There are many reasons why you might want to become an entrepreneur. For most people, often it’s just because they can’t find a job that pays enough, can’t find something that’s interesting enough, or challenging enough. Other times, it comes after a long life of working for others and moving up in a company and after that, understanding that they can do much more with their own business. Others start a business because they want time freedom and flexibility.

While there are many reasons for becoming an entrepreneur, it’s important to choose the best business and run it properly if you wish to become a successful entrepreneur. It’s easy to say you’re an entrepreneur, but it’s an entirely other thing to truly do it successfully.

What is an Entrepreneur?

There is a lot of discussion about what makes an entrepreneur, both online and offline. For example, a freelancer is not really an entrepreneur in the sense of creating a business that they can retire from and still generate passive income, or sell to somebody else to keep running in the long run.

An entrepreneur builds an organisation that can outlast them. 

A freelancer earns money providing services or benefits for someone else. But, if that person is out of the picture, the freelancer won’t get any cash. An entrepreneur also takes a financial risk that is greater than average to run their business, while a freelancer generally doesn’t have that many expenses.

Both are perfectly genuine ways to make money, but the goal is slightly different. One is to work and make money, and the other is to build something that is about more than earning money and will outlive you and continue to generate income. 

You can choose to call either one of these, freelancer or business owner, an entrepreneur, but technically there is a mindset difference that is very subtle:

• Entrepreneurs develop a business that outlives themselves
• Freelancers construct jobs that support themselves and their household

The difference is small but it is an important distinction when it comes to talking about becoming an entrepreneur. 

Do You Have What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur?

The other aspect of entrepreneurship that is necessary to take into account is whether you have the personality to do it or not. Are you self-motivated? Can you act without a boss? If you see you are missing out on a few of the personality traits that entrepreneurs have, can you make up for it by investing in tools and resources that can help you or by outsourcing?

What Characteristics Do You Need to Become an Entrepreneur?

There are a lot of blog posts and articles you can read online about all the personality traits that an entrepreneur needs to have. Many of them bring up the idea of being passionate about your work; however, there are more important elements than passion when it comes to business success.

Some days you will hate your business. You will get demotivated and want to quit. Enthusiasm and or passion about your work is important but you also need to be motivated by the results. This list of personalities and characteristics that you need to be effective all depend on your ability to do the work.

1. Expertise 

You need to understand what you are doing. At the very least, you need to have someone you can depend on who understands what they are doing. You can outsource, so you don’t need to know exactly how to do every little thing. Your main job as the entrepreneur is to plan, finding clients and assigning the work to other people.

2. Determination 

Once you start a business, you can not quit when the first thing goes wrong. You need to be able to stick it out till you see success. If you have done the research and you have the actions planned, you need to do those before throwing in the towel. Stay with it for a minimum of a certain amount of time before giving up.

3. Resilience 

To put it bluntly, an entrepreneur needs to be able to fall and get back up instantly. Things are going to happen that trigger you to second-guess yourself. That is normal. All organisations have typical ups and downs. Your capability to weather these storms is what will make you an entrepreneur.

4. Resourcefulness

A great deal of people believe you need a lot of resources to start a business, however in reality, you just need to be resourceful enough to recognise when you have access to something remarkable. Some of your resources may be money, people, or technology.

5. Motivation

If you don’t have the natural ability to motivate yourself and others to achieve a vision or goal that you have in your own head, it’s going to be hard to be successful. However, if you lack motivation but you have the skills and desire, you can buy it in the form of a coach to help you find it.

6. Commitment 

Commitment is the ability to truly remain in your business one hundred percent. You don’t want to just dabble in this business. You want to do your due diligence and after that, stick to your business and do your best to make it work. 

7. Take Risks

Owning and running a business is a journey that is going to be a lot like being on a rollercoaster. There will be ups and there will be downs. Sometimes you will go really quickly between the two; that’s the way it is. Understand that it’s ok to take risks and without being uncomfortable, you will go nowhere.

Other qualities are also crucial, but when you discover that entrepreneurs incorporate all kinds of characters, from introverts to extroverts and everything in between, you rapidly recognise what makes them effective.

Research and taking tactical forward action that helps you reach the objectives you make is what it takes. In other words, take action makes you successful. You can have all the planning in the world but if you donít execute and do something, nothing will happen.

Once you decide on becoming an entrepreneur, the next thing you need to do is to choose which kind of business you need to start to be successful and how to continuously produce incredible systems to help you grow and scale your online business. In the next video fo this series, let’s take a look at exactly how that is done. 

Steps to Choose the Right Business for You

Choosing the best business to begin, based upon what you understand about yourself so far, is the first thing you need to do to build your dream. Letís take a look at how you can pick the right business for you.

