Being an Entrepreneur is not a Title

Entrepreneurship is not a style, and it’s no joke. It is not a wish, and it’s not in having a great idea, and it is not about having a complimentary card or a business name. Being an entrepreneur is about sweating out your idea, and making it tangible enough for various stakeholders to buy into it. Having the title ‘an entrepreneur’ is not an accomplishment, what makes you an entrepreneur is what you have accomplished through innovation and creativity.  

There are 2 critical roles entrepreneurs play in the life of consumers

The role of a Father
Fathers anticipate the needs of their children. Through experience, they know what needs the children may have as they grow, so they prepare for it, and provide it. Successful entrepreneurs are those that anticipate needs and sometimes even create one and eventually solve it. Consumers sometimes don’t know what they really need; it is the responsibility of the entrepreneur to anticipate such need, and figure out how to satisfy it.

The role of a Leader
Leaders lead their followers towards a desired destination. For entrepreneurs, it is not enough to anticipate needs, they have to guide consumers towards satisfaction. Consumers love entrepreneurs that have the capacity to lead them to satisfaction. If you anticipate need and you can’t create a solution that is so innovative and creative that consumers are willing to leave their current solution and move on with you, you are not yet an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs provided a direction with the iPhone and iPad; he created a new path that consumers and competitors willingly followed. That is what entrepreneurs do.  

Entrepreneurship is a duty, an obligation for which you hold yourself accountable for meeting a particular need of the society. You have the duty not just to identify a need, but to innovatively transform that need into a solution that people will be willing to pay for. Every activity an entrepreneur engages in is done with a level of responsibility to the consumers, and it is this responsibility that makes one an entrepreneur.

How Small Businesses can Recover, Grow and Succeed

Small businesses have had their own share of the recent economic crisis that rock the world. While many have absorbed the shook and moved on, others are still struggling with the effects of the recession.

Recently, D&B an organisation that provides insights and actionable information to support small business growth offered some tips on how small businesses can recover, grow and succeed during challenges. These principles include

1. Make use of data: The big businesses are not the only ones who need data to make decisions, small businesses should also take advantage of it to improve on their business decisions.
2. Be transparent with your business: Small businesses that share information on themselves are more likely to get access to capita.
3. Get personal with your customers: Small businesses stand a chance of developing a one-on-one relationship with their customers more than big businesses. Make use of all the channels possible to keep the interaction going on with them.
4. Don't be restricted: Explore new markets, seek for new opportunities, and develop new strategies.
5. Make resilience the norm: Adaptive and agile small businesses are responsive and ready for change 

Quotes on Personal Development

It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who
cannot change.
     --  Confucius


We are either progressing or retrograding all the while;
there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
     --  James Freeman Clarke
 

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be
vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most
ignoble defeat.
      --  Plato
 

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
      --  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
      --  Hamerton

What is a Start-Up?

In business, alot of terms are so difficult to define, and others lack a consensus meaning among experts. One of such terms is START-UP.

What really is a start-up business, and when does it ceases to be a start-up? Below are some of the expressions and illustrations of what a start-up is.

1.    A 'startup' is a company that is confused about --

• What its product is,
• Who its customers are.
• How to make money.             

      As soon as it figures out all 3 things, it ceases to be a startup and then becomes a real business.

                 - Dave McClure

 
2.    A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under  
       conditions of extreme uncertainty.  - Eric Ries 

3.  A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. 
        - Steve Blank:

From the definitions above, a start-up is not yet a business, it is more like a moving object without precised direction and destination under high level of uncertainty, and its operations are temporal until it finds a proper business model.