What is Entrepreneurship? - Video 1
Transcript:
The first lesson we teach our students when they arrive here on campus is define your turns, before you solve a problem it is essential to have clearly as to what everyone is talking about. The first term we need to define in this course on entrepreneurship is entrepreneur. Entrepreneur comes from a french word that means undertake which is very appropiate because what an entrepreneur does is that undertake a journey to create a new venture and that involves risk. This coming misperception that entrepreneurs are gamblers and they love to take risk. In fact, nothing can be further from the truth. What entrepreneurs dont have to do is through a rational systematic process manage risk to their advantage. The story about entrepreneurs being mad geniouses who take ideas and turn them into gold is just a story.
Beyond the misconception that entrepreneurs are unindiscipline gamblers is another myth that we have to dispel right away. First of all that they're born, not made. Secondly that they're particularly intellectually gifted and third that they're mercurial individualists and fourth maybe most of all they're just lucky. These are all whopping lies. The reality is much different. If you take a wildly succesfull entrepreneur and you peek behind the image of the chaos-loving visionary, then you'll find something much different. You'll find a group of remarkably disciplined people, Steve Jobs once famously said, it's more fun to be a pirate that to join the Navy so here we're going to embrace that pirate spirit, that pirate spirit inside of you, and we're going to add to it the execution skills of a Navy seal and we're gonna have a heck of a lot of fun doing it, so good luck, and welcome to disciplined entrepreneurship.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbQDeP5w7C4
What is Entrepreneurship? - Video 2
Transcript:
Hi, my name is Bill Aulet, I´m going to talk about disciplined entrepreneurship, 24 steps to successfully launch in a new venture. What i'm gonna start with is what is entrepreneurship cause this term is used all the time, it's bandied about everyone's for entrepreneurship. However, there is two fundamentally different types of entrepreneurship that i´m gonna talk about.
First of all, we have entrepreneurship, we have what we call SME Entrepreneruship. SME stands for small medium enterprise entrepreneurship. These are fundamentally small companies that will stay small and they may have been around for a while. They're focus on local markets. They're often service businesses, they're servicing a local opportunity but they're not something that is looking to go global, they know there's a need local, they want adress that, this could be a drycleaner, this could be a nail salon, this could be a restaurant or pizza parlors with reference in the paper that fiona Marie and I wrote. These are fundamentally important companies to an economy in a region because they serve a need but relative to the way the´re made up is the system that they create is one that shows kinf of linear growth and then at some point it usually taps out of the market. Now, this is an approximation of what goes on but that's what it usually looks like linear growth work and you notice that this is cash flow here from the business that there is no a tremendous amount of cash flow out against simplification.
However, when we go to IDE over here, which I will call Innovation Driven Entrepreneurship or Innovation Driven Enterprise Entrepreneurship we have a fundamentally different business and this one is looking for global markets or superregional markets to serve. And while this one is usually older and the older is usually you know maintaining control of it. This one is gonna require more cash because the dynamics of this business, look! it looses money and then it's gonna start showing exponential growth so there's this negative cash flow here. If this is cash flow on the Y axis and this is time along the X axis, it will initially have to require some capital to be put into it but that if it works it would take off because it's got basically unlimited markets. Underline what they're doing here as an innovation that's unique that allows them to adress much broader markets, so they're not just focused on the local market but much broader markets.
This is very important, this is gonna require more cash as I mentioned. While this is owned by, you know, this is controlled by a family or the owner. This is over here is gonna have sharewholders and a bunch of people. This is very important to differenciate because while this business is a very important business, the underlying demographics for the underline system in training for this does not look the same as this, it's almost like if you have two sports, basketball and baseball, you know sure your run in both, you jump in both but one and that's true of these, but Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, he turned out not to be a great basbell player, all his training was for that. So, likewise, there could some cross over here but generally there's more risk on this that people that are trained for this are doing, you know how to manage multiple stakeholders, how to do an underlying innovation.
