrepreneur needs a successful business trait like we already highlighted above.
You can call an entrepreneur an individual who, rather than working as an employee, runs a small business and assumes all the risks and rewards of a given business venture, idea or goods/services offered for sale. An entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.
Entrepreneurs play a key role in any economy. These are the people who have the skills and initiative necessary to take good new ideas to the market and to make right decisions that lead to profitability.
The reward for taking the risk is the potential economic profits the entrepreneur could earn. Entrepreneurs commonly face many obstacles when building a business.
Some common obstacles that many entrepreneurs face are overcoming bureaucracy, hiring talent and acquiring finance.
Entrepreneurship is a critical driver of innovation and economic growth. Therefore, fostering entrepreneurship is an important part of the economic growth strategies of many local and national governments around the world.
To this end, governments commonly assist in the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which may include entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and government sponsored programs to assist entrepreneurs.
Given the risks that comes with a new venture, the acquisition of financing is particularly challenging and many entrepreneurs overcome these obstacles by bootstrapping.
Bootstrapping means to finance a business using methods such as owner funding, providing sweat equity to reduce labour costs, minimizing inventory and factoring receivables.
While some entrepreneurs are lone actors struggling to get small businesses off the ground on a shoestring, others work with additional founders, armed with greater access to capital and other resources.
In these situations, businesses may acquire financing from venture capitalists, angel investor hedge funds, crowdsourcing or through bank loans.
Key Factors to Consider as an Entrepreneur
What motivates people to start business?
To you, it may be passion, while to someone else it could be something else. The economy could be the reason why someone wants to start a new business, it could be that you want to become your own boss, it may as well be that you want to be free from the 8 to 5 work style, other factors includes autonomy, opportunity, being responsible to the society, necessity, accidental, and many others. So the question is, what is the motivating factor behind your starting a business?
What type of business should you go into?
Before going into any business, you must do your market research, have a basic knowledge of the industry you are going into.
There are three things you need to run a successful business.
Capability: You must possess the ability or power to get things done, you must be willing and determined.
Strategy: You must have a business plan. A business plan of action that is designed to achieve a long term or overall aim.
Capital: When we talk about capital, it does not only refer to financial capital, although this is a key factor, but you also need relationship capital, knowledge and human based capital.
How do you raise capital for business?
- Personal savings
- Loans
- Investors
- Financial institutions
Family and Friends
In addition, you should also become a service provider.
What must you do before starting your business?
- Register your business name/company
- Get a bank account
- Be determined to succeed
- Keep records
- Have a business plan and feasibility report
- Have a business model that works
While running your business;
- Have financial discipline
- Keep your earning in your business
- Have a staying power
- Pay and account for your taxes
- Keep your books accurately
- Build a brand around your business
- Market your business (both online and offline)
- Have a transition process in place
Do trend analysis for your business regularly
– Understand the business operation
– Manage people well
– Build trust
– Build people
– Keep re-engineering your business. We elaborated more on this under business model in chapter one.
– Expand your business when you need to
In conclusion, an entrepreneur must be sensitive to opportunities. Most people are not ready for a long race, for you to succeed in business, you must have a staying power.
