Merriam-webster defined an entrepreneur as the “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” As per Cambridge University’s dictionary, entrepreneurship is a “skill in starting new businesses, especially when this involves seeing new opportunities.
Besides these textbook definitions and interpretations, who exactly is an entrepreneur? How to become an entrepreneur?
We will find the true meaning of the term Entrepreneur when we trace its history. The term “Entrepreneur” has been derived from the French word “entreprendre”, most probably coined by the economist Jean-Baptiste Say in the 17th century. And the meaning of this French word is “adventurer” or an “undertaker”.
On the other hand, Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business, often a small business startup with limited resources, big plans and fast execution. The people who kickstart these businesses or startups are entrepreneurs, or more aptly adventurers, who are out there attempting to shift the status quo and bring an impact.
Entrepreneurship is a verb, and it denotes action, movement, posture and hence a choice.
If your question is how to be your own boss, then yes, the answer is to become an entrepreneur. But, is it that easy?
4 Key Elements of an Entrepreneurship
Before you go through the steps of becoming an entrepreneur, let us share the 4 critical elements of entrepreneurship:
- Entrepreneurs are forced to make decisions. Often, hard decisions, with very little information.
- Entrepreneurs are required to invest in assets and activities whose outcome is not guaranteed. So yes, chances of failure also exist.
- Entrepreneurs need to convince other people to invest their time and money in a mission, whose success is not assured. Not easy, but they have to.
- Every day, they are required to do work that might not work. This is the most difficult of all the elements since it’s the soul of being an entrepreneur.
Having said that, the rewards of being an entrepreneur are manifold, and out of the world. Being an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding, exhilarating experiences one will ever get. Being an entrepreneur gives you freedom of choice, standing, respect in society, and the world’s wealthiest persons are entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs generate jobs; they can help other people, and support the nation’s economy and growth.
How to Become an Entrepreneur: Step by Step Process
There are no definitive outline and textbook theories that can teach how to become a successful entrepreneur. The reason being, the rules of entrepreneurship change every single moment, and you as an entrepreneur must be flexible and dynamic to embrace this change.
Hence, if you are asking yourself how to become a business owner, then do prepare for a journey with limitless obstacles and unknown destinations. However, there are some basic steps, which need to be followed for starting any new business and to kickstart your journey as an entrepreneur.
Step 1: Select an Industry or Niche
Theoretically, you can choose any industry or niche to launch a business, but you need a passion as fuel to sustain the long, challenging journey of entrepreneurship. If you have experience of any particular industry, that can also work. But you should have a deep passion for whatever you are trying to sell.
Learn more about – 7 Best Business Ideas With Low Investment For Indian Entrepreneurs
Step 2: Research the Market & Competitors
Research the market, the demand of that market, and competitors. This research will help you to determine the product or service which you will offer. More competition is not bad news, in fact, it’s great news. But more important than your product, it’s the market.
Find out if a market exists for your idea or not.
Learn more about – What Is Market Sizing? Why Is It Necessary For Startups And Businesses?
Step 3: Educate Yourself, If Needed
If you ask a well-established and successful businessman this question: how do you become an entrepreneur? then his/her answer will definitely include education. In case you are venturing out into an entirely new domain, then educate yourself. If you want to stay ahead of the competition and get a pulse of the market, then educate yourself.
Suppose your background is mechanical engineering, and your idea for entrepreneurship is launching the next big social network. In that case, you must have knowledge about programming, user experience, digital marketing, and more.
Being an expert is not required, but basic knowledge is mandatory.
Step 4: Research Your Audience/ Target Customers
Do as much research as possible about your target audience, who will eventually buy your idea. Understand their pain points, the issues which keep them awake in the night, their fears, their happiness, their mindset. If you can walk into their shoes, then you can do anything and everything.
Step 4: Create a Business Model
Once you know the market, and the target audience and are empowered with knowledge about the industry, it’s time to prepare the business model. Simply put, a business model is a blueprint for making money out of your business. It’s the roadmap for answering your question: how to be my own boss?
And, it should just answer one thing: how is your business generating profits?
Learn more about – Decoding Profits: How To Calculate And Find High-Profit Margin Business?
Step 5: Validate Your Idea
In case you are creating an app or a website, then validate the idea by building an MVP or Minimum Viable Product, and showcase to a target group and know their views, feedback. In the case of other businesses, validation of ideas can be done by asking other industry veterans, experts, business coaches, friends and family.
You can get disappointing reviews, negative feedback, but it’s part of being an entrepreneur.
Learn more about – Importance Of Idea Validation For Your Business Startup – Know Its Pillars And How To Validate Your Idea
Step 6: Find a Co-Founder & Team
Entrepreneurship is all about building the right team, with the right people. You need to find a co-founder as well if that niche is not your primary domain. For example, you are an HR Manager, but your idea revolves around a music app.
A co-founder with coding skills would be a good strategy.
Step 7: Launch Your Business
All said and done, launch your business. Create a launch plan, marketing and sales strategy, payment mechanism and put it out in the world. Legal and tax-related compliances too need to be taken care of, before the launch.
Step 8: Find Investors and Scale
Once you get traction, customers and sales, then pitch your business to investors and scale it to increase sales and profits. Search for investors can be done after validating your idea and finding your team as well since several early-stage investors are interested in that. This is an extremely concise and stripped-down answer for “How to become an Entrepreneur”. Every step and every move has layers to it and then more layers.
Learn more about – Types Of Investors And Their Roles
At MSMEx, you can find industry experts and business coaches who can navigate you in this journey of entrepreneurship.
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