In the next section we're gonna look at what is Innovation and define that more precisely, but the point of this is, two types of entrepreneurship, small medium enterprise ntrepreneurship, small companies distributed geographically and then, Innovation Driven Enterprise Entreorenurship companies that might not make it but then, if they make it they get to grow and be very very big. These end up, you know, generate a lot of jobs, these you need a lot, these tend to be more clustered, this tend to not to be so clustered.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcsp0486olY
What is Entrepreneurship? - Video 3
Transcript:
But, what exactly is entrepreneurship? Well, today we're gonna look at three caractheristics of an entrepreneur, but I thought at start by defining the word, so that word itself actually comes from the old french meaning someone who undertakes, and that word itself comes from entreprise on the french "prendre" meaning to take as to someone with an adventurous disposition, as someone who is ready to undertake challenges or someone with the spirit of daring will fall into this category.
So, what do all entrepreneurs have in common? well if we look at some of the famous entrepreneurs in today society we can start to see some common caracteristics, but I was suggest according to the literature in entrepreneurship it starts with innovation. So, Peter F. Drucker wrote a fascinating article in the Harvard Business Review about the Discipline of Innovation and he said that all the successfull entrepreneurs I have met have in commom is not a certain kind of personality but a commitment to the systematic practice of innovation. So, the heart of entrepreneurship is innovation and then the definition of innovation according to Peter Drucker is the ethic to create porpuseful focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential.
Take for example Henry Ford with his model T Ford in 1917 and also that fascinating story of the computer industries starting with Windows and Dell and IBM and of course Macintosh (Mac) and it's quite interesting to watch how their products have evolved over time and so the foundation of entrepreneurship as both, the practice and disclipline is a practice of systematic innovation, and the second element focus on how people interact with the environment, so one caracteristic or one personality trait is the idea of proactiveness and the definition of proactive behaviour is behaviour that directly alters the environment so people create environments and set them in motion as well as rebut them. People are proactive, not simply counteractive.
So, the definition of the prototypic proactive personality is one who is relatively unconstrained by situational forces, and who affect environmental change and not always for the better as we look at somebody's faces we cannot see the effects of their proactive behaviours but in a nutshell entrepreneurs and to add value to society, the economy, to the customers. Whatever these three main elements of entrepreneurship that remain as we said is practicing systematic innovation, proactive behaviour and then the final element is their attitude toward risk as Frank Knigh wrote a fascinating book called "A Profit Uncertainty and Risk". I'm sorry I dont remember that order I think, but anyway he wrote this book and he said the entrepreneur is willing to put his or her career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending time as well as capital on an uncertain venture so risk and uncertainty are similar concepts although uncertainty is strongly linked with knowledge so that's my applaud you today for choosing to study the discipline of entrepreneurship because that's going to further your own knowledge and reduce the level of uncertainty that you have about starting a business, begining a new venture, so the more unceratinty you can reduce the better your chances are. So, take a look at some of these advanced readings, if you get a chance pause the screen now, type in some of these titles into Google scholar and you should get access to that and yes, check out Knight's book that's sorry "Risk Uncertainty and Profit" is the title. Thanks for listening, essentially that's what Entrepreneurship is or Entrepreneurs are, innovative, proactivea nd risk takers.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC3n5enTz0
What is an Entrepreneur? - Video 4
Transcript:
So, what exactly is an entrepreneur? it's just a fancy word to someone that starts a business and if you've ever wondered what it means to be one, and look no further. The folk here at Big Ideas Wales know that there's no one better to tell you what's involved and the skills you'll need on entrepreneurs, so we asked some. The answers can be summed up in four words: attitude, creativity, relationships and organization.
So, let's have a look at attitude, having a positive attitude will get you a long way even when sometimes things are not going the way you like them to, be confident in our ideas, believe in yourself and persevere. It's your determination to see things trough that'll make things happen.
