The Idea of Becoming an Entrepreneur
Essay Preview: The Idea of Becoming an Entrepreneur
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An entrepreneur is someone who owns and manages their own business. The idea of becoming an entrepreneur is very appealing to many people. Across the country, more people than ever are being exposed to the entrepreneurial thinking. Colleges are even offering more entrepreneurship courses for business and non-business majors, thereby increasing the new business genre. Society wants to obtain the luxury of being your own boss, putting a product or service in the market that may make a difference and making all of your own decisions. Starting your own business has so many perks, but there are certain risks involved in getting the business off the ground. According to the Small Business Association, approximately one million businesses are started each year. By the end of the first year at least forty percent of them will be closed and within the next five years, eighty percent will have failed. The statistic generates fear in future entrepreneurs, but taking charge of your destiny doesnt have to be a mere dream. There are key concepts that entrepreneurs must obtain in order to increase their chance for success.
Why do businesses tend to fail? This is the grand question or mystery that all small businesses and entrepreneurial people want to know about and how to avoid it. For most, there is a 60% or higher rate that your business will not make it out of the gate. There are ten main reasons why businesses tend to fail within the first few years of existent. Here is a few ranging from lack of management, poor bookkeeping, procrastination, ignoring the competition, ignoring customersÒ needs, cash flow problems all the way to location just to name a few. As you begin to start your business you must sit down and allocate your expense and task to what and where it should go to. You must spend time to understand what you are going to produce and who you are going to target in the market. By introducing manager with no experience to your set business back until they are trained enough to understand the business. Most of the time if you hire a person you look for qualities that can help a business grow, but most of the time if you have no direction besides just making money then you will hire sub-level competence managers. This also goes for your financial records and location. If you have an accountant that does not have the skill level to run your books then you can never tell if you are making enough to profit or buy supplies.
The next biggest problem is to separate your business expense and money from personal money and expenses. By not doing this most entrepreneurs and small business owners tend to use all the money that comes in and does not know were it comes from or how they got it. After, these problems there are problems about motivating people and interaction with customers that must be addressed. The reason for this is that without workers or customers you do not have a business to operate. During this time you must create a place were customers wanted to come and use your service or product, as while as a nice and come