Step #1: Know How Much You Need/ Hope To Make

This might seem like an unusual place to start, however whether we like it or not, money is how we spend for our lives. It’s what enables us to get the education we want, go to the medical professional, purchase homes, enjoy entertainment and so much more.

What kind of lifestlye do you want to live? Where do you want to be one, three, five years down the line. Pick a number of what you’d like to make. Validate it by producing a little one-page budget plan, so you understand it is a possible goal.

Think about everything, including of just how much tax you’ll require to pay and possible business expenses. When it comes to income, the only thing that actually matters is what you take home. That’s the money you can spend and invest into yourself.

Step #2: Know Your Ability

The abilities you have right now are vital for you to understand. What are you good at? As you evaluate different types of businesses, it’s necessary that you know what you do well, what you do poorly, and what you don’t ever want to do again.

You can begin by listing the things you done previously, what you have education for doing, what credentials you have, and anything you’ve done for fun as well that needed certain skills. Now, just make a list without any of your own opinion or thought as to whether you like it or not. You might have the skill and dislike it, but thatís not important right this minute.

Step #3: Recognise the Right Kind Of Business for You

Considering your capability, what industry do those fall in? Understanding the specific niche and industry where your abilities fit in best is valuable. You might also choose to start with a specific kind of service because you currently already know you want to do it. If you already think you know, what is it about that niche that calls to you?

Something to consider is how much it costs to start that specific service. It’s also important to know what type of business you do not wish to do. If you absolutely never want to do anything with MLM, that’s fine. Make it your objective to pick something else.

Based on your abilities, jot down a couple of various concepts that enter your mind. Again, don’t use any type of judgment at this moment. After youíre done, you can go through and mark through the “no” ideas and highlight the “yes” concepts.

Step # 4: Determine Who You Like Serving

Something to take a look at in any given industry is the type of audience you like working with. If you don’t like people who are served by that kind of business, you’ll hate your business. If you like the audience who you serve, you’re going to enjoy your business and feel great about it.

Jot down a description of the kind of target audience you’d like to work with. What are their worths? What are their problems? Do they have cash to spend for issue solving? The number of are they? Can you make money from that audience?

Step # 5: Know Why You Are Doing This

It’s also important to always keep in mind why you are choosing a particular type of business. Know your why – whether it’s because you had a problem that you found the solution for, or if it’s because you like working with the type of people that this business serves, or something else. Your story is your story. Be sure to tell it to your audience.

Taking the time to explore alternatives and new opportunities before you get started is all part of the process and journey of becoming an entrepreneur. Many people spend a lot of time researching until they find just the right thing. Once you do find the right thing, you can easily get started in your business. 

Know How you’ll Manage All Aspects of Your Business

Once you know the niche, the industry, and the people youíll serve, you can start thinking about how youíll run and manage your business. A typical business has several aspects that needs to be managed. Yours may have all of these or only some, but you need to consider how you’ll deal with each one that applies to your business.

1. Production

How will you produce your product or service? What type of product are you making? Is it physical or digital? How and who will make it? How much will it cost? What are all the parts you need to work together to get it to work?

For example, if you want to promote and sell affiliate software, that’s a digital product. Will you outsource the project to someone who is going to code it for you? Can you code it? You need to plan out every single aspect of production and know who is responsible for it.

2. Research and Development

How will you research your audience to keep creating amazing products for them? How will you research your competition? What means will you use to compile the data you collect? How often will you look at it and what will you use it for?

3. Purchasing

It depends on your business, but all companies have to make purchases. You need to create a process for purchases, even if it’s just you. How do you decide the price and who to choose to buy from? How will you keep track of the vendors you use? Who will maintain the relationships?

4. Marketing

No business can succeed without marketing. What type of marketing do you want to do, and how will you do it? If you are planning to include social media marketing in your efforts, which platforms will you use? In this case, you may need to start with your budget and then choose your marketing method based on how much you can invest.

Online marketing is an important marketing method to use today. You can get started online with free marketing tools, but you should determine which is best based on your business and your audience’s needs.

5. Sales

Do you need to hire people, work with joint venture partners, or bring on some affiliates? What software will you use? What features should it have? How will you handle sales? What type of software do you need to manage your customer relationships?

For example, when someone buys from you, that’s only one part of the sale. There are transactional emails and follow-ups that must be done to ensure customer happiness and satisfaction so that you can create repeat buyers.

6. Human Resources

How will you handle your freelancers, employees, and others who work with and for you? Are you aware of the legalities of each? Is there a professional you can outsource to on a contract basis that you know about? Do you want to hire someone full time to deal with this? If you have several employees and contractors, itís in your best interest to have someone on staff or a contractor you can call on to ensure youíre doing things legally.