What about creativity? Well, creativity is solving a problem, all you need is little imagination, look at some thing with a fresh pair of eyes, think of it differently and bingo, you have done it, you just come out with a brilliant new idea, so take a look around and ask yourself how could I make that just that bit better, tap into to that briliant imagination that you have and off you go.
Ok, now relationships, running a business is definitely a people thing, having a good relationships with your customers, employees, suppliers, partners and other businesses is essential for success, be willing to talk to everyone and listen to what they have to say, the more people you know the easier it will be to use your powers of persuasion and get things done.
And lastly, organisation, to get to grips with the day-to-day running of a business, good organization skills are essential, you need to understand how to raise finance, manage the money and deal with tax. You need to set up systems to make your business check from IT system to planning and record-keeping, the more organized you are the smoother things will run. Yes, there's a lot to consider, but many entrepreneurs told us that they asked friends, family, colleagues and professionals to help along the way so you're not alone. Starting a business is an exciting adventure, full of new experiences, surprise, some lows, some tough decisions and a lot of hard work, but as an entrepreneur the power is in your hands, just tap into that imagination of yours, be positive, be friendly, be organized and you'll surely be very successful. For inspiration and information on becoming Wales' next young entrepreneur visit Big Ideas Wales.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92ZmzD70sOU
What is Entrepreneurship? - Video 5
Transcript:
- Hello, welcome to our MOOC "Launching New Ventures". - I'm Chris, - I'm Marc, we're both professors here at EPFL, the École Polytecnique Fédérale de Laussane which is a hotbed of entrepreneurship and innovation. Every month roughly two new companies are created here.
- EPFL is located in Laussane in Switzerland and Switzerland is also a country where a lof of technology development happens, you know? We didn't design the course only for Switzerland, quite to the contrary, this course is a very international scope so we try to make it relevant for many many countries around the globe.
- Yeah I mean, many MOOCs are designed with one specific country in mind whereas what we try to do with this MOOC is to make so it's applicable to many different contexts, many different regions including Africa and other parts of the world.
- So we desing the course with you in mind drawing on our rich research experience of more than 30 years combined as well as our experience in teaching entrepreneurs and in consulting with entrepreneurs. So, there's lots of experience to draw from and we use that in order to craft a MOOC that is compelling to you. We know that for many people entrepreneurship is a life-changing event. So maybe this MOOC will change your life and lead you to some greener pastures.
- Now what we've done with this MOOC is we've followed a long entrepreneurial process, the MOOC itself is only going to be five weeks long, total and what we have done is we have picked the subjects that are absolutely critical, the most specific things you need to launch your business. So, we think this is going to be both, fun and educational.
- Surely fun! Exactly. So, without further ado, let's get going and let's look at what entrepreneurship actually means.
- Yes, what is entrepreneurship? Well, one definition of entrepreneurship is, it is bringing resources together to create value.
- What type of value?
- That could be any kind of value, could be economic value, social value, there is eco-entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, there's lots of different things but what we are going to focus on in this MOOC is going to be on the economic value creation for the growth ventures. Although the other things will probably fall into place once you have a viable business proposition.
- Exactly. So, this word entrepreneurship actually comes from a french term,"entreprendre" and if you thought well entrepreneurship is something cool and new, here is the bad news right at the begining of the MOOC. It's actually a term that was used since the 17th century and there was one person, a scientist. Richard Cantillon, he used that for a term in the 17th century for the first time, so what did you observe? You observe people like Marco Polo and contrasted them with how business activity was done in the ancient marketplaces at the time, so, Marco Polo he was a merchant-adventurer, he travelled to the Far East, he boguht silk, he bought tea, and he brought the stuff back to the marketplaces here in Europe. And to think about these market places in those days; what do they sell?
- Local busiensses, butchers and carpenters, farmers' markets, etc where people congragated in one public place.
- So, now imagine Marco Polo being on one of these market places and saying ok "I have silk for you, I have tea for you" and the customers wouldn't know these types of products, so it wasn't innovation that Marco Polo brought about but it was risky because he had expenditures, you know when he was in India.
