Mastering Entrepreneurship: A Guide to Becoming an Entrepreneur

In the US, there are approximately 31 million entrepreneurs. These individuals create jobs, spur economic growth, and foster innovation in their community and country alike. If you wish to be your boss, create opportunities for yourself and others, build wealth, or have a business idea you want to bring to fruition, then entrepreneurship might be the correct path for you.

In this article, we will go over everything related to entrepreneurship, from defining an entrepreneur to becoming one, as well as the various types of entrepreneurship and examples of successful entrepreneurs. Additionally, we will discuss the future of entrepreneurship. See the table of contents below to better navigate this article.

What is entrepreneurship?

Simply put, entrepreneurship is the process of starting and running a business with the hopes of generating profit. Entrepreneurs bring innovative ideas to the market and solve problems. Entrepreneurship involves having a vision and bringing it to life.

Pros and cons of being an entrepreneur

To see if entrepreneurship is right for you, let’s look at the pros and cons of being an entrepreneur.

What an entrepreneur does

What does an entrepreneur do? As mentioned before, an entrepreneur must embrace a leadership role, and lead their business and its employees to success. This means choosing the right people to employ (and allocating their duties) and overseeing the functionality and growth of the business. In addition, entrepreneurs lead business activities that seize opportunities that arise as well as build advantageous partnerships.

Entrepreneurs must wear all hats. What this means is that they must employ themselves in all aspects of their business, from marketing to project management (unless delegated to another individual).

How to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset

To be successful, entrepreneurs must adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. This mindset entails that the individual is completely invested in the company and has full faith in its success. An entrepreneurial mindset embraces failure, using it as a learning curve to learn and prevent future mistakes. It entails taking risks and being content with defeat.

To foster an entrepreneurial mindset, you must surround yourself with like-minded individuals who share the same passion for success, typically done in the form of networking and the building of strong relationships. Additionally, this mindset requires that you adopt a growth mentality that is open to change and improvement.

Skills that every entrepreneur should have

Entrepreneurs should be equipped with a skill set that allows them to run a business. These skills enable them to be resourceful and make effective decisions. Let’s look at the skills that every entrepreneur should have.

Time-management skills

As an entrepreneur, you will likely be burdened by a plethora of tasks and responsibilities. Thus, it is important to manage your time efficiently. This means understanding your personal and work responsibilities and prioritizing them effectively. Time management also means planning ahead, either through a schedule or a to-do list. Prioritization and planning ahead allow you to have more control over your time.

Financial literacy

Financial literacy is the ability and knowledge that is utilized to help you better understand and manage your money, enabling you to make better financial decisions. This is crucial to an entrepreneur as they will not only have to manage their own money but also the funds of their business and the wages of their employees.

Communication skills

Communication skills are often underrated, and therefore neglected. However, their importance should not go unnoticed. Communication skills enable entrepreneurs to convey their ideas effectively. Additionally, they strengthen bonds between the entrepreneur and employees, clients, and other businesses.

Qualities of a successful entrepreneur

What makes up a successful entrepreneur? Let’s look at the qualities of a successful entrepreneur to figure that out.

Serial innovators

Innovation is the epitome of entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurs are relentless in innovative thinking and aspire to create new ideas and improve on existing concepts.

This does not have to mean creating something entirely new, such as a new product or service. Innovation can also be the improvement of something that is already employed so that it is better optimized.

Curiosity

Successful entrepreneurs have the ambition to continuously learn and are always in pursuit of new knowledge and opportunities. Instead of being content with what they already know, they strive to seek out new knowledge. This means asking challenging questions or being open-minded to different perspectives.

Adaptability

Entrepreneurship is a journey that will consist of various roadblocks, innovations, and problems that demand adaptability from the entrepreneur. It is almost impossible to be prepared for everything, so entrepreneurs must be able to adapt to the situation they are faced with.

Persistence

Successful entrepreneurs had an idea and stopped at nothing until they were successful. The ability to persevere despite what comes their way is what distinguishes successful entrepreneurs from the rest.

As we discussed before, you must be content with failure. Instead of giving up at the first sight of defeat, successful entrepreneurs got back up and tried again, this time with new insight gained from their failures.

Problem-solving

Entrepreneurs typically create a business idea that aims to solve the problems of others. Successful entrepreneurs are able to identify a problem and take a systematic approach to find an appropriate solution. This requires creativity, critical thinking, and effective decision-making.

Empathetic

Successful entrepreneurs foster a strong sense of ethics and integrity. Being empathetic means that you can understand and share the feelings of another person, which in turn allows you to establish a stronger bond. You must be able to implement fair practices and ensure a healthy environment for your employees. Only by being empathetic will you be able to understand the needs of your employees.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and control one’s own emotions. If you are short-tempered or petty, employees will take note and lose trust in you. Conversely, if you are self-aware and can manage your emotions, employees will respect you and look up to you.