7. Accounting and Finance

What is your chosen business structure? How will you do your bookkeeping? Will you use a specific program? Will you hire a CPA to help? Do you have the skills to do it yourself? What about paying your taxes? Paying quarterly taxes (USA) is imperative. You must pay on every single dollar you earn from day one of your business.

Getting this appropriately organized is imperative. More than one business has taken a fall even though they were profitable due to unpaid taxes, and sometimes they even end up paying more than they should due to poor organization and commingling of business funds and personal funds.

You need to figure out each of these characteristics of your business and figure out how youíll deal with them. You may need to develop a team, find mentors to help you, take a course, or any number of actions to get started. Go through each area with your business in mind to make an action list.

Run Your Business Right 

Once you have figured out the business you want to start, know who your audience is and where they are, and get things in place to get started, youíll need to ensure that you are legal and running your business right. To do that, you need the best tools you can afford, and a plan to follow going forward.

1. Get Legal

It depends on where you live and the type of business you are starting, but in most cases, youíre going to need to get a business license. In some cases, you’ll need more than one. How much the business license costs and the type depend on where you live too.

Check out the potential for needing the following:

• Business license
• Federal and state (or county) tax ID
• Registered business
• Permits
• Licensing
• Business bank account
• Trademarks
• Copyrights
• Patents
• Business structure
• Inspections
• Labels
• Other

2. Get Support

Like most things, it totally depends on your situation, but you need support as an entrepreneur – people that you can go to who will always tell you the truth and who also support your dreams. You may want to involve a coach, family members, a mentor, or someone else like a professional banker, CPA, or something like that.

Before you hire a coach, be sure to get to know them. Check out their groups, pages, and websites, and join one of their less expensive options first to make sure youíre a good fit. Any professional you want to bring on your team for support should be vetted to ensure they share your dreams and your values.

3. Learn from the Experts

Identify three to five movers and shakers in your niche to follow so you can start learning. They may be your competition too. You can learn so much from them as you build out your business idea. They say that the best place to open a successful coffee shop is right across the street from a successful coffee shop. Donít fear your competition.

Your competition doesnít have to be someone who is “bad.” The competition is not the enemy. You can learn from them and even team up with them on issues you both care about. Mostly, you can learn from them. Learn what they do well and learn what they do poorly so you can do better.

4. Find and Get to Know Your Audience

Now that you know who youíll serve and what you want to do for them, itís time to find the audience and get to know them. You can use Google Alerts to set up a keyword or term that will then send you emails every day about that topic.

Follow the people your audience follows. Read the news they read. Get to know the gurus they like to follow too, whether you like them or not. There is something about them that your audience likes, and you can help them.

5. Create Processes and Systems

One thing that is important if you want to be a successful entrepreneur is to set up processes and systems for the business. The more you can automate, the better. If you can automate your inventory process, you will make more money. Thatís how Walmart took over the discount department stores.

Set up processes for everything, even things you can not automate. When you check the mail, you should have a process for that. When you set up processes and times to do tasks, you can turn them into habits and become much more efficient.

6. Learn about the Butterfly Effect

Learn what you can about the butterfly effect and incremental change. When you realise that every little step you do in an orderly manner will get you to the end, it becomes a no-brainer to set up your business that way.

Sending out an email to your subscribers automatically every single day is an excellent way to build relationships with them. Even though itís only one step, the fact that itís automated will make all the difference because it will free you up to do other things that improve your business.

The thing to remember is that you do not need to reinvent the wheel. You can make a better wheel if needed, but you can use the wheels that exist right now to get started. Running your business “right” simply means that you go about things in a legal and organized manner with a goal in mind, using processes and systems to get things done more efficiently.

Keep in mind that even if you do all these steps and try to account for everything, sometimes issues happen. Many can be avoided, though, so letís go over some common obstacles to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Common Obstacles to Successful Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a way for many people to successfully build something that will take care of them and their family for generations. Itís also fraught with barriers to entry, obstacles, and challenges that can become roadblocks to success. Letís go over this so that you know exactly what to look for.

1. Finding Start-Up Capital

Starting a business can be expensive and even when it isnít, it can be hard to come up with the money to get started. There are ways to get money. There are banks, but even PayPal offers loans to entrepreneurs without even checking their credit.

2. Cashflow Management

Once you start earning money, often itís not going to be the same amount every month like a job. Itís going to sometimes be a lot and sometimes be nothing. Due to this, you need to learn how to manage your cash flow in a way that considers slow times and booming times.