- Quite a lot of expenditures before he was able to get a return on his.
- Exactly if you're not knowing exactly what he would get in a return. So, that has traces of entrepreneurship there, you know, doing something innovative but on the other hand you know, he did also not finance his travels by himself what Marco Polo actually did, he found capitalists to finance his travel to the Far East and when he was in the Far East he brought the goods back and he sold them, the profit you know he shared the profits with this capitalists, you know 75% would go into the profit of the capitalists and 25% would be going into Marco Polo's pocket and that sounds awfully familiar to what we see nowadays in venture capital. So, there're also traces here of entrepreneurship. So, in essence I think these early observations shaped the field of entrepreneurship quite a bit and you know, entrepreneurial behaviour as such is actually rooted in many of us here, you know? It's not something special in that sense. It's quite conventional that we see entrepreneurship because if we think back into the ancient times everyone was an entrepreneur. There were no large organizations or public organizations, governments to work for, everyone had to find ways to trade and to produce something and to sell something, so entrepreneurship as such is everywhere and I think it's time that you discover whether you might be a good entrepreneur.
- So, according to this Cantillon example, you can think about Marco Polo as a great case of someone who had an Entreprenurail Mindset, he was an entrepreneurial thinker who had gone to several entrepreneurail events or milestones, and who someone who participated in a whole entrepreneurial process. This is kind of the three ways of thinking about entrepreneurship and we're going to discuss each of those. First we're gonna think about the kinds of people who would be entrepreneurial minded, this could be anywhere; it could be a founder of a company or could be someone in a big company having an entrepreneurial mindset, someone who wants to take risk
- So in a way you know by looking at the content of our MOOC you can see what are the components of an entreprenurial mindset and how may I nurture, as a person, my entrepreurial mindset.
- Right, and then what we'll do is, we'll think a little bit about the entrepreneurial events, or milestones that happened during the course of entrepreneurial process, and then we're also mainly organized this MOOC about point number three which is the entrepreneurial process itself.
- So we have pre-launch phase and the post-long phase. In the pre-launch phase we look at content, for instance, like opportunity identification; in the post-launch phase we look at growth, about making your sales, entrepreneurail marketing, etc.
- Exactly
- So, all of this stuff will be organized around the entrepreneurial mindset process as a timeline in that sense. So you may ask yourself, Is entrepreneurship actually for me? You might think, "maybe I'm too old, maybe i'm too young, maybe i'm living in a region where entrepreneurship is not so prevalent", but here are two statistics that are quite important, we don't want to bore you with lots of studies but these are two interesting tidbits that you want to know. First, look at this slide here . It shows you the distribution of entrepreneurship across different age groups acroos different regions, I think the main takeaway is that entrepreneurship is everywhere. Now you see it across the globe.
- Right
- And what's quite amazing is lots of entrepreneurship, actually on Africa and in other countries, US of course, you knnow, that's typically considered as an entrepreneurail country and also here on Europe and other countries and also that's quite an important takeaway. The second takaway is here on the next slide.
- Right if you look at this slide I think what strikes you is that yes, there's slightly more men than women in entrepreneurship worlwide. However, it's really quite well distributed between men and women, almost equal across all parts of the globe.
- So, it's not a male dominated area. It's very democratic and that's it. If we look at the later corporations we're still discussing that there the equality but look at this here we have shown the equality
- Also you have got the different regions of the world too. And we most think about North America as being the place where entrepreneurship but we you look at this graphic I think you see that really it's happening everywhereand even to some extend more than North America.
- That's what I want to reiterate what we said before: this is a course that is really targeted at global audiences and not just a specific country or specfic regions. This is targeted to males, to females, to people in Asia, to people in Africa, to all poeple around the globe, in a way.
