Starting your business may be an exciting and rewarding experience. It offers numerous merits like setting your schedule, being your boss and earning a living doing something you are passionate about.
However, being an entrepreneur also brings with it some challenges. In this guide we will discuss:
- Characteristics of a good entrepreneur
- Coming up with a business concept, and
- Assessing the market
Now let’s roll our sleeves.
Characteristics of a good entrepreneur
Becoming a successful startup requires sound planning, hard-work, and creativity. As well, it involves taking risks. To evaluate whether starting your business is the perfect outfit for you, consider the following characteristics which are common to most typical successful enterprise owners;
Creativity and Innovation: The first step in starting a business is to come up with a unique idea. It takes creativity and innovation to develop a unique product or service that provides value to clients. Also, entrepreneurs often have to find creative ways to handle daily business problems.
Resilience and persistence: Like any other investment, businesses require time to grow. Very few entrepreneurs produce profits within the first stages of being in business. There will be many failures but you need to look at your failures as tests you are running in order to get the outcome of the experiment and better serve your mission. Entrepreneurs, inevitably, fail because of poor planning, poor market timing, poor funding, poor team and better competitors offering better options. As an entrepreneur, you must learn to live with uncertainties and turn them into opportunities.
Flexibility and Passion: Changes in technology, customers’ tastes and market are rarely controllable hence even a well thought out plan may need to change along the way. Your ability to respond to be flexible and respond to these changes is vital.
While it’s not a must to have all the above qualities, it’s a good idea to think about them to help you determine if entrepreneurship is the right way for you.
Developing business concept
When developing a business idea consider answering the following questions:
What problem do you solve?
Solving a problem is essential to the development of a strong business. The essence of any new innovation is to do something new that saves time and/or money to customers.
What do you offer?
Knowing what you can offer to your clients is essential to building your business. You need to understand the aspects you perform better than others.
What do you want to achieve?
One of the most rewarding factors to consider when developing a business idea is what you want to get out of it. Whether it’s creating something you are passionate about or making money, it’s better to understand if getting into entrepreneurship will provide the desire you want.
What are the current trends in the market?
Successful startups are always on the lookout for the newest opportunities in the market. While the new ideas may not stem out to what you are currently doing; certainly it helps if you combine what is trending with your new expertise.
Assessing the market
After determining the business idea you want to invest in, it’s important to do a preliminary market research to evaluate the viability of the idea. To run a successful business, you need to carry out a market research to learn about the customers, your industry, and the competitors. Market research helps in understanding the best products and services which are currently in demand.
Some ideas to help you get started in assessing the market include:
Understand the market: As a business owner, you need to know what potential customers want, the price they are willing to pay, their taste and what they buy. Think more about your business and define the demographics including, age, location, and income level. Always use customer reviews similar to your idea. Such information may provide valuable insights into why clients choose certain products over others.
Know your competitors and understand your industry: Use the web to research up-to-date business listings in your market. Get to assess how what you offer to compare with competitors. Additionally, it’s important to know what’s going on in your industry even if they are not your direct competitors.
