Who is an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is simply an individual with a business plan and a risk-taking mindset, not settling for less, but aiming for the best.

What makes an entrepreneurship journey look easy? All the behind-the-scene happenings and engineering. The entire stressful path you have endured to build a successful business venture is rarely seen though they are the foundations of success.

What can go wrong in your new business?

i. Money: You need enough money to venture into a business enterprise. Having sufficient funds to invest is the only way to start out. You must have an estimate in view before you start out. Bring in people with financial capacity into your business to meet up your desired investment goal.

ii. Competition: You must always be ahead of competitors in your market. Keep reinventing, engage in promotion and give room for feedback from your customers, this will help you be a step ahead of your competitors. Most importantly, find out what your competitors lapses are and build on them to get the market share you desire.

Competition is very good in business, it helps you strive for the forefront in your business. If you are the top player do not relax, your competitors are looking for ways to eat into your market share; set improvement targets quarterly.

iii. Frustration: Do not be derailed by push backs from your business. Keep your head up even in times of business failures, you can be successful if you try to learn from your past mistakes. Plan never to make mistakes twice. Join groups where you can get encouraged and leverage on other members’ experience.

Strength of Every Entrepreneur:

Know your DNA: You need to know your DNA for your business to succeed. Understand what suits your kind of personality. Learn how to deal with every stakeholder in your business (from distributors to retailers and possibly end users/consumers) without resulting to conflict. Understand your capabilities and areas where you are deficient. Bring in team members to compliment your skills.

Be Innovative: Keep improving your process, pattern and strategies where necessary. Get periodic feedback from your clients, market and develop new ideas that will keep your business afloat.

Tips to Entrepreneurs:

1. Have great content/product that will attract patronage.
2. Look for the best international platform to showcase your goods and services. This will earn you credibility and recognition in both local and the global space.
3. Keep records of people you come across on your career path as an employee. They can be positive connections when building your own business.
4. Join networks and be visible and active, most trades have associations you can join.
5. Your stack of business cards are gold; every business card is important in your archive. They are the database you need to market your goods or services.
6. Your network may be your access to information, sales opportunities and encouragement. Use them wisely and treat them with respect.
7. Pay your tithe regularly, by so doing; you are sowing a seed for more blessing from the creator. Give back to society and don’t always look to who can mentor you, there is someone you can mentor also.

My 12 Step-by-Step Guide for your Survival

1. Your product or service should have a story line you want to share.
2. Practice how will you tell your story.
3. Pull in ‘actors’ into the story so your potentials clients see themselves as part of your story.
4. Enter your service or product into competitions, showcase your solution to as wide an audience as possible.
5. Look for the best sector specific or other platforms to showcase your products or services. Credible recognition in global space or with a targeted audience gives you credibility.
6. Plan to keep developing improvements, if you are successful copy cats will come after your ideas and they may have more resources than you so be a step ahead of them.
7. Go beyond your neighborhood, beyond your state, nation and go global if you can, that’s what the internet was made for.
8. Make noise about your business through marketing, advertising and promotion. Invest in your brand.
9. Testimonials; Let people vouch for your product or service and let others know about it.
10. Keep fixing the problem you identified that spurred your business idea, provide solutions faster and in a more seamless, integrated way.
11. Make provisions for audience/stakeholder’s feedback. Put your email address and phone number in an easy to find place, if possible set up a complaint chat room and be responsive to the feedback.
12. Let’s make those coming behind us think the entrepreneurship journey was easy by putting the above into practice.