Have You Got What It Takes to Succeed as an Entrepreneur?

entrepreneur

Being an entrepreneur is more romanticised than ever and popular culture increasingly celebrates entrepreneurship as well. Have you ever thought of being an entrepreneur yourself? Do you have an idea nobody else has thought of? The better question should be: do you have what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur? Sure, new technologies make it easier to start a business, but increased competition means that there’s a smaller piece of the pie for everyone. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before you make the jump.

entrepreneur

Are You Willing to Work Hard?

While it is possible to work part-time on a business or take a second job, the reality is that starting your own business will require far more time than a standard job.

It is common to work six and seven days a week in the startup stage, especially if you’re alone. Twelve-hour days are common. Are you willing to work hard? And are you willing to invest this time though you may fail? Are you self-driven? If you aren’t able to drive yourself to keep going when you aren’t getting paid for your time, you probably shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

And forget about off days and vacation packages if you’re just getting started. You’ll probably won’t have time to delegate at first and you’ll need to be committed to your clients, which means being available to them as much as you can. So, unless you are ready to put the whole weight of the business on your shoulders, then entrepreneurship is definitely not for you.

Are You Willing To Take Risks?

Starting a business is a major risk. An estimated 70% of businesses fail within ten years, though the failure rate depends on the industry and product or service offered. Even if you can start a business without any financial investment, you’re still pouring your time into it. You risk working many hours without pay if the business fails, whereas an hourly job would pay you a predictable wage. If you aren’t willing to risk failure, you’re not qualified to be an entrepreneur.

You can manage the risk by keeping debt to a minimum, only taking measured risks, and being covered by insurance. For example, you could limit your risk by taking out loans to fund the business but refusing to mortgage your house. Look for ways to rent the equipment you need instead of buying and try to buy used instead of new.

Insurance protects you against risk. You can get a quote for business liability insurance at next-insurance.com. Take the time to get familiar with the different types of insurance they offer since you may need additional types of insurance for your business.

Can You Handle Failure?

Your business may fail. That’s one risk we already addressed. However, as an entrepreneur, you will experience failure in many ways on a regular basis. Sales calls will be rejected the vast majority of the time. Your initial product may not sell well, and you may have to change the design or your business model or both. On top of all of this, you have to be realistic. If you set unrealistic expectations, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Are You Willing to Take On Complex Financial Issues?

You’re going to have to take on complex financial issues. A budget is the first step, but you’re going to have to start dealing with taxes and raising funds almost immediately. You’ll have to generate invoices and collect payment due if you want to remain in business. You can reduce the burden by hiring qualified tax experts and an accountant, but you have to be aware of your financial status and plan for future expenditures if you want to stay in business.

Recognize that you don’t have to be a jack of all trades, but you will have to wear many hats, at least at first. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses and know where you’ll need to bring in help and when.

Can You Sell Yourself?

If you’re building a business, you have to be able to sell your business – and at the very start, that is just you. You’re the head of marketing for your new business, selling your services or products. You’ll need to convince investors and lenders to loan you money. You may need to convince others to work for you. If you need constant ego gratification, the constant rejection small business owners face makes entrepreneurship a bad idea.

Conclusion

Read through our list of questions you need to ask yourself to determine if you’re the right type to start your own business. If you feel like you fit the bill, make sure that you research the market for your business or product idea first and have all bases covered before you start.

Continue Reading

How to Succeed as a Business Entrepreneur – 6 Top Ways

Having taken the primary and most important step, which was to set the wheels of your business project into motion, the next step would be to discover new ways to make it grow and prosper successfully. 

It is important to realize that you need to dedicate your heart and soul to the initiative for it to receive a great number of responses.

maxresdefault

The most important thought you would need to inculcate is that this would be a result of all the hard work, the creativity and the love that you put in to bring the project to life. So be ready to breathe it, eat it, dream it and live it!

Make it a point to read some quotes every day. Motivational quotes have the power to influence your mindset and allow you to function effectively!

Here are six important pointers to help you become a successful business entrepreneur!

  • Become more vocal

It is imperative that you break out from that shell of yours and become more social. No better time than now to begin engaging with others who are in the same place as you. The best form of help is self-help.

So let’s start there. Make it a point to get to know different people, and tell them about your new project. Speak freely and with confidence. Make it an engaging conversation. Allow them to pass criticism and pick it up from there. When they see the fire and passion in your voice, they will begin to take you more seriously

  • Marketing Online

Another way to spread the word effectively is talk about on the internet. Create a website that elaborately depicts your project in an intricate, catchy yet professional way. Outline your project details effectively and highlight the essentials. Spread the word by sharing the website page on your social media accounts.

