Skills needed as an Entrepreneur

Polishing your skills as an entrepreneur can help you be a better entrepreneur. Here are the skills every successful entrepreneur has in common:

Doggedness.

The ability to be persistent in time of trial. Not every business will achieve that immediate success. The determination, knowing how to handle the ups and down is vital. Success does not happen overnight, some of those successful entrepreneurs out there failed again and again before finally achieving that remarkable success. Winston Churchill said: “success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”. What you need to know is that failure isn’t the end but a step closer to achieving that success. This skill enables the entrepreneur to keep going when the outlook is bleak.

Stay Focused.

You have to be ready to give it all it takes, when success in the business is your priority, you will find yourself ready to tackle any kind of challenges along the way. After setting a goal, knowing how to “laser focus” on the very next step to get closer to the ultimate goal. There are so many distracting forces when trying to build a business that this skill is not easy to master.

Productivity.

This is a sensitive topic, the fact is there is no one right way to be productive that works for everybody. Learn about your peak energy times, your routines, and the productivity tools that work for you in order to create your own plan for success.

Sales.

Some entrepreneurs get stuck here, every entrepreneur is a sales person whether they want to be or not. They are either selling their ideas, products or services to customers, investors or employees. They work to be there when customers are ready to buy. Alternately, they know how to let go and move on when they are not. If you’re always nervous about selling, try enrolling in a sales workshop to learn this much needed skill.

The ability to manage people.

You need to know how to manage people well. Early on in your business, you will be everyone’s manager, so it pays to be effective. Entrepreneurs should know how to motivate and encourage the employees. Only by learning to leverage employees, vendors and other resources will an entrepreneur build a scalable company. They need to learn to network to meet the right people. Entrepreneurs strive to guarantee they will get honest and timely feedback from all these sources.

Adapting to change.

Change they say is constant! Successful entrepreneurs realize they don’t know everything and the market is constantly changing. You have to be willing to go with the trend or change. You know what brilliant entrepreneurs does? They stay up to date on new systems, technology, and industry trends.

Strategy implementation.

You need to dedicate your time to simply dreaming about what you want for your business. Where would you like to take it? What’s your vision for it? Now, how can you get there from here? Set your goals, and then develop an actionable plan to make them a reality. Then, don’t forget about those goals. Keep them at the front and center to everything you do.

Take your time.

You don’t need to rush things. Most entrepreneurs are not patient; they sometimes focus only on what comes next, rather than where the company needs to go. Overnight success may take 5 years or more. Entrepreneurs need to stop, pause and plan again at several intervals. Take a step at a time!

Don’t be discouraged, you can learn some of these skills. Your eventual success depends on it.

See you at the top!

Entrepreneurship Misconceptions

Don't let what others think about entrepreneurs hold you back from greatness,

Misconception is a thought or opinion that is incorrect based on the faulty thinking or understanding of people. Here, we want to clarify some of the misconceptions in entrepreneurship.

They work for money

Entrepreneurship isn't all about money, it's about solving problems for people and love what they do. Also, it's about creating a name for themselves and making a positive impact in the world.

Money is also a way to do bigger and more exciting deals. The motivation of a new idea, and the risks involved have far more power to motivate the entrepreneurial spirit than money. In entrepreneurship, your business and success become an obsession not the money.

They lack courage

I’ve never seen anyone that is as courageous as an entrepreneur.

It takes courage to forego the predictability of a corporate job, It takes courage to take the risk of failure, It takes courage to make your dreams into reality.

And it takes courage, lots of it to hand over the reins when your startup grows beyond your ability to manage it.

That's why entrepreneurs are rightly the true heroes of our modern world.

 They are professionals

Most successful entrepreneurs are not highly qualified fellows, but are success driven. Surprisingly, attending an elite university or higher education doesn’t provide a significant advantage in entrepreneurship. What matters is that the entrepreneur gains a degree; the choice of major or college doesn’t play a big role in success. However, the greater the education of the entrepreneur, the lower the rate of business failure and the higher the business’s profits, sales and employment.

