What are entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs?
Is it a quality you are born with or can it be taught/learned?
What makes a successful entrepreneur?
There are so many questions that arise around these words. By the end of this article, those and more questions will be answered. Hopefully, you will even see these in a little different light than you did when you started reading this article.
What is Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs?
Wikipedia defines entrepreneurship as the process of designing, launching, and running a new business. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an entrepreneur as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”, but a simpler definition is the person who goes through the process.
I highlighted the word process both times because it truly is a process. An entrepreneur is first and foremost a creator. This is a business that is created not bought or given to them. If you put it in terms of farming, they “plant” the seeds, they “water” it, they “fertilize” it, they “weed” it, etc. to grow that “seed” into a “producing crop”.
Notice size is not a part of the definition. An entrepreneur could be associated with the founder of the trillion-dollar Fortune 500 corporation with thousands of employees in multiple locations OR it could be the small town “Mom and Pop” store that has two employees OR even the artist that creates their art by themselves and then sells it at flea-markets on the weekend.
While there are many paths to entrepreneurship, all the successful paths have common characteristics. Those characteristics are the purpose of writing this article.
Opportunity…, She is ‘A Knocking
We truly live in the greatest time for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. Why? One word… internet.
OK, maybe you need more than one word, so combine that with all the innovations that have come along. Every time we get a new G level (3G-4G-now 5G) everything gets exponentially faster and better. There is a technology that just 10 years ago was not possible that is now in danger of being surpassed by even greater programs.
No time has taught us more about the power of the internet than the pandemic of 2020. Jobs went from board rooms and cubicles to bedrooms and kitchen tables. School rooms turned into Zoom connections from anywhere the student was.
At no time in history has so much information be assessable to so many. And there is so much information that you could only get in high-priced classes in college towns that now is free or low cost on sites. Never has this access be so available regardless of age, net worth, sex, race, nationality, geolocation, or any other statistical factor.
The only thing that is required is desire and time spent wisely. That is the first key to successful entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs- the desire to learn.
A Shift from the Current Paradigm
I will never bash schools. I have a doctorate and am just now getting to an age where I have spent more time not in school than in school. {I am 46 at the writing of this and spent 22.5 years in school between kindergarten to law school.}
BUT… many successful entrepreneurs have pointed out that public schools are still training you to be an employee, not the boss. While there have been some modifications, the way school is set up is on a paradigm to create factory workers in the industrial age and that is fine since a majority of people are not cut out to be entrepreneurs.
You are different though, you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t, and you want to be an entrepreneur. That requires a mind shift from what you were taught in school. This is the second key to successful entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs- a shift in mindset.
So how do you do that? …
Ways to Shift Your Mindset to Entrepreneur
1. Responsibility
You must accept responsibility for your choices and your life in order to be a successful entrepreneur.
Employee indoctrination tells you that an authority person (teacher, boss, politician, etc.) is in charge of your life and that we are merely bystanders. This mindset will not lead to success, particularly in the field of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurs accept responsibility for their activities, whether positive or negative. They accept personal accountability for their actions.
Of course, there are some things over which you have no control. Your business success, lifestyle, income, and happiness, on the other hand, are all well within your hands.
2. View of Failure
We are taught at school that making errors is a terrible thing.
But that is not the case in real life. You make mistakes in life and learn from them in order to progress and grow.
You will never try something new if you are afraid of making a mistake. And it is only when you begin to try new things that you will achieve success.
How can you start a new company if you keep doing what you’ve always done? Answer- you won’t be able to.
I am not saying blindly do new things. Entrepreneurs that succeed take calculated risks, learn from their errors and keep moving forward. Employees avoid making mistakes by staying in their comfort zones. Entrepreneurs go outside their comfort zone where innovation lives, in order to expand their comfort zone.
3. Think for Yourself
So much of our upbringing has taught us to think in certain ways. We all have the same thoughts and assumptions when we’re young.
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, this will not suffice. Great minds think in unique ways. They put the rules to the test. They come up with new ideas. They question.
Consider the most successful entrepreneurs you can think of. They are individuals who have not been scared to try something that the majority of people would deem insane.
If they thought like everyone else and adopted “common wisdom,” companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, and a million more would never have been. Instead of naively accepting cultural preconceptions, they challenged the status quo and innovated.
Never be rude, but to start thinking for yourself, start questioning things. If conventional wisdom is correct, you gain a greater understanding of why it is; if it is not, you might have a breakthrough to the new innovation that revolutionizes the world.
4. Be an Action-Taker
Entrepreneurs who succeed take action. They are decisive in their actions.
Employees wait for instructions, for others to tell them what they should do. How would you expand your business as an entrepreneur if you sit and wait? You won’t be able to do it.
Make words like “proactive” a part of your personality by meditating on them.
Do you have an idea?” How can you put that idea into action right now? What is the first step, and what is the second step? This is an entrepreneur’s thinking. But you can’t wait until you have all the steps mapped to begin. Once you know step one, implement it, then discover step two and implement it, then three, four, … Take action on a regular basis. Every day, ask yourself what activities you can do today to grow the company. Then watch as success comes to you.
Dream Big
Don’t limit yourself. “I don’t know enough.” “Who would buy from me?” “That’s too hard.” “I can’t charge that much.” Who am I to think I can do it?” “I’m not technological.” “People will think I’m crazy.”
And the list goes on. We are often our worse enemies. Self-doubt, self-sabotage, disbelief. A lot of the things we know have become commonplace to us and we don’t realize how many people don’t know what we know. If you provide the answer to someone’s problem or pain and are willing to put yourself out there with the solution, they will buy from you.
Hard just means you are out of your comfort zone, we already discussed that is where innovation lives. If you are willing to learn and be consistent there isn’t much that you can’t do when it comes to businesses. There are plenty of technologies that are easier than you think and there are plenty of employee-minded people who are technical people.
People will think you are crazy until you make it and then they want you to teach them how to do it themselves.
Biggest Secrets to Success in Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurs
The biggest secret to success in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs is the implementation of these five mindset shifts.
Make these changes to your thinking, implement them on a daily basis, and see how far you can go. Find a mentor who is successful and try to learn from them, learn about all kinds of knowledge and then see if you can apply their teachings to your business, and set routines and stick to them.
The next big secret is to find something you are passionate about so that you don’t tire of it over time and implement it into a system that works.
PS- If you want to learn more about business structures for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs to use to set up and protect their business, see this group of four articles:
Easy Guide to 4 Types of Business Structures: Sole Proprietorships
Easy Guide to 4 Types of Business Structures: Partnerships
Easy Guide to 4 Types of Business Structures: Limited Liability Company
Easy Guide to 4 Types of Business Structures: Corporations