There are a lot of successful career women who have opted out of their previous employment and have been able to transfer their skill set across to start a business entity, and who have been able to build that into a successful business, a real entrepreneurship.
The Business Dictionary.com defines entrepreneurship as
“the capacity and willingness to develop, organise and manage a business venture, along with any of the risks in order to make a profit”.
The interesting point above is that the person needs to be able to “develop” and also has the “capacity and willingness” to do so.
This almost implies that they are super-human entities who have it altogether and do not suffer the normal frailties that the rest of us do from time-to-time.
It also implies that the person needs to be able to exercise initiative and has the ability to see and take opportunities as they arise. This entrepreneur also needs to be able to make decisions rapidly and make effective decisions about products and services and what to offer the market place, how to do that and when and so on.
An entrepreneur also needs to be able to communicate effectively with internal and external parties and be able to negotiate and secure business contracts and the list goes on and on.
Quite often people misinterpret what trued entrepreneurship is and what the sprit of it really it. There is a difference between just having a business and being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs “gleam” whilst business owners are in need of a “polish”.
When most people start a business, they tend to take on too many roles, trying to save time and money and they get “stuck” with doing the job instead of building their enterprise. If they want to be real entrepreneurs they need to start “polishing” their entire business.
Nobody is gifted with every skill necessary to create, organise and manage a business from start-up to a thriving, successful business venture. Unless and until they recognise that there are enormous personal and financial risks involve d in marketing and growing that business.
That means that the business owner, the new entrepreneur needs to be able to recognise limitations and call for help and outsource to others who are specialist in the areas in which they lack skills.
So, how do you “polish” your entrepreneurship for that extra “gleam”?
Firstly, by recognising those gaps in knowledge and skill sets, asking for help, outsourcing and then developing a future plan of where you want to be at some specified time frame.
When you polish cutlery or the silver goblets or the tea-set, the strategy is to take one item at a time, apply the primer and then at the appropriate time after allowing the polish/primer to dry, you then pick up each individual item, one at a time, and “polish” to satisfaction, that one, individual, item. And then you move onto the next item.
When you want to polish your entrepreneurship it’s exactly the same process. Rather than throw everything into one pot and try to do the lot at once, you instil one new success habit, one at a time.
‘Most people have no idea of the great capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.’
— Tony Robbins
So, if you stopped to address where you want to be and where you are now, and, have engendered outside support and advice (someone not close to the business), identified the strengths and weaknesses within the entity. Then group wanted improvements into categories such as: skills set, marketing, business relationships, mindset, external collaborative opportunities, health and wellness, business goals and so on
The next step is to ask yourself: what is the one new success habit I could instigate within each of these areas you have identified? This one new habit will be THE key habit that will change the course of your particular entity?
When you have done that for each of the categories your next task is to intuitively identify out of all of the categories that ONE key habit that will have a domino effect one some of the other ears you might have identified. This key habit will propel you into a new level of excellence.
For example, one of the skills that many people identify is their ability to communicate their message not only in the written word but also verbally in small or group setting. You may be called upon to deliver a presentation or give a speech.
Most people would choose presentation skills first because everybody admires people who seem to be easily able to express themselves succinctly and with passion, engendering interest from their audience.
So, having identified one new success habit that could be implemented within each category, you then go through your categories and identify from that short list, that one, major, key habit, that will change the course of your business, and perhaps your life, exponentially. And do that first and then do the others, one at a time.
As Tony Robbins has said that ‘mastering’ a single area ‘expands our capacity to command’.
You see, entrepreneurship is not merely starting up a business and taking risks.
There is a certain “flare” that comes with it, of being really good at what you do. And this “flare” is characterised by innovation together with risk-taking, but, being able to apply that ‘in an ever-changing and increasingly competitive global market place’. (Businessdictionary.com)
The ‘flare’ of entrepreneurship give you the ‘gleam’, the edge.
Bu the ’gleam’ comes from the polishing of your skills and areas of need, instigating and mastering new success habits, one at a time.
Just keep polishing!