Defining an Entrepreneur: the Concept, the Acronym By Kehinde Olagbenjo
An entrepreneur is that person who discovers or recognizes business ideas and turns them into business opportunities. He or she creates ideas to translate the opportunities into products or services other people are willing and ready to pay for.
To recognize means the ability to see opportunities when other people are seeing problems. As an entrepreneur you must learn to see problems as abandoned projects, and then take action to identify solutions to those problems and the customers who will pay to have the problems solved. If you must go far in life and in business as an entrepreneur, how you see problems matters.
To discover means to find something that was hidden or to be the first person to become aware of an opportunity, and this will make you a leader in your field.
Business ideas can be creatively conceived as new products or services or they could consist of finding new market or new users for existing products and services.
Business opportunities are people (individual or group), institutions, and organisations who have needs, wants or desires to fill, have the purchasing power (money to spend), and are willing to spend to satisfy those needs, wants and desires.
IT IS NOT ALL BUSINESS IDEAS THAT CAN LEAD TO BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES.
Four Characteristics of a Good Business Idea
1. It is attractive to the customers.
2. It will work in your business environment (location).
3. It can be executed in the window of opportunity that exists. Timing matters. The window of opportunity is the amount of time you have to get your business to the market. If you allow your competition to get to the market before you, it may be difficult to breakthrough.
4. You have the resources and the skills to create the business idea or you know someone who does and want to work with you to make it a reality.
As an entrepreneur, you are a leader: a leader is someone who knows where he or she is going in life; they know how to get there and they have the skills to convince and motivate people to follow them.
A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal.
One of the major qualities of a great leader is vision: vision is the ability to capture the future even before it arrives. It is a vision that makes a leader.
A leader should have the capacity to see farther than any other person. When you take a vision out of a leader, you cut out the heart of the leader; there is nothing left.
Vision is an idea or a picture of a future in your imagination that you can turn into a reality. Vision is the foundation for success in life and business.
Vision is the ability to see what no one is seeing. If you don’t have a vision, you can’t progress.
Peter Marshall once said, “Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for because unless we stand for something we shall fall for anything”.
Your future depends on the effectiveness of your inner eyes.
As an entrepreneur, you should be able to organize and manage other factors in this translation process of your ideas into business opportunities or manage what can be described as the six “M”s of business organisations such as:
Man- (e.g. staff, customers, partners, etc.).
Machine – (depending on your field. My example of machine as a writer and speaker is my computer, microphone and writing materials).
Money- capital for investment.
Market- this is your potential customers, your target audience, your niche market.
Management –leadership – no business will grow beyond the owner. Show me your leader and I can predict the future of your business.
Method – your style of leadership and your method of running your business.
You must be able to manage the “Ms” effectively to solve a problem, achieve sales and make profit.
An Acronym for Entrepreneur gives details of what it is all about:
E – Enterprise (enterprising/ industrious/ diligent, etc.)
N – Network (networking/ building bridges & business relationships, etc.)
T – Technology (better or faster and cheaper ways of doing it)
R – Research (dig deeper)
E – Education (know more than enough in that field)
P – Preparation/ Passion (demonstrating readiness)
R – Revelations (special insight)
E – Endurance (staying power, rugged, etc.)
N – Niche (market, sphere of influence)
E – Earnings (value creation, revenue, profits)
U – Unique (unique selling point, outstanding etc.)
R – Resources (human, capital, etc., are all it takes to deliver results)
Culled from my book:- Defining an Entrepreneur: the Concept, the Acronym
Order for my book to read the full book.
Call 08083535857.