Harvard Business School goes so far as to say that a lack of emotional intelligence can have lingering consequences on your business and its employees, such as an increased turnover rate.

Leadership

To run a business, you must be a leader. Leadership encourages harmony from top to bottom. Successful entrepreneurs possess leadership qualities that allow them to rally their team to a united goal. They do so by demonstrating high performance, taking initiative, and employing confidence.

How to become an entrepreneur

Now that we have thoroughly looked at entrepreneurship and its components, let’s look at how to become an entrepreneur.

Process of becoming an entrepreneur

This process may be different for different people (and depending on the type of business you form). However, this is what most entrepreneurs will encounter in their embryo stage.

Finding the idea

It all starts with the idea. Finding an adequate business idea (here are some examples if you are looking for inspiration) is one of, if not the most important part of becoming an entrepreneur. It may seem easy, but most struggle with this part. To find an innovative business idea, you should look for problems, reflect on your passions, or identify something that you could improve upon.

Before clinging to an idea, make sure it is a good one that has a solid foundation. This means that it has existing demand, a unique value proposition, and is backed up by goals.

Legal considerations

Before going any further, you must consider the legality of your business and idea to avoid legal issues in the future. This means registering your business through the government, protecting your intellectual property (trademarks, copyrights, and patents), drafting and reviewing contracts carefully, complying with regulations, and more. If you are unfamiliar with this, then it is wise to seek out a professional who could be of assistance, such as an attorney or accountant.

Business structure

In addition to legal considerations, you must also choose your business structure (LLC, sole proprietorship, S corp, nonprofit, etc.). This will determine the way that your business handles taxes as well as the requirements that your business will have to abide by.

Creating a business plan

Another crucial step of becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business is to create a business plan. This will act as an outline to the process by which you will grow and operate your business, as well as the aspirations of your business. Additionally, it should contain details of your business, such as your product and financial plan. This is what investors and potential collaborators will ask for and will use to determine if you are a viable partner.

Securing funding

Now that you have an idea and a plan, it is time to secure funding. Funding can come from personal funds, investors, loans, crowdfunding, and more. This helps to establish an early cash flow to keep the business afloat. When securing funding, you must keep in mind that this funding comes with a price, usually in the form of equity or interest.

Developing your product/service

It’s time to bring your idea into fruition and develop it into something that is market-ready. To do this, create a prototype and test it. In addition, find a supplier and/or manufacturer to source your product from. Research the market to analyze the competition and see what competitors are doing right (and wrong), as well as what works and what doesn’t.

Product iteration is one of the best ways to develop a product. This process involves releasing a minimum viable product, gathering feedback, using that feedback to make changes, and then testing the product again. It is repeated until an effective product is created.

Marketing your business

Marketing is crucial for any business to build a reputation and increase brand awareness. It can boost sales and encourage both customer engagement and retention. The best practices for a beginning entrepreneur is to create a website, leverage social media, and invest in advertising (if the budget allows it).

I am sure that you can name hundreds of restaurants that have better food than McDonald’s. However, McDonald’s will always have higher revenue and profits than those same restaurants. Why? Simple: marketing!

Search engine optimization (SEO)

An excellent way to market your business online is to implement SEO. This is the process of optimizing a website to increase its visibility on search engines. There are many SEO practices that small businesses can use to gain traction online and get their business out there.

Scaling

Now all of your business operations are (hopefully) organized and functional. What now? The next step is to scale your business. This means setting your business up for growth without hampering its operations, as well as maximizing its potential in the market. When scaling your business, you must ensure that you don’t unnecessarily sacrifice integral parts of your company.

Why should you become an entrepreneur?

By becoming an entrepreneur, you essentially become your own boss, allowing you to gain control over your decisions and future. You embrace a different lifestyle that is different from the traditional nine-to-five or desk job. Being an entrepreneur allows you to pursue your passion and profit from it. As Confucius once said, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”

However, being an entrepreneur impacts not just you, but also others. By becoming an entrepreneur, you create opportunities for others, such as through job creation. If you wish to further impact your community, then try implementing social entrepreneurship principles into your business. Social entrepreneurship utilizes a business platform to address a cause and alleviate a social or cultural problem faced by the community.

How much do entrepreneurs make?

According to Indeed, the average salary for an entrepreneur in the United States is $87,582. However, this number is not entirely accurate and should not be taken seriously. The true answer (that everyone will hate) is that it depends. It primarily depends on how much of the business’s profit you allocate to your income as well as how much profit the business generates. As the business’s profit increases, so does the salary of the entrepreneur.