 They sometimes have overnight success

It may seem to you that entrepreneurs made the huge amount of money, but do you know that there is a lot of handwork before he made it.

Overnight success is possible; entrepreneurs are inspired to start their own business by witnessing successful and established entrepreneurs. They study the success stories, the beginning of those success stories, which often includes massive struggle prior to the breakthroughs. As a matter of Fact, it takes years to become an overnight success in entrepreneurship!

You don't have to be a Harvard graduate to be an entrepreneur, but you do need to understand the characteristics of entrepreneurial.  See you at the top!

Entrepreneurs and ideas 2

Who is an 'Entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is that fellow 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 good or service offered for sale. An entrepreneur is 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 improve any economy. The reward for taking the risk is the potential economic profits the entrepreneur could earn.

 Yes, I know that’s hard. It's a lot of work. And that, folks, are what makes entrepreneurship so friggin' hard. And so friggin' necessary. What can I say, that’s life. Besides, look on the bright side:  You get to do what you want and you get to do it your way. There’s just one catch. You’ve got to start somewhere. Ideas and opportunities don’t just materialize out of thin air.

The only way I know to get started is by learning a marketable skill and getting to work. In my experience, that’s where the ideas, opportunities, partners, and finances always seem to come from. Sure, it also takes an enormous amount of hard work, but that just comes with the territory.

If you want to do entrepreneurship right, let me share the story of an African lady  you’ve probably never heard about,  her name is Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu.

Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, 34, grew up in Zenabwork, a poor village in the suburbs of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

She came up with her business idea after she noticed most of the artisans in her community, who made beautiful footwear, remained jobless and poor.

Today, her company, SoleRebels, is one the most popular and fastest growing African footwear brand in the world! It sells its ‘eco-friendly’ brand of footwear in more than 50 countries including the USA, Canada, Japan and Switzerland.

SoleRebels’ footwear is unique because it is 100 percent made by hand using locally-sourced and recycled materials like old car tyres and hand-loomed organic fabrics.

A few years ago, SoleRebels became the first footwear company in the world to be certified by the World Fair Trade Organization.

By using local craftsmen, Bethlehem has built a global brand and a hugely successful business that has created jobs and improved livelihoods in her local community.

She started SoleRebels in 2004 with less than $10,000 in capital she raised from family members. Today, the company has more than 100 employees and nearly 200 local raw material suppliers, and has opened several standalone retail outlets in North America, Europe and Asia.

Despite its very humble beginnings, SoleRebels now makes up to $1 million in sales every year, and according to her projections and expansion plans, the company could be making up to $10 million in sales by the end of this year (2016).

Buoyed by her success with SoleRebels,  She recently launched Republic of Leather, a new business that trades in luxury leather products like bags, belts and other non-footwear leather accessories.

Bethlehem was selected as the Young Global Leader of the Year 2011 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was a winner at the Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship in the same year. Bethlehem and her inspiring success story with SoleRebels have been featured severally on Forbes, the BBC and CNN.

As an entrepreneur, the sky is your limit. You can achieve anything you want! We can all be Bethlehem, start thinking and creating…

See you at the top!

Entrepreneurs and Ideas (1)

Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business, such as a startup company, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire, and the people who do so are called 'entrepreneurs'.  It has been defined as the "...capacity and willingness to develop, organize, and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit."

 While definitions of entrepreneurship typically focus on the launching and running of businesses, due to the high risks involved in launching a start-up, a significant proportion of businesses have to close, due to a "...lack of funding, bad business decisions, an economic crisis or a combination of all of these"  or due to lack of market demand.

In the 2000s, the definition of "entrepreneurship" has been expanded to explain how and why some individuals (or teams) identify opportunities, evaluate them as viable, and then decide to exploit them, whereas others do not, and in turn, how entrepreneurs use these opportunities to develop new products or services, launch new firms or even new industries and create wealth.

At the heart of every successful business is a great idea. Some seem so simple,  we wonder why nobody thought of them before. Others are so revolutionary we wonder how anybody could've thought of them at all.

