This weekend I attended a forum hosted by the Marketing Society of Kenya where I had the pleasure of speaking as well as listening to others share their experiences in this journey called entrepreneurship. This article highlights a few of the key common messages that came out and dispels some myths for those who would like to be entrepreneurs.
Firstly just because you run your own business does not mean you are an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is largely a way of thinking and many self employed remain just that i.e. self employed because of not understanding this. Working IN your business and working ON your business are two separate things. If you cannot leave your business for a month without it falling apart, you are working in your business. You are an employee who has the added pressure of having to be responsible for the sustainability of the organisation. Granted, in the beginning you will have to play many roles. For those who think that being an entrepreneur is about playing golf on Friday afternoon, having long lunches, and arriving at work at 10 am every day, you are highly mistaken. When you first start you will be the messenger, accountant, receptionist, filing clerk etc and be accountable to the bank, suppliers, creditors, shareholders etc. However as that business grows, you need to start getting the right resources, setting up structures and systems within the organisation so that it is not dependant on you. Ask yourself what the best use of your time is. Will your spending 10 hours a week doing filing really help you or is it better to get assistance with that so that those 10 hours can be spent on business development? An entrepreneur’s time is spent on more strategic things to keep taking the business to the next level.
A lot of people get into business because of seeing what someone else has or their current position. We never do research well enough to understand what the journey to get where they are now looks like. These expectations set us up for disappointment and early failure. There are challenges the entire way; they never end. Once you overcome one, there is another one. In retrospect as an entrepreneur I can now say every challenge teaches you something you need to know to keep moving forward and to keep growing but do not expect to come to that perfect place where there are no problems. Lastly create Value in your enterprise. Value is not necessarily financial, although that helps. It is a brand, visibility, strong management, partnerships, profile, structures, human capital, vision etc. These are the things that make your business grow and will usually only happen if you are doing something you truly care about. Two people can run the exact same kind of business but the difference between the two is the passion of the entrepreneur followed by the focus to create value in that enterprise and to help other people. Run your company like you were preparing to sell it and/or create a legacy that survives just you. The vision should always be bigger than you; something you believe will happen but you probably don’t know the how, but it focuses your everyday actions and decisions towards that.
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