- So, in this MOOC we're going to have an emphasis on the technology-driven entrepreneurship businesses. If you think about technology-driven entrepreneurship, it's about having an innovative technology, trying to commercialize it, it's like the Marco Polo example. You're doing something innovative to the market, customers might not know it, so there are some unique challenges that you are facing when you are trying to create this type of venture, a technology-driven one. In contrast there's the more self-employed entrepreneurship where you are imitating. It could be that this is still relevant for self-employment businesses but in a self-employment type situation, you need usually more of an imitation type business, usually made for a lifestyle without a big, big growth option. The material in this course will also be relevant to those people too but we will place more on an emphasis on the growth aspects of this.
- So, where are these technology-driven companies coming from? These technologies are oftentimes developed at universities, so they might be coming from technology transfer offices, they might also be coming from larger corporations where some employes might say, "we have a cool new technology" "our headquarters are not interested in commercializing this business, so we do it, we form a group, and we spin out a company from the larger corporation". Or it could be individual inventors making things in their mythical garages.
- Exactly, and that doesn't have to be a garage, could also be a basement, but that's typically where they start off. we'll always talk about the garage. They say that they don't have the funds to hire fancy office buildings. So, there are a lot of origins, and there might be different ones, so we don't want to exclude the other ones but these are the conventional ones, three ones that are often encountered.
- So, as I mentioned before, this course is structured around the entrepreneurial process. So what we'll do is in the next segment we'll go through a lot of the details about how the course is structured, and what to expect over the next five weeks, so stay with us!
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3a8-mUUUBI
Introduction to Entrepreneurship - Video 6
Transcript:
- Welcome back! This is segment 1.1!
- During this segment we are gonna introduce you to the set up of this MOOC. We have designed five weeks for you that cover the essentials of the entrepreneurial process.
- So, let's review what we just discussed last time.
- So, we discussed what entrepreneurship is about, you know, we talked about entrepreneurship as the process where you create value by bringing resources together.
- And we also discussed the fact that it's not a new concept, Cantillon was discussing this already in the 17th century, thinking about Marco Polo's journey, some of the risks that he took, some of the innovation aspects. So, it's been quite a long time that people studied entrepreneurship.
- Why its so important nowadays? It's because it's one of the very liberating types of business concepts, you know, it's your imagination that sets the limits of what you can do. Initially at least because you can come up with new things and how to develop new products, ways to serve customers. So, what you can imagine is actually the initial limit.
- So, we've chosen here five critical topics that we've put in chunks of one week each, so you have five pieces of the entrepreneurial process.
- Exactly, so we start off with a more general discussion of what is entrepreneurship and then we move on in week two to identifying and evaluating business opportunities. And then, in week three, we cover one of the core aspects of the entrepreneurship process which is entrepreneurial marketing because you need to attract customers for your venture. And then we have in week four another core aspect which is raising and managing money. And then, week five, we talk about value capture because you shouldn't only develop an innovation but you should also be able to profit from that innovation
- Now to enhance your learning experience in this course we're also going to accompany our lectures, interviews with entrepreneurs with assingments and quizzes and participation in the forum. And in addition you're supposed to write a business concept proposal that summarizes your venture, what you're intending to do in your entrepreneurship process.
- And then finally we have someonewhat unique experience which is going to have you participating in a real crowdfounding campaign.
- So, let's walk you through each of these weeks, you know, with one slide each. So, it's a very brief summary, so, in week one as Chris just mentioned, we'll talk about what is entrepreneurship, we're gonna sensitized you to the differences between different types of entrepreneurship and also the differences to normal management in that sense. If you look at the differences in entrepreneurship, you could say there are more the technology driven types of startups and then they're more the self-employent type of entrepreneurial companies where the former of the technology driven-ones would have strong ambitions, they're often found and based on some kind of cool innovation, and create markets while the self-employment entreprenurship type would be more about replicating markets, copying what others have done, etc. Both I think are valid and important forms of entrepreneurship because they' have important functions within the economy but on the other hand, we needed to focus the MOOC on some type of ventures which are the technology-driven ones, but that does not mean the content would be only relevant for those.