You could use your friends’ and family’s help by asking them to do the same as well. Build a strong front by exploring various such upcoming start-ups and mutually help each other to grow together.

  • Lend a Helping Hand

Remember that there are probably many out there like you trying to come up with their own business ideas, and so it’s much easier when you engage with such people. Don’t hesitate to offer them help and let them know when you come across new, innovative ways to sell your project. This will always come in handy because this way you get to learn so much and have a diverse exposure to all kinds of people and projects.

Also, when you lead a helping hand, you can be sure to receive the same when you need it!

  • Good Strategy and Testing

Come up with a good enough strategy to outline your project, beginning from the initial to final steps of development of the project, making sure you’ve kept in mind all the little details. It must be a fool-proof strategy, and you must be able to work out any shortcomings. Investing into franchises is a great way not to only make money but to start a business in the future.

The final step before delivering the product to the public would be to test it amongst close friends who would appreciate and criticize you at the same time. Absorb the good and work on the negatives.

  • Come Up With Good Customer Service

This is the next big thing which would help your business grow! Put in place a team which dedicates itself to satisfy the needs of your customers. This is highly necessary if you want good reviews and expansion of your business. This will go a long way to getting contacts as well.

  • Believe In Yourself

This is the first and last thing on your mind when you work on your project every day. Trust yourself to make right choices and stand by it. It all works out for the best when you believe in yourself and in your dreams.

Continue Reading

Making The Right Choices When You’re Trading

Making The Right Choices When You're Trading can make the difference between winning and losing

Photo by CC user Kbrose on Wikimedia Commons

You must be sure that you are right in the midst of decision making process. You must decide when, what and how to trade. You also must go through the right learning and unlearning process. While many of us might be talking about how and when and what to trade, we should also know when not to trade and when to get out of the market.

Over the next few lines we will try and have a look at some time tested and proven theorems which could help you in making the right choices when you’re trading. This will help you to move away from a state of mind which often is referred to as “analysis paralysis”.

It Is All About Experience

If you believe that you can become an expert in trading overnight then you are in for some rude shocks. Trading in commodities, indices, and currencies is a learning process and therefore experience is the biggest teacher. Therefore you must believe in learning the tricks of the trade step by step and gather as much experience as you possibly can before heading over to CMC Markets. It would not be a bad idea to keep a trading journal where you should note down each and every significant event as it happens daily. This certainly will help you to identify the areas where you are making mistakes. You will make mistakes for sure but experience is all about learning from the mistakes and not repeating it again.

Do Not Bite More Than You Can Chew

When you are in trading you certainly make use of various types of indicators. It is quite obvious that you could be cluttered with information and each one might interpret these indicators in their own way. You should find out ways and means by which you keep the number of indicators as low as possible. This is important because the more you clutter your decision making process, the more you are likely to make mistakes. Hence you must believe in keeping it simple and straight. This again will happen only with experience and therefore this point and the previous one are closely interlinked.

You Should How To Recover From Mistakes

There are hardly any traders who have not incurred losses and their success story is not all smooth sailing. You must therefore find out ways and means by which you can convert mistakes into learning grounds and learn to profit from it over a period of time. Many people often become paralyzed when they make losses and you should not be one of them if you wish to make it big. You must sit down and analyze the reasons for failure and take lessons from it rather than being stunned into inaction.

Intuition Has A Role To Play

Though many theoretical experts may have a different take on this, it has been proven time and again that your intuition can help you a lot in making the correct trading decision. If you make wrong use of it you could end up in a state of failure. Intuition is something that comes with experience. This is often referred to as expert intuition. You must also try and develop long term intuition. This is about intuition being driven by the brain which works in the background. This could be of strategic importance at times.

At times you might be at a loss to understand as to how your intuition made you take the decision. However, having said this it is important to understand that intuition does not work in thin air. It has to be backed by logic and figures and there should be some basis for it. There have been instances where intuition has enabled traders to take smart and fast decisions.

Importance Of Playing Learning Games

It is important to train the brain so that it is able to think correctly and think fast. You must therefore understand the importance of playing learning games. You will be playing in a demo environment and hence the risk of losing money can be ruled out. You could try and look for games which could help in speeding up the brain and its thinking capacity.

Continue Reading