#What's bugging you?

Ideas for startups often begin with a problem that needs to be solved. And they don't usually come while you're sitting around sipping coffee and contemplating life. Ideas tend to reveal themselves while you're hard at work on something else.

I will like to share a brief story about Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh, who invented Sugru.  Intimidated by her surroundings and fearful that she was out of her depth in the prestigious corridors of the Royal College of Art, Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh hid herself away in the school workshop with a vague idea of finding a new, fix-everything material.
One of her series of experiments as she pursued her master's degree in product design was to combine bathroom sealant with wood-dust powder. It made balls that bounced when she dropped them.
"It was just a surprising moment. I made something that looked like wood and it bounced," she said. "I just wanted to create something that looked interesting or behaved in an interesting way, which could then lead me somewhere else."
Just over a decade later, those lab explorations have led to Sugru, a mouldable, setting silicone rubber that has been compared with Blu-Tack and Sellotape in terms of its significance.

The material can be shaped for 30 minutes after being taken from the small sealed packets it comes in, before it cures in the air into a strong, durable and waterproof substance that will stay stuck to almost any surface and can withstand extremes of temperature up to 150C.

The rise in popularity of Sugru, initially among the tech and "maker" community, has seen it used as a car engine sealant, in a school children's project to send a camera into space, and to personalize ski poles for a north pole adventurer. The youngest member of the British Olympic fencing team, James Davis, used a foil personalised with Sugru in the 2012 games.

It has been a long road to fruition for Ni Dhulchaointigh, who left the RCA with a rough idea of wanting to create a "really, really functional version of Blu-Tack that would be permanent and have lots of benefits". A summer show for graduates' ideas showed her that the public also had an interest in what she was planning.

"I had in mind this culture of people feeling empowered to improve their stuff, to fix it and that is the most difficult thing and the most exciting thing," she said.

What an amazing invention! We can all be Jane, Start thinking and creating...
See you at the top!

How to increase your sales beyond imagination

©Femi Adefioye. All Rights Reserved http://entrepreneurship-skills.blogspot.com

Want to generate massive income, make more sales, simple right? But how many average small business owners do you think know how to sell? Letting their competitors stole their hard work. If you want to know how to sell more effectively which means putting more money into your pocket then read on, this could be the article that will change your mindset about selling.

Build a long-term value not a Short-term value.

An intelligent and smart entrepreneur knows it will be paid off to build a long-term value rather than the short one. You might lose some money initially, however, in the long term you will get many times return. The rule for any long-term value is success, it’s as simple as that, “make sure your customers are always happy”.

Put it in practical way, you can offer more bonuses that have some more values than the price they pay to buy your product.

You can call or send mail once in a while to know their progress. You should treat your customers as a long-term buddy. Buddies will not just take money from his or her friend and run away the next morning.

Always maintain a good relationship, follow through, this will make your customers to always referring you to their friends, associates, or families for many years to come. Jeff Bezos said: “If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful”. Your customers will spread the word, which can have a positive impact on your sales.

Focus on the selling first not the product.

You should avoid making the mistake of so many small business owners that have all their concentration on their product initially, rather than focusing on selling. You need to sell to make money. So focus on sell, sell and sell. Here are few ideas that might inspire you:

Go approach people. Whenever you go; to the mall, café, or club, there is nothing wrong with just saying hi, give your business cards and tell them about your business and everything you have to offer them. Tell them about the immediate benefit after buying from you, which can make them jump to your offer.

Be consistent, some people fold after making one timid request. They quit too soon. Keep asking until you find the answers. In sales there are usually four or five "no's" before you get a "yes." Jack Canfield said: “If you are not moving closer to what you want in sales (or in life), you probably aren't doing enough asking.” You should be persistence and never give up until you make those sales.

Put advertisement on newspaper. Put advertisement in a way that shows you are in authority. You can write article about your subject of expertise. You might not get paid in the beginning, but the credibility you will build during the years is what makes your business keep having momentum to keep alive.

