Impact Partner Content: Absa
Entrepreneurs are those innovators among us who identify a need, any need, and meet it.
Individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset are often drawn to opportunities, ingenuity and new value-creation, and have the ability to take calculated risks. They also accept the realities of change and uncertainty.
The South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) says entrepreneurs spawn new technologies, products and services, and create new markets and jobs in the process. Entrepreneurs are smart risk-takers, implementers, rule-breakers and visionaries, and, like any emerging economy aiming to move ahead, Africa needs many of them. The IDC believes that transforming ideas into economic opportunities is the crux of entrepreneurship.
According to Donna M. De Carolis (PhD), founding dean of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship at Drexel University in the USA, being entrepreneurial is essentially about thinking and doing something that has not been done before, in order to achieve a desirable outcome. “It is about assessing a situation, designing alternatives, and choosing a new way — or perhaps a combination of ways — that we hope will lead us to something better. Hopefully, we make our choices in the context of maximizing our happiness without harming others — the ethics that underlie all of our choices,” she says.
In an article in Forbes, Patrick Hull said: “Entrepreneurs are confident in themselves and their abilities. They recognise that they don’t know everything or control all the available resources. Instead, they have a keen ability to understand what they need. Then, they go get it. They educate themselves or partner with others who have a needed skill set or experience.” The ability to see and understand opportunity is critical for entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurs like to challenge themselves and search for opportunities. Entrepreneurs are less risk averse than many, but they don’t take foolish risks. Rather, they calculate the risks of a situation, and will take the risk if they think they can beat the odds.
“Being an entrepreneur can be challenging, lonely and risky. It can also be fun, friendly and financially fabulous. But there is a 90% chance that you will fail at some stage as an entrepreneur. The real difference between success and failure is mindset,” says mindset expert, motivational speaker and author, Tony Dovale.
Dovale explains that your mindset is about how you habitually see, think, and believe, as well as how you filter, focus and process in a certain context or situation. This controls attitudes and actions. “Think of mindset as the internal mental lens through which you see and navigate life. Inside your brain, you automatically and unconsciously combine your personal experiences, natural traits, and education to form your unique life lens. That’s why your mindset, your inner lens, colours everything. It controls the way you see and navigate through the world.”
E-Myth author Michael E. Gerber says that, as you go to work on your business (as opposed to in it), you must think beyond what the day-to-day reality of your business calls you to do. “As an entrepreneur, you must rise above the stuff of doing it, doing it, doing it. It means you must ask meaningful questions about your role in the world, your community, and how you can institutionalise your new-found perspective into the genes of your company, so that it lives, speaks and demonstrates it in every action your company takes.”
Business consultant and author Janis Pettit explains that business owners fall into two categories: the self-employed and the entrepreneur. The self-employed are those who have a talent or skill that people are willing to pay for. It is not long before they find themselves working too many hours, constantly trying to fill the pipeline with new prospects.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are the business owners who seem to grow their businesses effortlessly, and maintain steady growth. Although they work hard, they enjoy three-day weekends and overseas holidays, and are able to spend time with friends and family. They have gained the entrepreneurial mindset.
“An entrepreneur is a great strategist and a master at getting others excited about helping them grow their business. They know they need to develop multiple profit centres in their business, not just one or two, so they’re constantly looking for creative opportunities to do so. And some of those profit centres need to be passive income that is not dependent on their time,” says Pettit.
Entrepreneurship means careful planning, strategising, measuring results against expectations and re-adjusting, taking calculated risks and learning from the ideas that fail.
