In these troubled economic times characterised by high unemployment rate, entrepreneurship has boomed.
But who is an entrepreneur and the tenets of the trade for one to succeed?
Inspiring extracts of career information from a book titled Succeed As An Entrepreneur authored by Kasuzi Mbaluko, provides answers.
Mbaluko defines an entrepreneur as a person who organises and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
An entrepreneur is a person who, alone or together with others, carries out activities in a business whose objective is to make a profit.
These activities include a degree of risk taking and deal with uncertainty.
They deliberately allocate resources to exploit opportunities in order to maximise the financial return.
Essentially, Mbaluko writes that entrepreneurs are leaders willing to take a risk and exercise initiative, taking advantage of market opportunities by planning, organising and deploying resources, often by innovating to create new or improving existing products or services.
As the term entrepreneur implies qualities of leadership, initiative, and innovation in a new venture design, Mbaluko says that the essential qualities of an entrepreneur are passion, team-building , leadership, and management ability.
Rather than working as an employee, an entrepreneur runs a business and assumes all the risk and reward of a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for sale.
Therefore, an entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes.
“Additionally, an entrepreneur must have self-confidence to be able to handle any situation without having inferiority or any other type of complex,” states Mbaluko.
However, Mbaluko notes that entrepreneurship is a process by which an individual (or team) identifies a business opportunity and acquires and deploys the necessary resources required for its exploitation.
The exploitation of an entrepreneurial opportunities may include actions such as developing a business plan, hiring the human resources, acquiring financial and human resources, providing leadership, and being responsible for the venture’s success of failure.
Entrepreneurship has traditionally been defined as a rigorous process of designing, launching and running a new business, which typically begins as a small business such as a start-up firm, offering a product, process or service for sale or hire.
He says there are various forms of entrepreneurship that one can undertake depending on skills, knowledge, capital and passion to execute the plan.
For example, an enterprise may be set up to commercialise a new business idea, product, service or invention. Others may take on an already existing idea or buy a business that needs someone to continue their operations.
He highlighted a number of factors why people ponder on entrepreneurship.
“Every entrepreneur has a different story why they resolved to start a business. There are many reasons for this, and every entrepreneur will have their own personal reasons as well. Some have known from day one that they wanted to work for themselves. Others come with the ideas while working for someone else and decide to take entrepreneurship leap.
“The daily strife of waking up early, commuting to work, bearing office drama, and repeating it almost every day is the story of an employee’s life,” notes the writer.
A desire to own a brand or bring solutions to certain challenges are some of the reasons why people want to become entrepreneurs. These are some of the reasons why people have become entrepreneurs.
How to start a business is a common question which has puzzled many people, especially young ones (including fresh graduates). But Mbaluko writes that having decided to become an entrepreneur, one has to analyse their strengths and weaknesses. This will enable one to know what type and size of business would be most suitable for them.
“Most importantly, a prospective entrepreneur needs to come up with a good idea. The more unique the product, the less competition you will face. Remember, research and timing transform commonplace ideas into successful businesses,” says Mbaluko.
In his book, Mbaluko also offers people valuable skills on how to manage a business. He writes that one of the first things that people should do is to educate themselves about various aspects of finance.
He says: “For starters, learn how to read financial statements. This is one important statement that tells you all about your money-where it originated from, how many hands it changed, and where it is.”
According to Mbaluko, Financial statements contain four essential details: Cash flow statement, income statement, balance sheet, and shareholders’ equity. For example, the cash flow statement analyses operating activities, investments and financial in/outflows.
Whereas, the balance sheet provides information related to business’ assets, liabilities and shareholders’ equity. And income statement reflects the revenue earned within specific period if time.
“It is also important for entrepreneurs to cut costs in order to keep their expenses in check,” he explains.
However, noting that challenges are inevitable in any business, Mbaluko also highlights common challenges associated with entrepreneurship in his book.
He says there are challenges that an entrepreneur may face such as picking the right business and delivering quality to satisfy customers.
Says Mbaluko: “For example, if your business does not help people or provide a solution or give people something they want, then there is no business.
“Therefore, to do business you should have a great product or service that will respond to people’s needs. That is to say finding customers is only a challenge if you do not have a good product or service.”
Mbaluko also says dealing with competition is another challenge that most entrepreneurs must deal with.
In this regard, an entrepreneur must recognise competition as a benchmark for creativity and innovation for quality products.
“However, copying is an easy path to mediocrity,” warns Mbaluko.
Grab your copy of ‘Succeed As An Entrepreneur’ today to upgrade yourself and succeed as an entrepreneur.