- Yeah, I think that this could be useful for people who want a lifestyle business as well as those who really want to look for a growth business.
- Exactly, so both of these constituencies, these target groups on our MOOC would be relevant, so we invite you to understand these differences because then you also know what are other particular challenges that you will be facing as an entrepreneur when you create one or the other type of venture.
- So, in a nutshell in week two, we're gonna talk about evaluating and identifying opportunities and here we're going to discuss a little bit about technology and how technology might be applied to different markets.
- Exactly, what we want you to understand is that markets have different characteristics, they present more or less fertile ground for fund creation, so actually this opportunity identification stage is a higlhy critical one because you might identify more or less favorable environments for a fund creation. And we're gonna talk about this aspect, but we're also gonna talk about how you can systematically improve your abilities to see good opportunities out there which is a higly critical skill, I think. So, in week three we're gonna talk about entrepreneurial marketing which is another critical aspect in your venture creation journey because it's about creating relationships with your customers, attracting their money, you know, trying to sell their products to these folks and then in order to understand entrepreneurial marketing in a systematic manner you have to really differentiate between more the strategic types of decisions which are my market segments, how should my customers perceive me in these market segments and then, differentiate that from the implementation issue which would be more like the marketing mix which type of pricing you do, which types of distribution challenges you chose.
- I mean, as Peter Drucker said, "the purpose of a business is to create a customer".
- Exactly and not creating just a product or technoogy because you need to survive as a company and you have to make these sales and you have to grow your company by making even more sales and entrepreneurial marketing is exactly about that.
- You're gonna have expenses to develop your product and services into your marketing so in week four we're gonna talk about a very critical aspect of this which is raising financing.
- Exactly, and when you think about your expenses you have it's cash outflows, and what happens if you cannot pay your bills? In your private life and in your company life, you go bankrupt. So, in essence, the cash that you have in the company is like the air you breath. Then what we'll be talking about is sources where you can get that air for your company to breath.
- Exactly, we're gonna go through the different stages and talk about some different sources of financing at each stage, and one of those is gonna be again, the crowdsfounding aspect of it. So, we can think about the crowdfounding as being a potential boost to get a little bit of air there while you're starting a business.
- And then we're already in week five. The MOOC is short, we told you because we are gonna focus on the essentials and then in this week five we have another key element which is profiting from your innovation, it's value capture because it's not given that you actually capture the value that you're creating, there are the other parties out there, your customers, your employees, you know, other people who want to have a share of the profit pie that you create so you have to be smart in how to structure your deals, how to defend the pie, or the share of the pie that should accrue to you.
- Right, so what we'll do in this particular week is, we'll discuss protecting your ideas through intellectual property and other ideas. We will also talk about the capturing of value relative to your patners, and how you make money relative to your partners. We'll think about legal liability and other legal issues.
- You want to have pivoting? - Yes, exactly. It's like once you have to figure out, do I change my product a little bit here and then wait to attract more?
- You might be part way through your idea, and then you might be testing it in the market and figuring out that actually that's not exactly the right market that I wanted and I need to change a little bit. So thinking aloud about pivoting is also super important.
- And then also about growing and scaling your venture. You have to grow in a venture, attract additional customers, you have to scale it up to actually get most of the value that you potentially could create. So, that's week five, it's highly critical and it basically is the final bracket, the final endpoint of the milestone of the whole MOOC because we want to have you there as a succeeding entrepreneur who also captures that value. So, by now you might ask yourself, "it's entrepreneurship actually for me?" is it for you a viable option, a viable choice for your life? and I think there's not definite answer. Some people actually know it you and they say "I want to be an entrepreneur" while others say "ok, maybe". So we invite everyone to experience it, to try to understand what it means because ultimately, it's an important choice in your life and if you think back, in ancient times, actually all of us were entrepreneurs. There were not such things as large organizations or goverments we could work for. So, entrepreneurship is in a way in us. But you need to find out whether is actually so much in you that you want to engage in this activity. So, think about, you know, in Tiger Woods, if he had never had a golf club, you know, he would never had understood that this is actually a sport that he can do.