3. Hiring Employees

Youíll need to ensure you know the laws if you are going to hire people. This is a lot of information to learn so you may want to make your first hire someone with the right knowledge to help set it all up.

4. Using Freelancers and Contractors

Often you may want to contract out work to someone however not employ them as a staff member. You can work with freelancers and specialists who often own their own service. You’ll give up some control over the work, however, you tell them what you expect in the deliverables.

5. Time Management

Twenty-four hours. That’s all you get. That’s all anybody gets. Often, it can appear as if the world anticipates entrepreneurs to have more. Learn everything about scheduling the work that you require to do and how to avoid traffic jams to do better with time management. Likewise, stop multitasking.

6. Handing Over and Releasing

Something that can actually obstruct an entrepreneur is their failure to let go and let someone else do the work. As an entrepreneur who is developing something larger than themselves, letting other individuals do the work they’re an expert at doing without your micromanaging will be a major source of success in your life as an entrepreneur.

7. Understanding Technology

Depending upon your specific niche and market, there is going to be the innovation that you may want to learn. Nevertheless, you might need to let someone else do it rather. Having stated that, do look for a fundamental understanding of tech that you pick to utilize.

8. Marketing

When it concerns company, you must “constantly be marketing.” This is according to the experts and according to effective individuals. There are numerous forms of marketing to discover, including online marketing, offline marketing, and everything in between. Content marketing is among the most important kinds of marketing today.

9. The Things You Don’t Know

Everybody has things they don’t understand, however, the problem is that we also have things we don’t recognize that we do not know. There will be principles that you have actually never ever even considered which you do not know about. That’s why you must constantly listen to your audience, your consumers, and your competitors.

10. The Tax Man

One concern lots of entrepreneurs face becomes the issue with paying taxes. Often small entrepreneurs simply put this aspect of their company out of their minds, thinking it’ll all be okay April 15th (in the USA). It won’t be all right. You need to accept an expert to set this up best and avoid losing your whole company due to owing a lot of taxes.

11. Self-Doubt

This is probably one of the biggest barriers you’re going to deal with as an entrepreneur. Many individuals that you understand, and love are going to act as naysayers when you say you want to begin a business. It’s most likely going to cause you to be afraid, but you need to stand strong in your knowledge and the research study you do and keep going.

Finally, one of the most significant barriers to entrepreneurial success is you. Do the actions it takes to discover the right company to start for you. Make a commitment to stick to it based on the data you create. If you do your due diligence initially, you will not be as likely to come down with these challenges.

Let’s start your entrepreneurial journey

If you still want to begin a company after reading this, let’s look at how you can start right now. You’re simply a couple of minutes far from the beginning of constructing your future. You might want to build an empire, or you might wish to build a good household company – it depends on you where you go on this journey, however you do have to get going.

1. Understanding Yourself

Carry out a SWOT on yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesss, chances, and threats? The more you understand about yourself, the much better. It’s essential that you operate with harsh sincerity when it comes to starting. If you understand that you’re not good at sticking to things, that is a factor to consider that you should try to figure out how to work around, such as by employing a business coach or business supervisor.

2. Use Your Skills

When you are attempting to figure out the type of business to begin, it’s always better to go with something you already understand how to do – unless you are the type of individual who can stick through lots of education and education. If you are, that’s terrific. You can select to start any type of service with that kind of action.

3. Conduct Marketing Research

When you have actually narrowed down an idea, don’t start doing it right away. You need to investigate the idea. If you don’t, you may waste a lot of money trying to go all in. Instead, carry out smaller sized tests to discover if your market wants what you have.

4. Talk to Specialists

Find someone you trust that is a professional in starting an organisation or the type of organisation you want to start. You can go to an organization to get help too, such as SCORE.org or other enterprise in your neighborhood. You may be amazed at what is available for you. The feedback the specialists can provide is vital.

5. Make It Legal

When you are sure about the type of service you want to start, don’t enter halfway. Establish your business structure. Choose your organisation name and register your business with the proper authorities. Take care of your tax information with the federal and local governments. Get all the permits you need and so forth. Remember to set up trademarks, copyrights, and patents. Also, do not forget to set up your checking account.

Here is a fantastic free legal course you can take to understand more about being legal!

Conclusion

Most of all, get started. Set up a timeline to go by so that you have a beginning and an end in mind. Do not say “I’m going to begin a company” and then five years later not have done it. Instead, be intentional about what you say you’ll do and then back it up by going through the actions and taking the action you require.

Keep in mind, the most successful businesses are carried out by people who are invested. They are implementors to the max. When you set up your service plan, set it up for doing something about it and doing things. When you do take action, you’re going to be that much more likely to be successful. What are you awaiting?