Can you become an entrepreneur with no money?

Becoming an entrepreneur with no money is very plausible. However, it will require additional effort and investment. This may mean keeping your current job, or even picking up another source of income, while starting your business. With a lack of capital, you will need to place your early focus on securing funding and keeping your business afloat.

Why do entrepreneurs fail?

Approximately 90% of new startups fail. Why? There are numerous factors that goes into the failure of a new business. The most prominent of these are:

• Poor financial management
• Lack of vision
• Problems with business plan
• Lack of market research/marketing
• Delegation issues
• Poor product/service quality

Types of entrepreneurship

There are numerous types of entrepreneurship, each of which contain their own unique characteristics and approaches to business.

Intrapreneurship

Intrapreneurship is when an individual is allowed to act as an entrepreneur within an organization or company. Intrapreneuers are proactive individuals who take initiative to pursue innovation in an organization. These individuals help businesses gain a competitive edge and bring new ideas to light. It should be noted that intrapreneurs do not take on as much financial risk as traditional entrepreneurs.

Social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is a business venture that aims to address and solve a social problem and influence change. It is similar to a non-profit in the sense that it strives to address a social issue, but differs in that it is a for-profit business model.

Scalable startup entrepreneurship

Scalable startups are business ventures that to rapidly grow. Entrepreneurs with big dreams and who are ambitious typically create scalable startups with the hope of big profit.

Related: How to Start a Scalable Startup for Optimal Growth

Small business entrepreneurship

A majority of businesses in America are small businesses. Entrepreneurs who pursue small business entrepreneurship typically do not have the intention of creating a chain or large-scale business. Instead, they create a modest business operation with a moderate staff that supports their lifestyle. These are your restaurants and local firms.

Large company entrepreneurship

Large company entrepreneurship differs from traditional entrepreneurship in that it is already an established company exploring new business ventures. They aim to innovative new products and ideas to reimagine their brand, making it more relevant and valuable to the industry.

Innovative entrepreneurship

Innovative entrepreneurship is the process of creating new ideas for a business venture. It focuses on identifying and developing innovations that have not previously been employed. Innovative entrepreneurs take a unique approach to entrepreneurship and disrupt the market.

Examples of successful entrepreneurs

Many entrepreneurs have found success and accumulated wealth through their business(es). Here are a few examples of successful entrepreneurs that we know and love today:

• Elon Musk – Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, both of which are prominent companies in their respective industries. He has endured numerous business ventures, including the acquisition of X (formerly Twitter) and a bumpy road with Paypal.
• Ben Francis – Francis is the co-founder and CEO of Gymshark, a fitness apparel and accessories brand founded in 2012. He turned his passion for fitness into one of the largest fitness brands in the world. At only age 31, Ben Francis has amassed a fortune of $1.2 billion.
• Thomas Edison – Edison, one of the most famous inventors of all time, is known for inventing the light bulb and electric utility system. Most forget that he was an esteemed entrepreneur who used his 1,093 patents to become a successful businessman. Edison is the embodiment of an innovative entrepreneur that disrupted existing markets and made a name for himself.
• Larry Page – Page is the co-founder and former CEO of Google. He fostered a culture of innovation, developing projects such as Google Maps and Google Drive.
• Oprah Winfrey – Winfrey went from rags to riches. Despite being born into poverty, she perservered and become one of the most famous businesswomen. The multibillionaire has pursued many business ventures, including being a media proprietor.

What is the future of entrepreneurship?

Applications for businesses have surged following COVID. More individuals are taking the entrepreneurial path. But what is the future of entrepreneurship? What can those entering the space expect? To answer that, let’s look at current trends that will remain relevant for years to come.

With the emergence of artificial intelligence technologies, AI is playing an increasingly important role in the world of business. More and more startups are becoming technology-focused, and aim to utilize emerging technologies to innovate and reshape industries.

Many businesses are changing their operations to conform to and encourage sustainability. They are taking action to become eco-friendly and prevent further damage to the environment. This can be seen in the car industry, exemplified by Toyota, who aims to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Social entrepreneurship has also seen an upward trend as more businesses are focusing on addressing social issues. Entrepreneurs leading their respective companies have shifted their focus to making a positive impact on the world. One example of this is the introduction of McDonald’s HACER National Scholarship, which focuses on lessening the financial burden of Hispanic students seeking higher education.

As we come to the end of this article, I want to remind you that entrepreneurship is a journey with ups and downs, successes and failures. It is a demanding occupation but can be very generous. Becoming an entrepreneur is not solely about starting a business; it is a transformative experience that allows for personal growth and continuous learning. Let your passion drive you, and do not be discouraged at the first, second, or even third failure. Get back up and try again.

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