Define An Entrepreneur:
An entrepreneur is a person who takes up an initiative idea of creating a business, taking all calculated risks into consideration with the hope of making a profit.
Entrepreneurs are perceived as risk takers, they see opportunities where others cannot and immediately acts on the opportunity with the mind set of making a gain out of it. Entrepreneurs are innovators, a source of new ideas, goods, services, their ideas are mainly created to solve common humanity challenges that we face in our daily lives and make life much easier for us to live by.
So if you are going to decide to be an entrepreneur, you must have a unique mindset that will generate great ideas with the hope of solving humanity problems that people will be willing to pay a fortune for.
Characteristics of an Entrepreneur
In order for anyone to be a successful entrepreneur, below are five (5) best qualities that you must be possess;
- Self – Motivation: One of the important traits of an entrepreneur is self-motivation. Going in business for yourself can be difficult, discouraging, scary, destructive but you need to stay focused, keep your eyes on the goal, knowing what you want to get out of it, you need to be dedicated to your plan and self-motivation can help you through it.
- Understand What You Offer: As an entrepreneur, you need to know what type of products or services you are offering and how they fit in the market. By knowing your products or services you will know who is your target market; in other words, who are you targeting to buy your into products or services? Understanding what you are offering will also help you know how to design, package, price and set up an excellent delivery system for your goods or services.
- Passion: As an entrepreneur you must be passionate about what you do. If you do not love what you do, then the success rate of it will be very low. Passion is what will help you find motivation when you are discouraged and it will drive you forward. Passion is fuel for successful entrepreneurship.
- Take The Risk: Risk taking is part of the traits of being a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are people who take calculated risks, accessing the successful rate of what you want to pursue and having a backup plan to fall on in case things do not go as you planned. You will need to take risks if you want to succeed in business.
- Financial Discipline: Being financially disciplined is one of the key attributes of being a successful entrepreneur. Understanding money and knowing how to handle it will help to run your business on good fundamental principles.
Types of Entrepreneurs
In addition, there are a number of different types of entrepreneurs, below are a few most common and practiced ones:
- Trading Entrepreneurs: Are those who undertake buying and selling (wholesale and retail) but not engaged in the manufacturing process. Mostly these are forced ‘pushed’ into being entrepreneurs due to certain circumstances.
- Business Entrepreneurs: Are those who start the business units after developing ideas for new products or services. Their business ideas ‘pull’ them into being entrepreneurs.
- Industrial Entrepreneurs: It includes entrepreneurs engaged in manufacturing and processing activities. They can be even classified in form of tiny sector, medium scale and large scale. These include companies like Trade Kings, Zamanitaj, etc.
- Service Entrepreneurs: It includes entrepreneurs of services like repairs, consultancy, tuition centers, beauty Parlor, etc.
- Agriculture Entrepreneurs: Engaged in different activities related to agriculture such as plantation, horticulture, dairy, forestry, floriculture, animal husbandry, poultry, seeds, etc.
Categories of Entrepreneurs
There are many categories of entrepreneurs in today’s business world as you may be aware but all these entrepreneurs are classified into two (2) categories. So each category will classify an entrepreneur based on their motive, this implies what lures them into entrepreneurship, what made them become entrepreneurs.
- Pushed Entrepreneurs: Are those who are not satisfied with their current situation forcing them to become entrepreneurs. For instance, someone who has been looking for a job for years and because they have bills to pay and other basic necessities of life, their circumstances forces (pushes) them to become entrepreneurs, to start their own businesses.
- Pulled Entrepreneurs: Are those who are derived by the passion, attractiveness of their ideas of wanting to implement them. The fact that they have a very brilliant and attractive business idea, the desire and passion of bringing it to life or implementing it pulls them into becoming entrepreneurs. Their business ideas lures (pulls) them into entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurial Competences
Are a set of skills and abilities that aspiring entrepreneurs must possess and/or can acquire and improve to become proactive and to show the initiative spirit. These competencies enable entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial employees to provoke and adapt to change. These include the following;
- Initiative
- Systematic Planning
- Creativity and Innovation
- Risk taking and management
- Problem Solving
- Persistence
- Financial and Technological knowledge