Finally, make sure your product is really what you have claimed it to be, offer a good product for the continuity of your business. “I think it's very important that whatever you are trying to make or sell, or teach has to be basically good. A bad product and you know what? You won't be here in ten years.” Said by Martha Stewart. So make sure your product is good one, which will make people to keep coming back to you.

After all you have done, what is next is to wait and see the result of your efforts materializing in term of sales. Continue the process again and again for your new or your existing products.

To your success!

P>Notice - You are allowed to publish this article in its entirety provided that author's name, bio and website links must remain intact, active and included with every reproduction.

©Femi Adefioye. All Rights Reserved http://entrepreneurship-skills.blogspot.com

How to write a small business plan

©Femi Adefioye. All Rights Reserved http://entrepreneurship-skills.blogspot.com


The first thing to do when starting a small business is to write a plan for your business, it is very essential and useful if you really want to focus yourself and get a whole picture of what you have to do in order to build your enterprise. A business plan is the road map for the success of your business.

What do you have to offer?

What are your products or what are your intended products? What are your products or services? What kind of income will these activities be generating or what is the expected range of income once the products are launched? Give answers to these questions giving a complete picture of the principal activity that you are engaged in or will be engaged in during the timeline of your business plan.

Where are you located?

Do you work from home or do you have a business premises? If you have a business location such as a store or factory, then explain about the size and capacity of this establishment. What is the business climate like in your area? Are there significant competitors and what are your prospects or advantages of competing in this market? Find answers to all these questions as best you can and give yourself and would-be investors a clear picture of where your business is situated geographically and with relation to your overall market.

How to make it happen?

Your sales and marketing research or plan should be outlined in this section. Explain how you intend to establish your product or service and what steps you will take to create or expand your customer base. How will you fund the start-up cost and the expansion of your business? Explain the source of your funds whether you have existing loans, your savings, borrowing from friends or liabilities. How much money do you need to raise in order to get realize your entire plan for the launching or expansion of your business? Explain how you are going to put your business idea into practice.

Having a good business plan is your key to success. A well-thought-out business plan forces you to think about the future and the challenges you will be facing. As long as your forecasts are realistic and you have done plenty of market research you will definitely come out with a good result. Go ahead with your plan and stick to it.

To your success!

Notice - You are allowed to publish this article in its entirety provided that author's name, bio and website links must remain intact, active and included with every reproduction.

©Femi Adefioye. All Rights Reserved http://entrepreneurship-skills.blogspot.com

Making your decision as an entrepreneur

©Femi Adefioye. All Rights Reserved http://entrepreneurship-skills.blogspot.com

Decision making encompasses the process that leads up to and includes the choice of a course of action from among two or more alternatives, and these actions are meant to help to achieve the set goals by the entrepreneur.

Decision making connects the entrepreneurs presents circumstances to action that will take the business into the future. It is the process of choosing actions that are directed towards the solutions or problems, and also important to note that this process can be carried out by an entrepreneur.
It can be difficult to make decisions for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s a matter of not having enough information. Other times, it’s simply a lack of confidence.

An entrepreneur, of course, should not make decision in isolation, while you are making your decision, other decisions are being made by people within the business i.e. your employees and those outside the business. Your employees and those outside the business should carried along in your decision making because their ideas and criticism can make the goals set achievable when entrepreneur project possible consequences of their own decision they must be conscious that other people’s decision may conflict or interact their own.

Different problems require types of decision making. Routine or minor maters, such as a return of merchandise, can be handled by a set procedure, a type of programmed decision. More important decision, such as the location of a new retail outlet or branch, require non-programmed decision, a specific solution created through a less structural process of decision making and problem solving. Because all decision involves future events, entrepreneur must also learn to analyze the certainty, risk and uncertainty associated with alternative courses of action.

No approach to decision making can guarantee that an entrepreneur will always make the right decision. But entrepreneur that make decisions intelligently are more likely than others to come up with high quality solutions.

To your success.