- We're in Switzerland, so think about Roger Federer as an example. If he didn't pick up a Tennis raquet, he would have never known, so in the sense, we really invite you to also experience entrepreneurship in all these stages, learn about it, and ultimately try to understand, is this an activity that is fun for you, it fulfills your life and it's a career choice.
- So, there are some practicalities for participating in the MOOC and Nethra is going to walk you through those in more detail later, this week. But just to give the overview of that aspect of it. There's going to be participation in assignments, quizzes, we have online forum where you can post questions. We also have Q&A sessions each week. We probably cannot answer all the questions you tweet to us or you post on the forum because there could be many questions, but, from our experience, they cluster around some particular topics and we will be discussing these topics with you during these weeks.
- So, we'll participate on online office hours, and we'll create pannels that are tailored to the discussions we're having and the questions we're receiving. In addition to that, we are also going to have you develop, as we mentioned before a business concept proposal, and as Marc just mentioned recently, there's going to be a crowdfounding campaign.
- So this is what this course is about, we designed for you, we look forward for being with you in the next five weeks, so welcome!
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2HmjAwGNEw
How to be an Entrepreneur - Video 7
Transcript:
Many of us want to become entrepreneurs. Starting your own business is one of the biggest dreams of our times. But how do you get to be an entrepreneur? Most of the advice focuses on the practicalities, writing a business plan, raising money, finding staff, marketing and PR. We'll go down a different route. In our eyes at the heart are successful entrepreneurship lies something oddly more abstract: an accurate insight into the causes of human unhappiness.
To be an entrepreneur means, essentially to become an expert in the things that make life difficult for people. That's because every properly ambitious business is in some way trying to fix things for other people. And the bigger and more original what you're trying to fix happens to be the more succesful your business can be because consumer society is not well developed; it may be easy to think that all the big problems out there already have thousands of fixes anyway. Think of all those car companies, or pizza outlets, or new websites. We surely have enough of everything. What could be possibly add to what's already out there? but to get a sense of the vast opportunities that still remain in capitalism all you need to do is ask yourself: where and in what areas you're unhappy in the course of an average day?
Every unhappiness is really a new business waiting to be born. Your frustations are a nearly inexhaustible of raw materials out of which the businesses of the future can be built. So while there may already be plenty of breakfast cereals, and t-shirts and cellphones and cab rides for sale, there's so much more that frustates and depresses us: Think of how difficult it is to get on with one's partner, educate children, cope with anxiety, discover what you want to do with your life, find a nice place to live, calm down in the evening. One could go on and on. Our griefs and irritations are endless, thankfully for the budding entrepreneurs. The biggest first step to take towards entrepreneurship is therefore to learn to study your own unhappiness and what might possibly heal it for you and others.
When profits decline in businesses it's really the result of too many people throwing themselves at trying to fix the same area cause they can't think of anything more innovative to do rather than start a new airline, mobile phone company, or supermarket chain. And by contrast, healthy profits are a reward for understanding and mastering and area of human distress ahead of anyone else.
Of course ideas aren't enough on their own; you need to take care of practicalities and money but they won't help you if your original psychological insight into human unhappiness isn't sound. And by the same token, if your insight into what makes people unhappy is razor sharp, and your solutions bold, then however difficult the journey, your business will stand a high chance of making money and benefiting humanity too.
Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJjILQu2xM8
The 15 Characteristics of Effective Entrepreneurs - Video 8
Transcript:
15 signs you're an entrepreneur: passionate, dedicated, optimistic. These words can apply to entrepreneurs, but insecure and trouble-maker are also accurate according to many who know and success when they see one. You might be an entrepreneur if the following traits describe you:
1. You take action
Barbara Corcoran, founder of the corcoran group and co-star of tv's Shart Tank says "people who have a concept but not a detailed strategy are more likely to have that special entrepreneurial ability". Corcoran's recommendation "invent as you go rather than spending time writing a plan in your desk".
