Often, people wonder, what makes a good entrepreneur. Is it the attitude or the mindset? Are his/her experience on a certain segment of the market or his/her ability to develop and exploit opportunities, where before him/her where none. The problem is that there is no a single answer. There are many depending on each one’s knowledge, experience, and interests. But there are few characteristics many people agree upon!
Entrepreneur Αs A Leader?
One of the most common characteristics of a successful entrepreneur is that he/she is a leader in his/her field! That would be an understatement if the leadership clause does not match a certain kind of profile and character to go with the leadership features a successful entrepreneur should have.
A successful entrepreneur is someone many people would follow and try to imitate his/her action. That it is always difficult because leadership is a feature (or quality) very elusive!
It includes a certain mindset, an initiative for change or better things, the propensity to go beyond what others were done and more over a mindset that would provide you (or make you develop) the incentives, knowledge, skills, and contacts you need to fulfill your vision. At least!
The Search For Clear Goals
But vision is not enough! Vision can get you to a certain point, but after that, as in training, you need to go after clear and precise goals.
Clear goals in a business venture, is not always easy to be accomplished. There are many myths, about it, but the most state that “if you build it, they come!” You know what, rarely that happens, and if that happens you need a ridiculously huge amount of effort to make a business running on such premises.
Business is about creativity, innovation, novel ways of doing things, or better ways to do what you have to do.
To do that, an entrepreneur should he/she be always on his/her toes and listen carefully to his/her niche market for the things he/she could improve.
And for this, he/she should have a clear picture of what his/her business is!
Business?
Most people launch a new operation aiming at making some money they do not know what their business really is! Business for them is a way to leverage their “abilities and skills” and provide them some extra money to do what matters to them.
Maybe correct as an approach, wrong as a business life decision! To sell something is not a business. It is just a sell. It starts to become a business only after the moment this activity is consistent and can support you financially.
You cannot expect to be a professional if you do something of this or something of that and just getting some money to get your ends meet!
You become a professional when you provide the best you can to the people can benefit to most of what you offer and at a price, they can match according to their requirements!
A Model Of Operation
In order, you start your venture in business you need SMART goals, something to offer, people willing to pay for what you offering and a unique value proposition. That’s about all the components comprise a business. Isn’t it?
Well, it isn’t, actually, because what separates a good business to a bad one is its model of operation.
If the vision, express the why of a business, the model of operation defines the how to bring this vision into existence. But do no think, the model of operation as something extremely narrow prescribes just a set of procedures and rules on how the things should be done!
The model of operation of a business is the sum of the aggregated beliefs, mindsets, working habits, intermediate goals, temporary products, services, support and involved agent’s actions should align and integrated into one unique, fine tuned and always aligned strategy towards a prescribed and clear defined end.
The operations usually defined in a strict framework within a business, but they govern the large part of how and where the things should be directed.
At the end of the day, the procedures of a well fitted in its market organization should aim only to one end: how to provide more value to the people the organization has developed to serve!
How To Provide Value
Every company, organization, market agent, etc. aims at provides value to its niche market. But not all organizations do so!
There are many reasons for this problem, but the most common ones are:
- Lack of clear vision and ruling guidelines
- Absence of interested customers
- Failure in operation in a given niche market
- Weakness to define the value it aims to provide in relation to the people it intends to serve
- Negligence of checking in what there and what problems need to be solved
- Failure of defining the ideal for the business customers
- Development of a service or product isolated from the market requirements
To provide value you need first and foremost to define what you are going to do to whom!
Get Your Clients
To do so, you need to start a bottom-up approach defining who you aim to serve with your business activity before anything else! You don’t start, as the most business, on what you can do as an entrepreneur; you start by the common area of:
- What you know,
- What you love doing,
- What it is needed, and
- Who is willing to pay for it
trying to find the people who can benefit the most from your activity (your audience) upon this common area! This is your foundation and the people of reference and upon that base, you start building your business.
Once you have reflected on that you can start to think, reflect, question, survey and verify what are the problems your clients have, what can make their life easier or more convenient, what would make them more happy, healthy, effective, productive, etc.
When you find what their requirements are it is the time to build the proper relationships with those people you have to decide to serve with your business activity!
The relationship you are going to build, if they are real and fueled by your character, authenticity and genuine interest to provide something of value to those people, are eventually going to create a community of common interests and requirements you have partially (or fully) cover with your activities!
Provide the Right Product/Service At The Right Price
The development of this community around your business activities (either product, or services, items, or training, or other info-products) will guide your efforts towards the development of the rights (for this audience) products and services!
It cannot be otherwise, because what your community needs it is known only to them, and you should be able to listen what they have to say, in order to provide the solutions the cover their requirements.
This approach is the only one if you want to become a successful entrepreneur which not only would have a successful business, but he/she would be certain that provide more value for his/her actions than anyone before him/her.
It is not a question of quantity. It is rather a question of quality! You approach the needs of the people you care about to serve in a Kaizen fashion (implementing baby steps, towards to find out what’s important to them) for being able to provide them the best possible output for their requirements!
Develop & Create Opportunities
A good entrepreneur would always keep on listening to his/her audience, have a specific, growth oriented mindset, which would provide him/her the flexibility to change what’s not longer pertinent and alter his/her output in favor of his/her, clients.
In that level, the cost might be great, but a successful entrepreneur knows well, that if he/she is unable to deliver a high ROI for his/her product services to his/she clients, all his/her effort would be in vain!
And if he/she fall to this “comfort zone” (his/her success makes him/her stop listening) he/she would stop developing new opportunities which would drive his/her next business efforts.
And that would be a shame because an effective entrepreneur is the one who can create new leads and opportunities not only for his/her brand but for his/her audience, as well!
Question: What is your definition of a successful entrepreneur? You can write and leave your comments or your questions, by clicking here.Â
