1. Start By Thinking Like An Entrepreneur
If you want to change your status to that of an entrepreneur, you need to start thinking like one. You need to change your mentality from just anything to something. Have the mind of doing business and to succeed. have a mind of anything is possible. That is the first step towards becoming an entrepreneur.
2. Find a cause
I often share with my foulks that the first thing one must do is to find a purpose, or define a vision for him or herself. And that is because if one does not know where one is going, one will never get there.
In order to find a cause and define a vision for yourself, ask yourself these questions:
What am I passionate about? What are my talents?
What does the world need? And how can my talents help solve a specific need?
What do I want to be known for?
2. Surround yourself with great people:
Jamie Dunn, 21, shortlisted as one of the top 20 young people in the world, says that the most important step he took towards success was to change his surrounding and the people with whom he spent time.
In his own words, I am a big believer that you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with most, and at a specific time in my life I wasn't surrounded by positive people who told me that I could achieve things. Instead, I was surrounded by people who told me that I couldn't. And I used the classic line success doesn't happen to people like us.
When I broke out of that circle out of that mindset that was holding me back and started spending my time with people who encouraged me, I found myself much more confident and actually achieving things.
3. Take action:
The old adage knowledge is power is wrong. At least, partially wrong. You can have the greatest ideas in your head, but if you dont put them into practice, they become worthless. The true mark of success lies in having the courage to invest emotionally, physically and financially in your idea.
Param Jaggi, 18, a successful inventor, says that the most important step was when he took his ideas from design into tangible form. He says, There is an interesting dichotomy between people that 'design and talk' about work and others that actually 'build and create.' When I was about 13, I reached a point where I had designed green-technologies on paper. At that point, I took a huge step by going into the lab and actually creating the technologies that I had been envisioning and talking about. To say the least: it was not easy. There is absolutely no glamour behind doing tedious and disruptive lab work. However, there is no greater feeling in the world when you create your first prototype or minimally viable product.
What is preventing you from taking action? What ideas, visions, are you keeping for yourself? Write them down and design a schedule that will help you implement them, little by little.
4. Turn the bad into good:
Rejection is a part of our everyday lives: often a phone call does not go through; a relationship turns sour; an investment does not pay off, and so forth. Instead of dwelling on the negatives, successful entrepreneurs have learned how to find strength in the highs and the lows, ups and downs.
When you face a challenging situation or rejection, know that those challenges can be used to help you go even further. Dont put your dreams in the backburner because things didnt play out the way you wanted them to. As life coach Veronica Cuyugan tell us, use those challenges and fears as motivating factors to help you succeed.
5. Never, ever give up:
As important as knowing which direction to go to is your ability not to give up until you reach your goals. When obstacles appear; when calls aren't returned,remember what brought you to where you are, in the first place. It would make no sense for you to give up now. Keep pushing. Keep striving. Keep facing thesun. For each rejection, ask yourself, What can I do differently? What can I learn from this situation? Finally, say to yourself: I am bigger than this.
These are the first 5 steps you need to align you life with. When you learn how to do the above, the rest wouldn't be a problem. Below are the 11 ways to become an entrepreneur both online and offline.
1. Choose Your Niche
It is very important that you choose your niche from the start. Decide what kind of business you want to do from the onset. When you do this, it means you can then focus all your efforts into that one business type instead of just anything or everything, like the saying goes, "Jack of all trade, master of none."
2. Starting Your Own Business
The best way to become an entrepreneur is to start your own business. It may not be easy at first, but when you take your time to develop the traits of an entrepreneur and take the steps listed above, you can be sure that you are on the right path to success.
3. Buy An Existing Firm
Outright Buy - When Microsoft bought an existing operating system from a Seattle company for $50,000 in 1979, they developed the operating system into MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System), which became the standard operating system in the computer industry. Pushing Microsoft sales to $16 million dollars in 1981.
It is not all the time that entrepreneurs start a business from the scratch. You Entrepreneurs can buy an existing business that interests you and modify it to your taste.
You can also become an entrepreneur by buying a franchise. A franchise is an authorization granted by a company (franchisor) to an individual or group (franchisee), giving them the permission to market their products. So, if you already have a product that you are interested in marketing, all you need to do is meet with the maker of the product and apply for a franchise.
It is usually a legal agreement and you can become really successful doing franchises. Examples of a successful franchise company is the South African Shoprite group.
4. Know Every Detail And Create Plan
After you have chosen your niche, you need to understand everything there is to know about the type of business you choose. For instance, if you decide to start manufacturing a particular commodity, you need to know the class of people that will be needing the product. Is the product a necessity (for everybody)or is it made for a particular group of people. Just like diapers are made for children, you can easily determine its market.
Again, you need to know what is generally acceptable or the standard in the market. You can take samples of existing products and make your own to see how people will respond, before going ahead to start proper production.
5. Look For Investors
One thing that can easily kill a business is lack of start-up and running capital. Therefore, you need to look for investors before embarking on the journey of starting a business.
6. Get Connections Through Networking
It is very important that you build a support network when starting a business. You need partners, referrals, allies and supporters. People that will help in growing your business either directly or indirectly. You can join the association of the particular business you are going into. e.g Association of Poultry Distributors in that is if you want to go into chicken distribution. You can also register at the chamber of commerce in your locality.
5. Set Goals And Make Plans For Your Business
Setting goals and making business plan is essential to successfully starting a business and growing it. It is like a to do list and it will guide your actions when starting your business.
6. Invest Wisely to Attract More Money
Even though one of the important traits of an entrepreneur is risk taking, you still need to invest wisely. You cannot invest in any business that you don't fully understand the pros and cons or that is uncertain. you need to have a level of certainty before you can invest in a particular business.
7. Take Business And Investment Risks
As much as you need to be cautious when investing, you still need to take some risks if you want to succeed. Some business, may not present everything you need to know at first, which means you may not know the details until you start something. In this case, you must take the risk if you want to know the outcome.
8. Out Smart Your Competition
It is very essential that you know the competition in your market. After choosing your niche, you must study existing competition. Know their products, market price, advantage over the market and devise means of entering into the market. when you no all this, increase your ways of doing things in that business . Remember, great people do things differently.
9. Market Your Business
What is the essence of a business that people know nothing about? This is why you need to market your business to the world. It may not necessarily be on TV, radio or newspaper, but in any little way that is possible, advertise your business.
Nowadays, people complain that on the average, most internet users spend hours on the internet, doing nothing other than Facebooking, Twitting, Whatsapping and using any other social media at their disposal. You as an entrepreneur, can use this to your advantage. You can put your business on the social media and appeal to your friends to share to their other friends.
With the internet revolution, a lot of people are maximizing the opportunity and make millions from the use of the internet. Online retailers like Jumia, Ezibuy in Australia are all utilizing the internet in generating income for themselves. So many businesses have been revolutionized with this method of online marketing.
10. Save to Reinvest
You cannot become an entrepreneur if you don't cultivate the habit of saving. You need to avoid frivolities and be very disciplined if you want to become an entrepreneur and not just an entrepreneur, but a successful one. Also, you should not put all your eggs in one basket. In other words, you should invest in more than one place. Diversify your investments.
11. Enter Into Partnership
Partnership is also a good way of doing business. You can make it as an entrepreneur by partnering with other businesses. If you think you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, you have money to invest and you know a few people with business ideas that are in line with yours, you can partner with them.
With all this listed, i hope their is someone there that will start taking actions and start to think like an entrepreneur.
Thank you
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