2. You're insecure
"Many entrepreneurs are really insecure underneath", Corcoran says. Those who are nervous about failing can become hyper-focus on success, if you feel insecure use that emotion to drive you to achieve your business goals.
3. You're crafty
"One of my favorite's TV shows growing up was MacGiver", says Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos because he never had exactly the resources he needed but with some help figured out how to make everything work out. Hsieh says "he admires MacGiver's creativity, optimism and extreme smart" it's not about having enough resources but being resourceful with what you do have.
4. You're obsessed with cashflow
"All I ever thought about was cashflow and liquidity", says Joe Gustafson, founder of brainshark. You need cash to fight the battle one more day even if you have the best company in the world.
5. You get into hot water
Stephane Bourque, founder and CEO of Incognito software says "true entrepreneurs are more likely to ask for forgiveness than permission. Entrepreneurs are never satisfied with the status quo", he says. Bourque says "I wish my employees would get into more trouble because it shows they're on the lookout for opportunites to improve.
6. You're fearless
"Where most avoid risk, entrepreneurs see potential", says chef Robert Irvine, host of food network restaurant impossible. In some ways he says "entrepreneurs are the ultimate optimists because they operate under the belief that their investments of time and money will eventually pay off".
7. You can't sit still
Entrepreneurs have unbridled energy that fuels them long past time when your employees have gone home. They're aeger excited and energized about business in a way that makes them stand out.
8. You're malleable
"If you have only one acceptable outcome in mind, your chances of making it are slim". Rosemary Camposano, president and CEO of Halo blow dry bars. Smart entrepreneurs consistently evolve, tweaking their business concepts in response to market feedback.
9. You enjoy navel gazing
"Entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with the process of evaluating their own performance", says Laura Novak Meyer, owner of little nest portraits. Little nest surveys every client to ask for opportunities for improvement and Meyer has worked closely with a business couch to identify personal areas where she needs to improve.
10 You're movativated by challenges
"When confronted by problems, entrepreneurs rise to the ocassion. Challenges motivate them to work harder", says Jeff Platt, CEO of the Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park franchise. Candace Nelson, founder of Sprinkles cupcakes agrees despite Hazels who questioned her idea for a bakery on the mids of the car fearing early two thousands, she persevered and now has locations in eight states.
11. You consider yourself an utsider
"Entreprenerus aren't always accepted" says Vincent Petrik, founder of J.P LICKS a chaine of ice cream shops. They are often rejected for being different in some way and that just make them work harder" he says, rather than copying what most ice-cream shops were doing, Petrik forged his own path. His early competitors otherwise are not ownering business.
12. You recover quickly
It's a popular notion that successuful entrepreneurs fail fast and fail often, if you fail, resist the air to mope, don't feel sorry for yourself, don't wallow, move on to the next big thing inmediately.
13. You fulfill needs
"Many people recognize market place holes, but the true entrepreneurs take them from cocktail napkin to reality" says Jennifer Dawn, partner in Savor the Success, a business in a work for women. Entreprenerus think about way to fix it and take steps to fix it. They're innovators.
14. You surround yourself with advisors
Actress Jessica Alba, cofounder and president of the Honest company says,"it's important to surround yourself with people smarter than you and to listen to ideas that aren't yours. True entrepreneurs don't hire yes men; they talk to those with experience and conduct through a research gathering as much information as they can to make important decisions.
15. You work and play hard
"Entrepreneurs fall down and pick themselves up until they get it right "says Micha Kaufman who snowboards and sales in addition to running Fiverr, the online market place he cofounded. During fiverr's launch instead of trying to deal with an endless hundred of potential challenges, Kaufman and his team focused on the single biggest challenge every market place has. Building liquidity, he says "not building liquidity is like worrying about the skills needed for fran size sixty three jumps before learning snowboarding basics.
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